Romney leads Obama in Florida by 7 points

[Assasin]

Hortical must be missing for a while. How X call out me and I-man talking bout easy victory for Obama.

Him better tell all him auntie, uncle, cousin and long Island neighbours fi come out and vote and stop talk .....

[Islandman]

Re the confidence thing, I think its more that he is facing the reality of how HARD it is to really achieve change. He didn't have the kind of first term that he imagined at all, though it wasn't his fault mostly. Even Obamacare which should have been a sure winner has been a struggle.

He should be able to pull through and win a second term if he shows that he still believes and really wants it. That was the worst part about his debate performance for me, it was as if he didn't even really believe what he was saying anymore.

[Gamma]

if he shows that he still believes and really wants it. that's it in a nutshell. he has not shown me that!

[Hortical]

Unuh deh pon the Obama kool aide eee.

[Assasin]

what cool aide??? I just can't see Romney's policies any different from Bush and with tea baggers full up the house, it would be a disaster.

I don't think Obama is Bill Clinton but what he has a better grip than Romney on the issues as it relates to me and I think America.

[Skeng DX]

[Skeng DX]

[Skeng DX]

Thursday night’s ding-dong Vice-Presidential debate may have cheered up Democratic supporters, but opinion polls across the country are continuing to show Mitt Romney making up ground on Barack Obama. Obviously, the polls don’t yet reflect public reaction to the Biden-Ryan show. But whatever impact the Veep debate has—and I don’t think it will be major—we now know that Romney’s post-debate bounce was more than a two- or three-day phenomenon: the debate changed the dynamics of the race like no other event this year.

In the national polls, Romney is now running slightly ahead of Obama (though within the margin of error), and in the key battleground states, he is also closing on him, and in some cases moving ahead. Reflecting this fact, I am making a couple of significant changes to The New Yorker’s electoral map—also known as Cassidy’s Count—which I last updated on Monday. In particular, I am shifting Florida from toss-up to leaning Romney, and New Hampshire from leaning Obama to toss-up. (By toss-up, I mean the state is too close to call.) In addition, I am keeping a beady eye on Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, Nevada, and Wisconsin, five more states where Romney has made up a lot of ground. For the moment, though, I am keeping Colorado as a toss-up and the other four states as leaning Obama.

After Monday’s update, I had Obama at 281 votes in the electoral college, 11 more than he needs to win, and Romney with 206 votes. Another 53 votes were still up for grabs. After adding Florida’s 29 votes to Romney’s column, the G.O.P. candidate now has has 235 voters, just 35 short of his target. After removing New Hampshire’s four electoral-college votes from Obama’s column, the President has 277 votes, which is getting perilously close to 270. And if the polls keep moving against him in the other states I mentioned, he will soon drop below the crucial figure.

At the national level, the Real Clear Politics poll-of-polls, which averages all the recent surveys, had Romney up by more than one point at midday on Saturday: 47.3 per cent to 46.0 per cent. More important than the exact numbers is the fact that Romney has maintained a narrow lead for four days in a row—the first time this has happened in a year. In the latest updates of the daily tracking polls of likely voters, Rasmussen and Gallup both show Romney ahead by a point or two, and a third survey, from IBD/TIPP Tracking, has the race tied. During the past few days, the only national poll that has shown Obama leading is the Gallup tracking poll of registered voters, rather than likely voters: in Saturday’s update to this rolling survey, he was still three points up on Romney. (The discrepancy between the two Gallup polls is explained by the fact that Gallup, and most other polling organizations, consider registered Republicans to be slightly more likely to turn out and vote than registered Democrats.)

At the state level, a brace of polls have been published in the past few days, and virtually all of them show the national trend toward Romney being reflected locally. The reason Obama is still leading in the electoral college when he is now trailing at the national level is that, in many of the battleground states, he started out in a stronger position, which has given him something of a buffer. But that buffer is now a thin one. I have three states listed as toss-ups: Colorado, New Hampshire, and Virginia, which together have twenty-six votes in the electoral college. If Romney were to sweep the three of them, and also win all the states now classed as leaning towards him, he would have two hundred and sixty-one votes, which would leave him nine short of his target. For victory, he would also need to secure Ohio or Wisconsin, or Iowa and Nevada. That’s a big ask. But in all four of these states, Obama’s lead is looking a lot less secure than it did ten days ago.

Here’s a bit more detail on the individual states, and why I’ve changed my calls on some of them but not others:

Florida: All along, the Sunshine State has been the big prize. If Romney doesn’t reclaim it from Obama, who defeated John McCain there in 2008 by about three points, it is virtually impossible for him to win. Throughout the summer, Obama maintained a consistent, if fairly narrow, lead in the polls. But that has now changed dramatically. Since the October 3rd debate, five statewide polls have been taken, and Romney has been ahead in four of them. The G.O.P. candidate’s average lead has been three points, but one survey conducted by Mason Dixon, a very reputable polling organization, showed him leading Obama by as much as seven points. “Obama’s now swimming upstream,” said Brad Coker, of Mason Dixon, which conducted the survey for a number of Florida news organizations, including the Miami Herald and the Tampa Bay Times.
It wasn’t just the headline numbers in the Mason-Dixon survey—Romney 51 per cent; Obama 44 per cent—that were alarming for Democrats.

Among the more detailed findings: The respondents trust the G.O.P. candidate more than the President on looking out for the middle class by 50 per cent to 47 per cent. On the economy: The margin in his favor is 50 per cent to 44 percent. On leading the nation, it is 51 per cent to 46 per cent.“There’s no question in my mind that that debate really made people stand up and pay attention,” Coker added. “And it really wiped away questions people might have had about Romney who were either undecided or soft for Obama.”

With two Presidential debates to come, of course, Obama still has time to swing things back in his favor. But right now, Romney appears to have all the momentum in Florida, and that is why, at least for now, I have recategorized it as leaning toward him.

New Hampshire: As you might expect, there hasn’t been nearly as much polling here as in Florida. But the two surveys that have been conducted over the last week both show Romney doing very well. A Rasmussen poll from Tuesday showed the two candidates tied. A survey from American Research Group (A.R.G.) that was carried out from Tuesday to Thursday showed Romney leading by four points: 50 per cent to 46 per cent. That lead is within the margin of error, but it represents a big turnaround from a few weeks ago, when Obama was ahead by as much as 15 points, according to one poll. Given these numbers, it could be argued that New Hampshire should be switched directly to leaning Romney rather than to a toss-up. But before making such a call, I’d like to see another poll or two showing the G.O.P. man retaining his newfound lead.

Colorado: On Monday, I switched it from leaning Obama to toss-up. Since then, three more polls have been published, and they all showed Romney narrowly ahead. In two of them, from the Denver Post/Survey USA and CBS News/New York Times/Quinnipiac, his lead was one point. In the other, from A.R.G., it was four points: 50 per cent to 46 per cent. If this trend away from Obama continues for another few days, I will switch Colorado to leaning Romney, which would give him another nine votes in the electoral college. For now, though, I still regard Colorado as too close to call. All of Romney’s leads are within the margin of error, and two earlier polls, both of which were carried out after the Presidential debate, showed Obama narrowly ahead.

Ohio: On Monday, I left the pivotal Buckeye State as leaning Obama, citing the need for more data. Since then, there have been eleven—yes, eleven—more polls. Obama has been ahead in eight of them, and Romney has been leading in three. Obama’s average lead in these polls was about 1.5 per cent, which confirms that the Ohio race is now worryingly tight for the White House. On balance, though, it is still leaning narrowly to Obama. A couple of polls have shown him sustaining a bigger lead.

CNN/Opinion Research had him up by four points among likely voters: 51 per cent to 47 per cent. A survey from NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist College, which was carried out from Monday to Wednesday, showed Obama leading by six points: 51 per cent to 45 per cent. In three polls in which Romney was ahead—from Wenzel Strategies, A.R.G., and Gravis Marketing—he was up by just one point. And both Rasmussen and Zogby, pollsters who sometimes lean towards the G.O.P., still have the President leading by one point. For all of these reasons, I am leaving Ohio in Obama’s column. But Romney isn’t out of it: his chances look better than they have been in months.

Wisconsin: Romney had a bit of a bounce here after he selected local boy Paul Ryan as his running mate, but it didn’t last. His post-debate bounce looks like it may be more durable. In the past couple of weeks, Obama’s average lead in the polls has been reduced from eight points to a little more than two points. But Romney has yet to take the lead in a single poll, and until he does I will continue to regard Wisconsin as a state that the President is likely to win. The fourteen-point margin he achieved here in 2008 still looms largely in my mind. Still, this is another blue state where Romney is doing a heck of a lot better than he was during the summer.

Nevada: This is a tricky state to call. Partly because of the influx of new residents, particularly Hispanics, it is a notoriously tough place to poll accurately. Given that Obama carried the state by more than twelve percentage points in 2008, I have always thought that Romney, despite the sizable population of Nevada Mormons, faced a monumental task in winning here. That’s still my view, but the latest polls show the race tightening up considerably. On the eve of Denver, Obama was ahead by about five points. In the four polls taken since October 3rd, his average lead is slightly less than two points. Even a P.P.P. poll, which showed Obama up by four points, contained some worrying signs for the White House. Since the firm’s last survey, which was carried out in mid-September, Obama’s lead had been cut by five points. Romney’s favorability rating has climbed sharply, to fifty per cent.“Barack Obama’s still the favorite in Nevada, but the state’s looking a lot more competitive than it did three weeks ago,” Dean Debnam, president of P.P.P., said. “The big question is whether Romney’s momentum will be enough to overcome the structural advantages Democrats have in the state.”
I agree with that assessment. Indeed, it can be applied to the country as a whole. Incumbency, demographics, and the balance of probabilities still favor Obama. But going into Tuesday’s showdown in Long Island, things are getting darn close.


Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...#ixzz29HD2yv2D

[Karl]

I am surprised!
I think the State is one Romney should win...but 7 points???

If the Democrats turnout is good (at or about the 2008 election) and Obama holds his 70:30 edge among Hispanics and 90+:2+ edge among blacks then he could pull off an upset!

[Willi]

Nate silver
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/

Obama 60% chance of winning.