Ramsauen & Fox again..OHIO now Romneys

[Sir X]

Poll gives Romney edge in Ohio as battleground contest tightens
Published October 29, 2012
FoxNews.com
A new poll shows Mitt Romney 2 points ahead of President Obama in Ohio, in the latest survey showing the vital battleground contest tightening and too close to call.
The Rasmussen Reports poll of likely voters had Romney slightly ahead at 50-48 percent. The lead, though, was well within the 4-point margin of error -- the results effectively reflect a virtual tie in the Buckeye State.
Another poll released over the weekend, by the Ohio News Organization, showed the candidates knotted up at 49 percent each.
The polling, though, appears to show Ohio falling well into toss-up territory -- despite Obama having the edge in most surveys leading up to October. The RealClearPolitics average of polls shows Obama with a 1.9 percentage point lead there.
Ohio and its 18 electoral votes are considered vital to victory on Election Day, and particularly to Romney's campaign. The Republican nominee attended a rally in the state Monday morning, while Vice President Biden has scheduled one later in the day in Youngstown, Ohio, while Obama stays in Washington to deal with Hurricane Sandy.
The Rasmussen poll showed a big split between those who voted early and those who plan to vote on or closer to Election Day. For the one-third of voters who already cast their ballots, Obama was leading 62-36 percent. Romney, though, had a big lead among those who haven't voted yet.
The poll of 750 likely voters was conducted Oct. 28.
Nationally, the Gallup polling firm shows Romney leading 50-46 percent among likely voters.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012...#ixzz2Ajp6BOG2

[Sir X]

The Track Record of Pre-Election Polls (in 2 Graphs)

By John Sides Oct 29, 2012, 5:14 PM Author's Website

How trustworthy are this year’s presidential polls? On Monday, November 5, will they be able to tell us who is likely to win the election? We’ll know soon enough, but in the meantime the historical record provides some important context. This record suggests three things:
1) The polls have been fairly accurate. (Adverbs are always a bit subjective, so see what you think after you read the post.)
2) To the extent that they miss, they do so by over-estimating the frontunner’s vote.
3) The reason they miss is not because of late movement among the undecideds but because of “no-show” voters who tells pollsters that they will vote but then don’t.
To show this, I will again draw on Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien’s Timeline of Presidential Elections. Their data include all live-interviewer presidential election trial heat polls from 1952-2008.
Below is their graph of the Democratic candidate’s poll margin plotted against the Democratic candidate’s margin in the actual two-party vote.

Clearly, the polls are very close to the actual outcome. Erikson and Wlezien write:

From the figure we can see that the polls at the end of the campaign are a good predictor of the vote—the correlation between the two is a near-perfect 0.98. Still, we see considerable shrinkage of the lead between the final week’s polls and the vote. The largest gap between the final polls and the vote is in 1964, when the polls suggested something approaching a 70–30 spread in the vote percentage (+20 on the vote −50 scale) for Johnson over Goldwater, whereas the actual spread was only 61–39.

In very close elections, the polls are still quite close to the actual outcome—missing by 1-2 points at most. They slightly underestimated Gore’s share of the vote, for example. Of course, in a close election, 1-2 points is consequential. But it’s not reasonable to expect polls to call very close elections right on the nose, and small misses shouldn’t be taken as evidence for this astounding claim from former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich:

Pollsters know nothing. Their predictions are based on nothing. They exist solely to make astrologers and economic forecasters look good.

To the extent that polls “miss,” they tend to overestimate the share that the frontrunner will receive. A similar graph from Erikson and Wlezien shows this:

This is not because of a pro-incumbent bias in the polls. It is because the front-running candidate typically does a bit worse on Election Day than in the final polls, and that candidate is typically the incumbent:

This figure shows a clear tendency for the late polls to exaggerate the support for the presidential party candidate; that is, most of the observations are below the line of identity relating the polls and the vote. From the figure it also is clear that the underlying reason appears to be that leads shrink for whichever candidate is in the lead (usually the incumbent party candidate) rather than that voters trend specifically against the incumbent party candidate. When the final polls are close to 50–50, there is no evident inflation of incumbent party support in the polls.

Another observation is, again, that the largest “misses” are typically in the order of a 1-2 points (with the exception of 1964) and rarely suggest a different candidate will win than actually won (this appears to have happened only in 2000). Ultimately, across these 15 elections, Erikson and Wlezien find no evidence of systematic bias, either for or against the incumbent’s party or one of the major parties.
In short, the polls are pretty good. Obviously, this judgment is somewhat in the eye of the beholder, but I think they deserve more credit than they often get. For example, I would not quite agree with Jay Cost’s assessment (here, here) that the polls “screwed the pooch” in 1968, 1976, 1980, 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004. Granted, Erikson and Wlezien are simplifying here by looking only at the two-party vote, thereby ignoring third-party candidates (e.g., in 1968, 1980, 1992, and 1996). But the two-party vote is still a useful diagnostic, particularly in a year like 2012 where there is no salient third-party candidate.
Finally, as I mentioned previously, Erikson and Wlezien investigate why the frontrunner in the polls tends to do slightly worse on Election Day. This is mainly not about late movement among the undecideds but about “no-shows” who simply fail to vote:

Relatively few voters switch their vote choice late in the campaign. Relatively few undecided voters during the campaign end up voting, and those who do split close to 50–50. Moreover, there is no evidence that partisans “come home” to their party on Election Day (although this phenomenon occurs earlier in the campaign)….[O]ne additional factor…explains why late leads shrink. Many survey respondents tell pollsters they will vote but then do not show up. These eventual no-shows tend to favor the winning candidate when interviewed before the election. Without the preferences of the no-shows in the actual vote count, the winning candidate’s lead in the polls flattens.

Given the state of the national polls right now—a virtual tie—the historical record suggests that they will be very close to the eventual outcome, but could be off by 1 or even 2 points, depending on the vicissitudes of turnout. Given the historical lack of systematic bias toward either party or the incumbent party in close elections, it’s difficult to predict which “direction” the polls might miss this year, if they miss. The national polls tend to overestimate the frontrunner’s vote share, but with the national polls tied, there is no clear national frontrunner at the moment.
If this same pattern occurs in the state polls, then the battleground state outcomes should be narrower than the polls reflect—movement which might mitigate Obama’s apparent lead in Ohio an Romney’s apparent lead in Florida, for example. None of this leads to a dramatically different conclusion than you’ve been reading—the election will be close, turnout matters, etc. But I don’t think discrepancies between the polls and the outcome, in the past or in 2012, reflect or will reflect a massive failure by the polls—what we might call a”pooch-screwing”?—only the inevitable challenges that arise when using a very useful but imperfect instrument to predict the future.

[Sir X]

The preposition of a Romney win or a close election is based on the republicans turning out in vengenance and the democrats staying home, i just dont see it.The democrats are scared out of their wits of a Romney victory thus energised to vote, i sense weak wingnut support hyped up by certain media elements ramsauen and fox,lets see!

[Exile]

Robert Shrum: Why Obama Will Win

by Robert Shrum Oct 26, 2012 4:45 AM EDT Was it all a bluff? As Mitt Romney’s ‘surge’ erodes, the Republican nominee’s campaign faces reality. Across the swing states, the polls show the president holds the advantage.

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We have now witnessed the penultimate phase of Mitt’s moderate makeover tour.

President Barack Obama greets supporters after speaking at a campaign event at the Carillon at Byrd Park, Thursday, Oct. 25, 2012, in Richmond Va. The president is on the second day of his 48-hour, eight-state campaign blitz. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP Photo)
He pleaded nolo contendre in the final presidential debate—perhaps wisely because his comprehension of foreign policy evidences all the depth of a sound bite. Every time he’s touched Libya, for example, he’s been burned—and that night, even as he all but endorsed President Obama’s foreign policy, he occasionally strayed off script with stunning observations such as the claim that Syria is Iran’s opening to the seas. Mitt, ever heard of the Persian Gulf?




Previously he had pursued the exploitative path he had foreseen in a little-noted part of the notorious “47 percent tape.” After referring to Jimmy Carter’s failed hostage-rescue mission, in which eight U.S. service members died, he told the assembled plutocrats: “If something of that nature occurs, I will work to find a way to take advantage of the opportunity.” I suspect his last round of debate prep included the warning that the president could clock him with that quote if he renewed his push on the Libyan issue, which had stunningly embarrassed him a week before when moderator Candy Crowley had told him he was wrong—that the day afterward, Obama had called the killing of the American ambassador a “terrorist act.”

Something else, however, was operating here and in all three debates.

The Obama strategy of defining Romney over the summer as an out-of-touch, job-destroying financial manipulator—of, by, and for the rich—was so effective that the Republican nominee had to use the hours when the whole nation was watching to re-sculpt his image. He partially succeeded in that first encounter in Denver—partly because the president, for whatever reason, let his opponent prosecute a narrative brazenly at odds with his past record, in business and in the Republican primaries.


Was Romney's surge a bluff after all? Robert Shrum weighs in on Obama's race to 270 electoral college votes.

In their town-hall meeting, a very different Obama punched hard instead of looking like a punching bag—and even more, Romney suddenly found his two strategic objectives at war with each other. He couldn’t be Mitt 3.0—the moderate governor who became the “severely conservative candidate,” but needs to edge back toward the acceptable middle—if he was a hard-right neo-con caught mining political capital from a national-security crisis. Thus the muted Mitt in the foreign-policy debate: he couldn’t be both moderate and on the attack. So in every survey afterward, Obama was the winner—most saliently, in the CBS poll of undecided voters, where the president prevailed by more than a two to one margin.

The Republican spin was that it didn’t matter—that because their candidate had already reset the race, we were in the midst of a Romney “surge” and he was on the road to victory. This argument became the new heart of Mitt’s moderate makeover. He can’t afford to emphasize his policies; he avoids details and specifics because they would doom him almost across the board—from taxes to Medicare to education cuts. Instead he updated his message of the campaign as referendum: if you’re dissatisfied with the economy, give me a try; after all, I’m acceptable now.

The “surge” story largely if briefly captivated a press corps craving a close race and intrigued by a potential upset, Romney and his advisers had added an after-burner to their narrative, claiming victory before counting of the votes in the apparent belief that the spin will birth the result. Romney strategist Stuart Stevens even spoke of the campaign in the past tense: “Obama … might have had a shot.” The bloviating John Sununu, the former New Hampshire governor who was tossed out as chief of staff in the first Bush White House, foretold “close to 300” electoral votes for Romney.

Now he faces the prospect of explaining his 1991 testimony in a post-divorce lawsuit against the founder of Staples—which has been unsealed by a court in Boston.

This tack has been tried before, and I was there. In 2000, Karl Rove announced that George W. Bush was headed for a commanding 320 electoral votes—and was even competitive in California. Rove spent millions of dollars on commercials there and dispatched his candidate to stump the Golden State. In the Gore campaign, we refused to take the bait. We didn’t spend a dime on ads, even after the Rove spin spooked leading California Democrats into insistently calling our headquarters and demanding that we respond. Jonathan Chait, who’s written an incisive piece on the episode, has the right word for it and its bastard stepchild, manifest in the Romney campaign. It’s a “bluff.” Gore carried California by 1.3 million votes—and Bush eked out the narrowest of electoral edges only by stealing Florida with an assist from a nakedly political Supreme Court.

The Obama enterprise, too, remains relatively undisturbed by Romney’s recycling of the Rove ploy. For one thing, it frightens Democrats, but it also motivates them. It’s almost part of the Obama GOTV operation. Here’s a typical example from the flood of emails in any inbox: “Looking for reassurance… Could it be that everything we fought for… is going to be for naught? We have to work harder.” In fact, that’s the plea in most emails coming out of Obama headquarters and other Democratic committees: We could lose—so do more and give more.

Obama’s strategists knew the Romney spin was and is as ephemeral as the air it’s spoken on. For Romney may be the last refuge of a candidate who dares not be candid—who has to hide his beliefs and commitments in a fog of political presumption. But if you see past the smoke and mirrors, you will understand that Barack Obama continues to command the electoral landscape.

After the debacle in Denver, I argued that the structure of the race hadn’t fundamentally changed—and wouldn’t unless the president faltered again in the second debate. He didn’t. He let Romney into the game; state and national polls did tighten—mostly because undecideds who lean Republican and voted for McCain moved to Romney. They would have anyway.

Now the surge is receding—and contrary to the conventional verdict, the second and third debates not only stemmed Romney gains, but restored Obama’s advantage. Even the outlier of outliers, the flawed Gallup tracking poll, which recently accorded Romney a seven-point lead, shows him only three ahead in a seven-day average—which means the numbers will almost certainly shift further toward the president as the bad days drop out of the average. Gallup drives news, but it’s increasingly discounted by political analysts. The Greenberg survey for the Democracy Corps—a rare survey in which 33 percent of the respondents were reached on their cellphones—has Obama leading 49 to 46 percent.

It’s not a big lead—and never will be. But the president has other big advantages that will prove decisive. And here is where the fundamentals haven’t changed.

The outcome will be decided in the battleground states—and here Obama has many more paths to a 270 electoral-vote majority. For example, he could lose Ohio—and still get there if he took New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Colorado. But Ohio is anything but lost; after dispensing with the GOP-infected numbers of Rasmussen, and the figments of the fly-by-night pollsters, the president has a consistent margin of 4 to 5 percent—and is at or near 50 percent.

Similarly, in the new PPP data, he is five points up in Virginia with 51 percent of the vote. In Nevada, Mark Melman, who almost alone called Senator Harry Reid’s 2010 triumph, shows Obama eight ahead. One of Republican Governor Brian Sandoval’s top advisers has bluntly predicted: “Obama will carry the state.” The adviser may not keep his job, but the president will take Nevada.

So it goes across the swing states, even in Florida and except in North Carolina. But there, the Obama campaign has registered a legion of new voters—and everywhere it has the most in-depth, technologically sophisticated, and well-staffed turnout operation in history. That can and will make the difference where the contest is close. The president has twice as many field offices as Romney—800 of them across the battlegrounds. And Romney’s are afterthoughts—late to the game, run by the Republican National Committee, and without the rich, data-based voter targeting of the Obama effort. A GOP operative in Colorado says he adds two to four points to the president’s poll numbers in the state because Obama has a better organization.

Finally, Romney can run, but he can’t hide—from the Bain ads that are on the air again in the Midwest, from the relentless Obama focus on the choice between a candidate who stands for the middle class and a candidate who favors the 1 percent. Now he faces the prospect of explaining his 1991 testimony in a post-divorce lawsuit against the founder of Staples—which has been unsealed by a court in Boston. This could be the next chapter in the story of a business career that was his calling card, but has become a political liability.

Stuff just keeps happening to Mitt Romney. He has to flee the press to avoid answering questions about the only Senate candidate he’s made an ad for—Indiana’s Richard Mourdock, who suddenly dominated the national news with his repugnant divination that a pregnancy due to rape is “something God intended.” Romney can’t bring himself to pull the endorsement ad; he’s too afraid of his own right-wing shadow. He can’t escape the extremists in his party with whom he fellow-travelled as he pandered his way to the nomination.

Thus the gender gap widens—and the moderate makeover unravels. Mitt is mired in the mid-20s with Hispanics, who heard him say “illegals” should “self-deport.” He’s far behind with younger voters—and the Obama organization will get them to the polls, with an assist from Romney’s position on social issues like reproductive rights and marriage equality. The restrictive voter-ID laws have mostly been struck down, at least for this year, and blacks and other minorities won’t be blocked from casting their ballots. Blue-collar workers in the Midwest can’t forgive Romney’s opposition to saving the auto industry—and they don’t trust the man from Bain. Even his lead among seniors is being eroded by his plan to replace Medicare with Vouchercare—and to raise the cost of their prescription drugs.

That’s why enough of the battleground states, where the campaign is being fully engaged, will be Obama country on Election Night. The brief silly cycle of spin about the impending, even inevitable Romney presidency is ending.

Let the Romneyans enjoy their premature claim of victory. It’s the only one they’ll have.


Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates all day long.
Shrum, a Senior Fellow at NYU, was a longtime political consultant who worked on numerous Democratic campaigns, including Kerry-Edwards in 2004 and Al Gore’s 2000 race for the White House.

For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.

[Exile]

ELECTION 2012
BATTLEGROUND STATES
Sort by:
State, EVs ?
Unemployment ?
Income ?
Margin ?

FL - 29
8.8%
$39,636
Romney +1.4

OH - 18
7.2%
$37,836
Obama +1.9

MI - 16
9.4%
$36,264
Obama +4.0

NC - 15
9.7%
$36,028
Romney +3.0

VA - 13
5.9%
$46,107
Tie

WI - 10
7.5%
$39,575
Obama +2.3

CO - 9
8.2%
$44,053
Tie

IA - 6
5.5%
$41,156
Obama +2.3

NV - 6
12.1%
$36,964
Obama +2.4



Florida
VOTE RESULTS


2004
52.1 ?
*U.S:
50.73% Bush

27 EVs

2008
50.9 ?
52.87% Obama

29 EVs

2012
Romney
+1.4 ?


Romney +0.8

*National popular vote totals
UNEMPLOYMENT ?
MEDIAN INCOME ?

8.8%
Florida


8.1%
US




$39,636
Florida


$41,560
US





Ohio
VOTE RESULTS


2004
50.8 ?
*U.S:
50.73% Bush

20 EVs

2008
51.4 ?
52.87% Obama

18 EVs

2012
Obama
+1.9 ?


Romney +0.8

*National popular vote totals
UNEMPLOYMENT ?
MEDIAN INCOME ?

7.2%
Ohio


8.1%
US




$37,836
Ohio


$41,560
US





Michigan
VOTE RESULTS


2004
51.2 ?
*U.S:
50.73% Bush

17 EVs

2008
57.3 ?
52.87% Obama

16 EVs

2012
Obama
+4.0 ?


Romney +0.8

*National popular vote totals
UNEMPLOYMENT ?
MEDIAN INCOME ?

9.4%
Michigan


8.1%
US




$36,264
Michigan


$41,560
US





North Carolina
VOTE RESULTS


2004
56 ?
*U.S:
50.73% Bush

15 EVs

2008
49.7 ?
52.87% Obama

15 EVs

2012
Romney
+3.0 ?


Romney +0.8

*National popular vote totals
UNEMPLOYMENT ?
MEDIAN INCOME ?

9.7%
North Carolina


8.1%
US




$36,028
North Carolina


$41,560
US





Virginia
VOTE RESULTS


2004
53.7 ?
*U.S:
50.73% Bush

13 EVs

2008
52.6 ?
52.87% Obama

13 EVs

2012
Tie
50/50 ?


Romney +0.8

*National popular vote totals
UNEMPLOYMENT ?
MEDIAN INCOME ?

5.9%
Virginia


8.1%
US




$46,107
Virginia


$41,560
US





Wisconsin
VOTE RESULTS


2004
49.7 ?
*U.S:
50.73% Bush

10 EVs

2008
56.2 ?
52.87% Obama

10 EVs

2012
Obama
+2.3 ?


Romney +0.8

*National popular vote totals
UNEMPLOYMENT ?
MEDIAN INCOME ?

7.5%
Wisconsin


8.1%
US




$39,575
Wisconsin


$41,560
US





Colorado
VOTE RESULTS


2004
51.7 ?
*U.S:
50.73% Bush

9 EVs

2008
52.8 ?
52.87% Obama

9 EVs

2012
Tie
50/50 ?


Romney +0.8

*National popular vote totals
UNEMPLOYMENT ?
MEDIAN INCOME ?

8.2%
Colorado


8.1%
US




$44,053
Colorado


$41,560
US





Iowa
VOTE RESULTS


2004
49.9 ?
*U.S:
50.73% Bush

7 EVs

2008
53.9 ?
52.87% Obama

6 EVs

2012
Obama
+2.3 ?


Romney +0.8

*National popular vote totals
UNEMPLOYMENT ?
MEDIAN INCOME ?

5.5%
Iowa


8.1%
US




$41,156
Iowa


$41,560
US





Nevada
VOTE RESULTS


2004
50.5 ?
*U.S:
50.73% Bush

5 EVs

2008
55.2 ?
52.87% Obama

6 EVs

2012
Obama
+2.4 ?


Romney +0.8

*National popular vote totals
UNEMPLOYMENT ?
MEDIAN INCOME ?

12.1%
Nevada


8.1%
US




$36,964
Nevada


$41,560
US






Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, RealClearPolitics.

[Baddaz]

x... read this... man singlehandedly dismantling the romney momentum...

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/da...f-mitt-mentum/

[Islandman]

I happen to think that Silver has the electoral college count about right, but given that he has a track record of ONE presidential election I think he is given a bit too much ratings. Dems especially are talking about the man like he has been predicting elections correctly since Reagan.

For me he is just one of the many people out there analyzing the data from the polls. Worth following but hardly the last word.

And for those who like to say Rasmussen is a known Republican, Silver is a known Democrat so if we should dismiss Rasmussen should we also dismiss Silver?

[Baddaz]

'For me he is just one of the many people out there analyzing the data from the polls. Worth following but hardly the last word.'

i think that's a bit disingenuous... sure he isn't the last word, no one is... difference is his methodology and his argument for arriving at his conclusions... his predictions of senate races and last presidential election give him the cred whether he is dem or repub...

[Islandman]

Sure he has built some credibility, I like his work, but reading the article you posted you would think that his method has been tried and tested for a generation, hence discard what everybody else is saying.

Poblano is the pseudonym of Nate Silver, the sabermetrician and political psephologist who has done more to influence the 2012 presidential election than other political analysts and commentator.

Wha? Says who?

Again, I am in the same ballpark as Silver regarding what I expect to happen but it is obvious that Dems and liberals like this writer are doing exactly what Republicans and conservatives are doing...boosting up the pollsters they want to believe and trashing the ones they don't. No moral high ground here.

[Sir X]

sure he isn't the last word, no one is... difference is his methodology

Havent I been saying that from day one , in the theme lets see ? To put your money on a certain poll or polls is ridiculous given the hype from both parties with the multimillions close to a billion or two invested combined by both parties, to say that polls arent skewed or manipulated by both is ridiculous.

The first trace of this was the repugs Ramsauen poll with a 14 point lead post 1st debate( the prezi lost 7 point from Romney to draw even and 7 more for Romney to pull ahead),when you trace the source of the filtered poll to a T.V station in Florida from a repug surrogate ,no methadology just a mention that it came out of florida?

I have to disregard them and look at emotional support (fiyah)in numbers, do the repugs wignut or repugs moderates have the fire to vote for ROMNEY ? Do the dems with their base have the emotional support to come out for Obama, so far the early Polls in Ohio have proven to me the latter is true with the prezi in the 60 % , I expect the same in Florida where the prezi will lead maybe not by that % but it will favour him and he will win it.I am not too familar with NC but that would be essential for a blow out.

[Islandman]

No you have been saying BLOWOUT FOR OBAMA , MORE RED STATES FOR OBAMA.You are on a different plant from everyone else. LOL

But yes if Obama finds a way to win NC it will be a blowout without a doubt. I don't see him winning it personally and FL is a stretch as well. Fortunately he doesn't need those to win.

Sandy might change everything though. If FEMA does a good job and Obama runs some ads showing Romney saying FEMA must go who knows? Might win easier than I expected. But if they screw up, then down goes Obama.

[Sir X]

Really dont get the joke , Blowout or more red states, am I supposed to choose ,

1) if the blow out will be with more red states ?

2) Even if he got more red states or a red state , what if it is still a blow out by a different route ?

3) what if it is not ?

All I would be is wrong

[Islandman]

No you don't have to choose because you predicted BOTH. Sounds like you are backing off the more red states part now though, you are a smart man, LOL.

what if it is not? All I would be is wrong

Is that an early concession? LOL.

Anyway, like me say Sandy throw a wildcard in the game. Things kinda unpredictable right now. I just hope Prezi do a good job with this disaster relief and whatever happens after that history will be kind to him.

[Sir X]

Early concession ? isnt the above the truth , if the latter holds true wouldnt that also be true ?

A blow out is a blow out isnt that also true ?

Tek yuh ego outtta it & lets see , BTW you still have to analyse why it wasnt so close after the election.

[Hortical]

NJ on the today show this morning praising Obama & FEMA for their assistance & help. Looks like Atlantic City is a disaster area.