by Jonathan S. Tobin
As I wrote last night,
liberal analysts are right when they point out that the preponderance
of state polls have greatly strengthened President Obama’s hopes for
re-election. But a couple of the latest ones published this morning
contradict that conviction, which caused New York Times columnist Paul Krugman to claim
only stupid people think the election is not a cinch for Obama. One
Democratic-leaning pollster has Romney ahead by one point in supposedly
deep-blue Michigan, while a new Pennsylvania poll shows the race there
deadlocked.
These may be outliers, but even a Nobel laureate (and, as the Wall Street Journal’s
James Taranto likes to say, “former Enron advisor”) like Krugman is
smart enough to understand that if Romney wins Pennsylvania and
Michigan, Obama has virtually no chance to get to 270 electoral votes.
The point here is that while we are all rightly focused on who will win
Ohio, the president’s hold on a number of states that were thought to be
likely Democrat wins is far from secure. What’s happened in the last
month since the Denver debate turned the race around is not just a surge
of Republican strength in the South and the West but a surprising
comeback for the GOP in the rust belt and the Midwest.
The Michigan poll
is from the Democratic firm of Baydoun/Foster sponsored by WJBK Fox
Channel 2 in Detroit, and has a sample that has a nine percent edge for
the Democrats in terms of partisan identification. More tellingly, it is
a fairly large number of respondents for a state poll — 1,913 likely
voters — and a relatively low margin of error at 2.24 percent. Yet
shockingly it shows Romney up by more than half a percentage point:
46.86 percent to 46.24 percent.
It should be specified that most other Michigan polls
are still showing the president with a lead there. Another Democratic
pollster, Public Policy Polling, has Obama up 52-46 percent in their
latest poll. Just to confuse things, that poll has a smaller Democratic
edge in partisan identification at only six percent but it is also the
product of a much smaller sample — only 700 likely voters — and
therefore has a margin of error that is nearly double that of the
Baydoun/Foster poll.
In Pennsylvania, a Susquehanna poll sponsored by the Scranton Tribune
shows the race in Pennsylvania a virtual tie. Indeed the poll’s sample
of 800 likely voters showed 378 say they would vote for Romney and 372
for Obama. Again, Susquehanna is a bit of an outlier in that it has
shown more strength for Romney throughout the campaign than other polls.
The Real Clear Politics average of polls for Pennsylvania
still shows the president up by more than four points. But it should
also be pointed that a clear difference between Susquehanna and the
others is the same one that has been stirring discussion about virtually
all the presidential polls on both the state and the national level:
partisan identification. Susquehanna (whose sample is larger than that
of the other Pennsylvania polls) shows a six-percentage point advantage
for the Democrats. By contrast, two other polls that show Obama ahead in
the state, PPP and Franklin & Marshall, had samples with 10 and
nine point edges for the Democrats.
Those numbers make the contradictions between these polls more
explicable. It can’t be said often enough that turnout is the key to
this election. Those polls that are assuming a large advantage for the
Democrats are pointing toward an Obama win. Those that are not are
favorable to Romney. It’s as simple as that. If the Obama campaign
machine can manufacture a replica of the 2008 electorate, the polls and
the analysts predicting and Obama win will be vindicated. If not, then
Romney may be on his way to victory and Krugman will be the one sitting
in the corner wearing the dunce cap.
Jonathan S. Tobin
Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/11/04/some-state-polls-point-to-romney-upset-michigan-pennsylvania/
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
No comments:
Post a Comment