Posted on 08/16/2012 6:21:26 AM PDT by ScottinVA
The August 2012 Franklin & Marshall College Poll finds increasing voter interest in the presidential election. President Barack Obama continues to lead his Republican challenger Mitt Romney, although his advantage is smaller than in June.
I’ve been saying this for a while now folks, but people aren’t listening.
PA and MI are most definitely IN PLAY this election. Obama’s policies have completely turned off blue dog democrats, and PA’s democrats are by and large these folks. God Fearing, Hard Working folks who basically vote D because that’s what they have always done due to historical Union ties and labor... Obama has thrown these folks UNDER THE DAMNED BUS for 4 years, litterally spit in their faces.
They aren’t radical leftists, they go to church on sunday, work hard during the week and don’t believe “SOMEONE ELSE MADE THAT HAPPEN”.
Obama has LOST HUGE support in this area, and in PA in particular its going to be damned hard for him to win without it. May he win? Perhaps, but it will be by a very narrow margin, if he is able to pull it out, and he’s going to have to spend TONS of money and time here to hope to do it. I personally don’t think he will win PA.
I can’t find a single swing voter I know voted for him in ‘08 planning on doing so again, and I know MANY life long democrats who have dutifully showed up every election to pull the straight line D lever who are openly admitting they regret putting this guy in office and will be voting for Romney in the fall.
Various polls have sown 20% of registered democrats plan to vote for Romney, I’d say in PA its at LEAST that many if not more.
I firmly believe the BATTLEGROUND is going to be places like PA and MI. I firmly believe, NC and FL are not even in play. They are solid R and will remain so, polls just aren’t fully reflecting the realities yet.
The Rust Belt I believe is DEAD to Obama, the only states I think he can consider himself safe in would be IL and MN... he is certainly going to lose IN, its not even a race there, as well as WI, IA, and OH. If Obama takes PA this fall it will only be by the slimmest of margins, and I feel the same way with MI, and will have to spend TONS of time and $$$ here to pull it off, and frankly I don’t think its possible.
I have never seen such a movement of Enthusiasm to DISGUST in 4 years. Folks I knew 4 years ago were over the moon he won, and now at best I can find some grudging support among dems who offer nothing more than “well he’s better than Romney, or at least he’s not Bush” not one can or even tries to offer a real defense of the man. I really honestly don’t see PA staying Obama’s this fall.
Again, anything could happen, I completely misread the supressed voter turnout by republicans in PA 4 years ago, but I truly don’t see it.
I think honestly Casey may be gone this election too.. It will be interesting to see how that race shapes up. Casey basically just has his dads name, and that’s it, and unlike last time where he ran against Santorum who was so hated by voters by that election he lost by 17+ points to Casey who literally no showed the campaign, it will be interesting to see how Casey fairs this time, he has the personality of a doornob... It will be interesting to see if his challenger can actually put up enough of a race to force Casey to come out from whatever rock he’s been hiding under for the last 6 years and engage. If he does, I think Casey will lose, if he can’t get enough momentum to pull Casey out of hiding then Casey just gets re-elected without really campaigning.
Time will tell on the Senate, but PA is either going to be an incredibly tight hold for Dems or a loss, no one should cound PA as SOLID for the dems this time around.
Life Long dye in the wool democrats are dejected by this fool, there won’t be huge turnouts for them.. Many may not vote for Romney, but a lot will either skip the presidential question on the ballot or just stay home rather than vote for this fool again.
Combined with the voter ID law and the war on coal and the war on religion (Catholics in particular) and I believe PA is in play.
Regarding the sample, I try not to worry about that too much; it's a good way to waste a lot of time. Some samples are good, some are okay, some are bad.
Here is the 2008 data per the NYT.
NYT 2008 Presidential Election Exit Poll
D/R/I = 44/37/18
And some 2010 data.
For the Sestak vs. Toomey race for the Senate seat in 2010 the D/R/I breakdown by Party ID was 40/37/23.
CNN Exit Poll PA Senate Race 2010
Summary:
D+7 in 2008.
D+3 in 2010.
D+13 Not a chance for 2012.
In Philly and Pittsburgh, it’s strong Dem. That is hard to overcome. I live in Lancaster and it’s usually very conservative. I’m assuming that it will continue that trend.
Obambi will continue to rack up votes in Philly, but in blue collar Pittsburgh, I don’t see him doing nearly as well this time around.
Given this poll’s skew towards the RATs, I treat it as very good news. If nothing else, the trend is definitely in the right direction.
2008 Election D’s had a 1.2 Million registration advantage and Obama won the election by just over 600,000 votes in an election with just over 6 Million votes cast.
Currently as of this month Dems do have about a 1.075 Million registration advantage, and that sounds daunting, but keep in mind what has happened since 2008 here. We have a Republican Governor, we sent Pat Toomey to the Senate. In fact EVERY statewide office that has faced election since 2008 (not including 2008, but since 2008) has been won by a Republican. Both state houses are Republican as well.
Simple registration is NOT a good indicator of success here, PHILLY, HARRISBURG and PITT are democratic bastions, with Philly area being the beast that must be survived. Republicans will likely NEVER win the Philly region in a state wide race, but if they can come out of there without being overwhelmed utterly, they can and do win.
You don’t have a corrupt democratic governor to use state resources to campaign for Obama here this time either...
Obama will NOT win PA by 10 points, I think his best bet is a slight win here, and to pull that off he’s going to spend a LOT of money and time. Watch what the president does, if you seem him visiting PA more than once or twice a month between now and election day, that tells you PA is not solid for him.. If you see ROMNEY in the state fequently between now and election day, that tells you PA is not solid for Obama.. and I personally feel it is not. PA is not an uber liberal state, its a blue dog state, and Obama’s term has been nothing but endless slaps to the face to the Blue Dogs. I really think PA is in Play and Romney can win here, best Obama can hope for is to squeak out PA if republicans bring the fight into his sandbox here IMHO.
I agree that it’s trending in the right direction. I dont’ know about Pittsburgh though. It’s a big union city and all those people hear is that Romney will destroy their union ways.
Romney will cut into Philly suburbs - married women who in 2008 voted against their own husband’s paycheck. They will vote their pocketbook this year.
Philly suburbs + war on coal throughout the State will make PA a real battleground.
Forcing Obama to spend a fortune in Philly market alone is a huge victory.
Well, if you looked at the data, you have Zero with a 6% lead based on a 13% oversample of Ds when the D/R ratio in 2010 was 6%. I call that a tie. But will the 2012 turnout be better for Dems? Hard to tell because it’s a presidential year. But you have 15% undecided!!! wow.
Gotcha. Wasn’t sure it was that close. I know there are a lot of blue dogs in the Western part of the state.
The party id split in PA should be 4.8. Not 13.I believe that's for a likely voter sample, which includes independent leaners, not a registered voter sample, which is based on registration.
West Virginia is heavily Democrat and votes Republican in Presidential races. One might see a similar effect in Pennsylvania, but more muted, since more of the Ds are minorities. Liberals like to joke that Pennsylvania is made up of Philadelphia in the East and Pittsburgh in the West with Alabama in between. To a great extent they say that to make fun of the “hillbillies and hicks” across the state, assuming the “peons” will vote D, representing their class interests. But, considering how Alabama now votes, their snarky comment may still carry a grain of truth — but with a different electoral outcome than what they expect.
Interesting that Oregon is on the list. Very few are polling Oregon because they don’t believe it is a swing state, but based on these statistics, it should be seen as a swing state.
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