Amazing this guy has a 96% approval rating among blacks. 68% strongly approve of the clown. The unemployment rate has hit them harder than any demographic except, perhaps, the young. And yet they're standing by him. Nuts.
Posted on 09/29/2012 8:21:34 PM PDT by smoothsailing
September 29, 2012
Byron York
For all the complexities of polling, says Scott Rasmussen, there are some fairly simple numbers to remember when thinking about this year’s presidential race. “For the last 20 years, between 37 and 39 percent of voters on Election Day have been Democrats,” says the pollster. “Republicans have ranged from 32 to 37 percent. Right now, our sample looks like 36 percent Republican versus 39 percent Democrat.”
The bottom line, Rasmussen continues, is that there is most likely a two, three, or four percentage point advantage out there for Democrats. That’s what it’s been for nearly a generation; that’s probably what will happen on November 6.
Given that, and factoring in independents, Rasmussen’s national surveys show Barack Obama leading Mitt Romney by a small margin. The president has a two-point advantage in the latest Rasmussen national tracking poll, and comparably small margins in the super-swing states of Florida, Ohio, and Virginia. “I think the race is tilting, just barely, in Obama’s favor, with the potential to shift between now and Election Day,” he says.
After some polls, particularly one from Quinnipiac and the New York Times, showed huge Obama leads in the swing states — nine points in Florida and ten in Ohio — there’s been a contentious debate about the relationship between state polls and national polls. Romney aides constantly point reporters toward the national polls. Of course they do; those polls are closer, and at the moment the Romney campaign is fighting hard against the impression, gaining momentum in some media circles, that the race is virtually over.
Team Romney has a point. When there are national polls showing a very tight race and big swing state polls showing a blowout, something is likely wrong. If the national results are close on November 6, it’s very unlikely that Ohio and Florida will be blowouts. And if Ohio and Florida are blowouts, it’s very unlikely the national race will be close. “When all is said and done,” says Rasmussen, “it is impossible for me to conceive of a circumstance where there is a huge discrepancy between those key states and the national numbers.”
And whatever the numbers are at this moment, Rasmussen expects them to move by Election Day. In the last three elections, he notes, the polls moved against the incumbent party in the final weeks of the race. That’s not an unbreakable pattern, and it might not happen this time, but it suggests Romney will gain on Obama, at least a bit, before November 6. Of course, some major, unexpected event might move things more.
Meanwhile, Republicans across the country continue to express skepticism, scorn, and in some cases outright contempt for the polls. Last week in Ohio, voter after voter at Romney-Ryan rallies complained about the polls, with most saying they just don’t believe them. It’s something every pollster, left, right, and center, is hearing every day.
“When polls appear to be in dispute,” says Rasmussen, “partisans go to the ones they like best and say they are right and everything else is wrong. Then they rationalize it. You rationalize things to fit what you want the world to be.”
BS!
After Nov 6th, Rasmussen will have some splaining to do.
It will be fun.
Don't Rasumssen's own polls show that the idenfification edge is now with Republicans?
I hate the Media. I think most polls are biased. But I also don't want to be "spun" by my own allies. Where are we to get truly objective analysis?
We shall see how the debates go
Though I am starting to see more O’Bumbler/BomeHead Signs.
So wait...Rasmussen, the most GOP friendly pollster out there, is also wrong? So every pollster is wrong about Obama leading/winning this race? Oh vey. This is getting downright sad.
Folks on our side are now stuck disputing virtually ALL the polls.....yeah, were losing. We don't even have Rasmussen to hang our hat on now. This is worse than I even imagined.
Amazing this guy has a 96% approval rating among blacks. 68% strongly approve of the clown. The unemployment rate has hit them harder than any demographic except, perhaps, the young. And yet they're standing by him. Nuts.
OTOH, look at that chart above. Romney is pulling 15% of the White Democrats.
Nice.
Oh, great. More good news. sarc/
Jeez. I’m replying to no one in particular.
Ras jumps around, within a narrow band. Romney was ahead with leaners earlier in the week. When he’s ahead again in a few days do we say `whew,’ now we’re gonna win? If the Dem turnout surpasses the Republican turnout by one two or three, we win. If it’s four, it’s truly a tossup. Five or better, we lose.
Yes, his August party affiliation polls showed the Republicans with a couple point lead, with a big upswing. I have not seen the September numbers, which I suspect are not out, and I am not sure how he came up with the party affiliation numbers anyway. I suppose it is possible he does not just use his affiliation numbers directly in his party affiliation models for some reason or another that I suppose only he could explain.
Ras national poll has a Dem +2.5% to 4% turnout model over Rs for 2012.
I think it will be at least even (like 2004) to R +2%.
Rasmussen last self partisan ID of R +4.3% (37.6%) over Dems (33.3%) with a sample size of 15,000.
Rasmussen ignores his month to month partisan poll because he has already set his baseline for this election.
We shall see how the debates go
And you can bet your last penny obama will be provided with all the questions in advance so he will have well prepared answers.
still think Rom's chances are very, very good....
Geez, I wonder if anyone here has read past the headline?
What’s being reported here is good news. Everyone had been assuming that Rasmussen was weighting it plus 4 Republican. He has it weighted +3 Rat, and Bambi is still ahead by only 1 or 2 points.
The polls showing Bambi with ludicrous leads have been +11 or +12 rat.
Ras is hedging his bets but his D+3 turnout model doesn’t square with a 14% enthusiasm gap of Republicans over Democrats from today’s Gallup/USAToday poll. If Gallup is wrong, it’s not wrong by 14 percentage points!
From Gallup’s site:
October 2004, Dem and Rep enthusiasm were equal, and Republicans won
October 2008, Dem=71%, Rep=51% enthusiastic, and Democrats won
this Last week 2012, Dems=48%, Reps = 64% enthusiastic, and who will win??
I believe the point here is that the Democrats have an advantage in numbers, not that voting will be that way. I could be wrong, but if the 15% of white democrats for Romney (as posted above) is correct, Romney wins. I still think he will anyway..
From what I’ve read, this is usually the case- does NOT mean that Obama will win. Republicans are more motivated this year.
Identity politics. Blacks DO NOT CARE. Nor does any other group that gets locked in to voting for one party because they've been trained to hate the other. Hispanics are increasingly acting like blacks when it comes to voting habits. If Obama at a living baby on live TV, they would still vote for him. Blacks will NEVER vote Republican in our lifetime. They see conservatives as the enemy first and foremost - people who can't relate with them and might take away their freebies. Detroit, for example, is a failed city and yet the the inhabitants will keep voting Democratic no matter what (they'd actually vote for Kwame Kilpatrick again if they could). The idea that people in Democracies can be counted on to self correct is WRONG. Populations will choose the wrong course and stick with it to their demise. There is no evidence in history that people somehow can be counted on to do the right thing.
I find it surprising he has Romney up among women, and Obama up among men.
So wait...Rasmussen, the most GOP friendly pollster out there, is also wrong? So every pollster is wrong about Obama leading/winning this race? Oh vey. This is getting downright sad.
Folks on our side are now stuck disputing virtually ALL the polls.....yeah, were losing. We don’t even have Rasmussen to hang our hat on now. This is worse than I even imagined.
Yup. All of a sudden Rasmussen is a commie polling outfit that can’t be trusted sarc/ A lot of whistling past the graveyard going on.
Beware the Nincompoops.
I can't imagine a more unbiased analysis than what Rasmussen said in this article. He even said the incumbent is generally expected to lose some ground in the final weeks. It only makes sense that as the challenger gets more well-known, he will gain some support.
IMO the race hasn't even begun until the first debate. Problem is, Romney's performances were so weak in the primary debates that he suffered big losses after getting hammered by Newt and Santorum in them, and he wanted to stop doing debates by about February because he knew they were likely to go against him. He did manage to do two good "comeback" debates against first Newt and Santorum, but only after suffering huge election losses to them. His natural tendency was not to be tough with his opponents, until they had made him suffer a big loss. So, in a way, the best place for Romney to be going into the first debate, based on his history, is in a losing position in the polls. I just hope it doesn't take losing the first debate for him to decide to make a "comeback" play. And he won't have Ron Paul to play tag-team with like they did against Santorum especially.
‘I just do not see the excitement from the Democrat base.”
Since a goodly percentage of it is zombies, that’s not surprising.
Poll Ping.
This is all mind numbing. I don’t think I’m stupid, but I don’t understand this at all.
It appears to me that Rasmussen contradicts its on information. See: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/archive/mood_of_america_archive/partisan_trends/summary_of_party_affiliation
he is also winning independents and more GOPers than mugabe is winning dems.
Dear God in heaven,
Please help these FR folks get through October intact. Cuz they are losin it big time.
Thank you Lord.
Amen
Listen my dear FRIENDS.. All of these people may be honestly expressing the facts as they are seeing them today.. The one thing I know for sure is I WILL NOT LET THIS THING HAPPEN BECAUSE I DIDN’T DO EVERYTHING I COULD TO SHOVE IT BACK AT THEM.. HARD!!!
I told my kids that I would personally kick their butts if they didn’t get to the polls and at least bring someone with them..
I’m digging deep and sending money to a swing state candidate, house and senate.. Also I am volunteering at a poll in a heavily Democrat district..
NOT ON MY WATCH!
Meanwhile...
Drop in Ohio voter registration, especially in Dem strongholds, mirrors nationwide trend
"The Democrats' drop in registered voters coincides with a gain in independent voters...There are about half a million more independents now than there were just for years ago."
And guess which way the Indies are going?
Scott, put away the bong.
Trust your gut.
The anti’s are quite motivated.
Ohio is not alone [in Dem registration decline]. An August study by the left-leaning think tank Third Way showed that the Democratic voter registration decline in eight key swing states outnumbered the Republican decline by a 10-to-one ratio. In Florida, Democratic registration is down 4.9 percent, in Iowa down 9.5 percent. And in New Hampshire, it’s down down 19.7 percent.
I think even Rasmussen has no clue what he is talking about this time around. In 2008 it took a perfect storm of anger at Bush, unusually high enthusiasm by young people who thought Obama was “cool”, blacks who foolishly thought that Obama was going to put gas in their cars and pay their bills, and whites on the left (and even some on the right) who felt warm and fuzzy about voting for a black president. It is impossible for support for Obama to be any higher than it was in 2008. Impossible.
Since then, we have the incredible rise of the Tea Party, disillusionment of blacks and the youth vote, and the opening of the eyes of most whites to what Obama truly represents. We have a crumbling economy, and international relations in utter chaos, yet Rasmussen and other pollsters seriously believe that we are going to see a similar result in 2012 to that in 2008? Complete and utter nonsense.
Obama will lose; the only question is the magnitude of the loss.
Thanks for the link! I was looking for that chart.
Ras should be using R+4 but he must think that’s an outlier, so he’s using D+3 for his election assumptions.
The MSM is pounding Ras for using D+3 because they think the turnout will be greater for the Dems than 2008 i.e D+7, which is fantasy. There are NO signs on this happening.
So D+3 is the Ras baseline, based on his assumptions. I think he will be wrong, but he’ll probably be less wrong than all the other pollsters combined.
maybe...i understand your point as i remember four years ago all the reports about the hillary voters who were going to vote against obama, which never materialized...that said i think this is different....Romney instills little enthusiasm in people but obama’s incompetence is going to make people vote against obama including the Repubs who did not vote or even voted for obozo four years ago as well as the independents...
“Of course, some major, unexpected event might move things more.”
In a rational world, Benghazi would have already been such an event if the economy had not already buried Obama. We are apparently living in a world where people live in their own cocoons, untouched by any reality that doesn’t come through their iPhone, TV-DWTS, managed news world.
That doesn’t jibe with current registration figures at all. Are they suing him, too?
Rasmussen pollsters, hard at work: 
1st pollster: Our results, man--they look like BS. 2nd pollster: You know, you're right. They smell like BS too! 3rd pollster: Now that you mention it, they taste like BS as well. ALL: Good thing we didn't step in it! 1st pollster: But I can see November from here. 2nd pollster: I can smell it! 3rd pollster......
Do not forget there are independents beyond the repubs and democrats. If maximum dems (39%) and maximum repubs (37%) turn out, there is still 24% still to vote. Those are the block of voters who always decide who wins.
No pollster is always accurate. I recall Ras was a darling around here during Bush vs. Gore and he was off by about 5% in that race.
Good points Jedi. Mitt knows he is behind so I expect him to be tough. We shall see. I am praying Mitt really brings it, but I just don’t know if he has it in him. At this point the man has a tough task. His campaign has meandered about and stood for little more than “we’re not Obama” so far. That obviously isn’t working and I am just not sure Romney is ideological enough to both call out Obama on his failed liberal policies AND spell out why conservatism is a superior governing philosophy (with some short sound bites people can remember).
At this point, I think we have to hang our hat on whether or not the people being polled are representative of a larger sample or not.
Don’t try and sniff a victory out in the polls. Be patient, and JUST TURN OUT.
I think that Scott Rasmussen is correct in his projection of voting by ‘party affiliation’. He hedges down as low as +2 democrat advantage. What the polling is not revealing clearly yet is the number of crossover democrats who will vote Romney. I have seen recent projections of 90%+ republican affiliated who are a firm vote for Romney. I have seen the democrat affiliated lower, in the mid-80’s for Obama.
How many Reagan democrats will there be? I believe the debates will turn this to us. Romney has very wisely spent a lot of time preparing his message. My gut tells me the first debate will be hard facts and straight talk vs. unicorns, rainbows, blame and assorted nonsense. I believe we start to see the turn after Wednesday. With these polls so close in spite of the illogical partisan samples (all but Rasmussen), Romney doesn’t have to persuade that many democrats.
Is it conceivable that he can convince 1 out of every 20 or 40 democrats to change their vote? Is it conceivable that he will take at least 3 of every 5 undecided? Is it conceivable that Ryan is going to make Biden look like such a boob in their debate that it only adds more anxiety to the fringes of Obama’s support? I don’t think it’s only conceivable, I think it’s likely. This race is Romney / Ryan’s to lose and I don’t think they are going to lose.
Thanks for posting the chart!
O 48% R 47% with leaners and a D+2-4.
Per Rasmussen “In the last three elections, he notes, the polls moved against the incumbent party in the final weeks of the race”.
It’s a virtual tie right now and Romney hasn’t even unloaded the massive ad buy or faced off in the debates.
Plus Obama is facing a load of heavy bad coming down on him in the coming days in terms of his failed economy and foreign policy blunders.
What you say is true but:
1) historically the independents have broken for the challenger
2) across the swing states it looks like large numbers of these independents have actually changed their registration from Democrat to Independent since 2008 (and not from Republican to Independent). Kind of shows you about the way they lean politically.
3) poll after poll show Romney having a lead with independents
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