Hey, guess what ... it turns out that Gallup and Rasmussen were oversampling Republicans. The final turnout split ended up being something like +6 in favor of the Democrats.
Also, keep in mind that some states had more than 40% of their votes cast during early voting -- and Obama outperformed Romney in most early voting. A lot of those votes were cast long before Halloween.
Here you go.
"Fox News co-host Brian Kilmeade on Wednesday complained that the United States was the “shallowest country in the history of man” because exit polls showed that people considered Hurricane Sandy an important factor in the presidential race.
On the morning after President Barack Obama won re-election, Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy noted that Hurricane Sandy had been the “October surprise,” with 42 percent of people saying that the storm response was an important issue and 15 percent saying it was the most important issue."
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Now what were the margins in the swings states? They were pretty thin gruel for an Obama win. Ms. Chritie likely made the difference.
What I'm hearing is that for the voters in the middle who decide elections, party affiliation is highly fluid. If they think they're gonna vote for Romney, they'll say they're Republicans. On a different day, when Obama's looking good, they'll say they're Democrats. That's why we get these big swings - not because of sampling error, but because not everyone's a die-hard party member.