Poll finds Romney leads by five points in swing states

CBS News ^ | October 15, 2012 | Lindsey Boerma

[2ndDivisionVet]

Mitt Romney is leading President Obama by five percentage points in critical battleground states, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll out Monday - a gain the survey suggests is linked to a spike in support among women.

The poll shows Romney ahead, 51 percent to 46 percent, among likely voters in 12 swing states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Women typically trend Democratic: In 2008, female voters chose Mr. Obama over Republican Sen. John McCain by a 13 point margin. Now, according to USA Today/Gallup, Romney is tied with the president among women who are likely voters, 48 percent to 48 percent. He is leading by 12 points among men.

"In every poll, we've seen a major surge among women in favorability for Romney" since since the first presidential debate, veteran Democratic pollster Celinda Lake told USA Today. "Women went into the debate actively disliking Romney, and they came out thinking he might understand their lives and might be able to get something done for them."

But the Romney camp shouldn't celebrate yet, argued Obama pollster Joel Benenson...

[ntnychik]

Right, we need Romney full of energetic campaigning right into Election Day. No going home early to sleep in his own bed, sitting on his lead.

[justiceseeker93]

Romney leads by five points in swing states

This sounds promising, especially since no less of biased entity than CBS News is releasing it no less of a biased duo than USA Today/Gallup purportedly did the polling, and still it purportedly shows Romney in a pretty good position.

BTW, I haven't seen any breakdown of the party affiliation of the sample in this poll.

For some reason, Gallup itself has yet to post the results on its web site.

[TomEwall]

The internals of this poll were interesting. Romney was doing 4 points better among women in the swing states as opposed to women nationwide. Maybe their advertising is targeting women, and working.

[Sybeck1]

[TomEwall]

I don’t think the fact that Romney won made the difference. It wasn’t that Romney did better than Obama that helped him, but that he did well, and how he came across. The question isn’t about Obama, but about Romney.

The Obama campaign has been spending millions to represent a caricature of Romney, and he was able to set that aside. In the second debate, he needs to show he can connect to people in the Town Hall setting. If he does well, I don’t think it will make much difference how Obama does. People have decided already whether or not they’ll vote for him. The question is if Romney is an acceptable alternative.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks justiceseeker93.

[Lacey2]

Romney only needs to hold his own. No matter how well he does or Obama fails the lib media will rave and claim it to be a “breath taking” performance for “the won” and a devastating defeat for Romney.

Look for the liberals to use words such as “tentative, nervous, unsure, lost” an will be accused at least once of having a “Deer in the headlights” look after what will be described as a “brilliant” question delivered with “pinpoint timing and with devastating effect”

The Left is all so predictable

[Lacey2]

They won’t be able to lie about when the election is held because by now EVERYONE knows the voting for those who want Romney as president is on November 6th and those who are voting for Obama will vote on November 7th.