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A large majority of likely voters believes all Americans should pay some federal income tax -- even if it is as little as one percent of what they make. Seventy-nine percent say everyone should pay something, according to a Fox News poll released Thursday. That includes 85 percent of Republicans, 83 percent of independents and 71 percent of Democrats. According to the IRS, last year approximately 41 percent of tax filers did not pay federal income tax. The Tax Policy Center estimates that will increase to 46 percent this year. Most voters (73 percent) are at least somewhat familiar with...

They won't officially declare the election over, but the experts at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics Thursday declared that President Obama's surge in key battleground state polls has pushed him well over the magic mark of 270 Electoral College votes, meaning his reelection is all but a lock. "We are not calling the race," said the experts, but the polls currently show "a decisive Obama victory." The team of Larry Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley said if the election were held today, Obama would win 290 Electoral Votes, Mitt Romney 204. And the 42 toss-up Electoral Votes...

One of my guys plugged into GOP circles in Virginia reaches out to me with the opening declaration, “Short attention spans.” “That is the reason Team Mitt is holding back right now,” he says. “They know, as they proved in the primary, that elections are won and lost in the last two weeks and on the ground.” Here the evidence has a few exceptions, as Romney was pretty steady in New Hampshire, but the former Massachusetts Governor did come back strong in the closing weeks and days of primaries in Florida, Ohio, and Michigan, and showed a modest closing bump...

There’s no point in putting it gently: Mitt Romney had one of his worst polling days of the year on Wednesday. It began with a series of polls from The New York Times, CBS News and Quinnipiac University, released early Wednesday morning, which gave President Obama leads of between 9 and 11 points in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Later in the day, Mr. Romney got polls showing unfavorable numbers for him in Colorado and Iowa. Unlike many recent days, when Mr. Obama’s national polls were slightly less euphoric than his swing state surveys, Wednesday’s national polls seemed to support the...

It isn’t unusual for the state of the polls to be a big issue this close to an election, but this week has been different from any previous campaign I remember — it’s not who’s ahead in the polls, it’s the polls themselves that are the big topic of discussion. My article “Skewed and Unskewed Polls” got picked up by both Drudge Report and Rush Limbaugh’s Stack O’ Stuff and — along with plenty of other contributions — made the topic of how polls are being performed into a national one. The problem is that the discussion (as happens only...

As I read reports over the past week that showed Obama up by several points over Romney, I can't say that I was stunned or surprised. One must understand that Obama is running only against Romney while Romney is running against Obama, the Mainstream Media, AND left-leaning pollsters. This is NOT a new phenomena. It has been going on for as long as we have had presidential elections, which is to say, from the very beginning of our country. Today, however, with all the advances in communications -- and-- with our mainstream media (for the most part) having dropped all...

Once you know the secret behind a magic trick, it loses its appeal.No matter how carefully crafted, no matter how spectacular the effect, no matter how much skill goes into its design, once you see the wires, or know where the secret compartment is, the trick stops being magic and becomes nothing more than engineering.The trick the Obama campaign has executed beautifully this month is to demoralize and dismay the GOP base. A combination of a very, very, very heavy TV buy in swing states (pay attention, because this is a rabbit they can't pull out every week), a...

Jay Cost today in The Weekly Standard should provide more than a little encouragement to conservatives who've prematurely taken to drink because of Romney's current alleged poll deficits. Cost's central point - and he is among the most prescient of poll observers -- is that most major polling organizations are oversampling Democrats, based on an assumption that the 2012 electorate will demographically match 2008's, when blacks, Hispanics and under thirty's constituted record percentages. In discussing Ohio, for example, Cost points out that if this year's electoral demographics turn out to be a compromise between those of 2008 and 2004 --...

Certain media polls indicating Obama is ahead of Mitt Romney by as much as 10 to 12 points in swing states seem to spell disaster for Romney, but what they really say about the Obama campaign may just surprise you? The absurdity of the skewed sample models in those polls is one thing, but what conservatives need to understand is that polls skewed to heavily favor Democrats logically point to one very important fact - Obama is in big trouble. For one thing, Democrats and the liberal media are taking a huge chance by touting polls showing Obama up by...

Last week New York Times polling guru Nate Silver tweeted, “The. Polls. Have. Stopped. Making. Any. Sense.” They do make a lot of sense if the objective is to help President Obama win a second term — or so Democrats think. Major election surveys in the last few months have shown Mr. Obama either in the lead or tied for the win, despite an economic record of massive unemployment and astronomical debt. With that kind of baggage, the current Oval Office occupant ought to be trailing by at least 10 points.[SNIP] Another way to avoid the pitfalls of subjective partisan...

The largest divergence among conservative and liberal polling critics this election is the debate over who will actually show up at the voting booth this November. Differences between the amounts of Democrats versus Republicans included in the poll are frequent. But embedded in each of these assumptions are questions on the racial make-up and how that varies from election to election. Democrats consistently talk about the “coalition of the ascendant” where the fastest growing segments of the population are minorities. As such they make up an ever-increasing segment of the voting population but also vote overwhelmingly in favor of Democrats....

Are the polls dishonest?

The overwhelming majority of public opinion polls show President Obama cruising to re-election. State polls of Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Wisconsin and Iowa are now consistently showing Obama with leads of five points or more.But Romney is not behind in the polls because liberal Republicans are being turned off or independents are moving toward Obama. Most polls show Romney doing very well within his own party and holding his own with independents. Romney is dropping in the polls because pollsters are predicting a Democratic edge in turnout that will make 2008 look like a good year for the GOP.For example, the...

I want to hear from commenters on this, as I think all bloggers are dealing with some variation of this problem right now. Standard practice on the site is for Ed and I to post any poll that we think you'll find interesting, whether the numbers are good or bad; normally the readers are fine with that, if only because they can use the thread to goof on me for being a dirty, dirty eeyore. But for two months every four years, the calculus changes for some and they start screeching that posting bad numbers is an act of treason...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Folks, there are a couple of polls out there today that are just outrageous. One is the CBS/New York Times poll. The other is the Washington Post poll. I'm telling you: They are irresponsible. They are designed to do exactly what I have warned you to be vigilant about, and that is to depress you and suppress your vote. These two polls today are designed to convince everybody this election is over. And Jan Crawford at CBS looks at one of these... Grab audio sound bite number six. She even says that. This is over because of...

Ohio is easily the most important state for both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney as they head towards election day. It has clearly become the most frequently polled state, with polls showing either a dead even race or an Obama blowout win. Yet the details of the polls are far more interesting than what the simple results show, and nearly half of the polls show a turnout scenario favoring the Democrats that has never been seen before, while the rest mirror a rosy – and unlikely – 2008 turnout scenario. The mainstream media is pointing to a number of polls...

The Rasmussen Consumer Index, which measures consumer confidence on a daily basis, slipped two points on Wednesday to 83.9. The consumer index is down two points from a week ago, but it is up two points from a month ago and three points from three months ago.

From its double standard on how the mainstream media has covered both campaigns, to the 2008-Democrat heavy polling models they use, to the lack of investigative reporting on the scandals associated with this administration, it has become blatantly evident that the mainstream media harbors a liberal bias, commits endless hypocrisies and will not hold this president up to the same standards it has for previous presidents. Campaign Coverage I find the messaging from both campaigns to be remarkably stunning. Despite both candidates being Harvard graduates and worth millions of dollars each, one is labeled as “out of touch” with mainstream...

For weeks, Republicans in Ohio have been watching with worry that the state’s vital 18 electoral votes were trending away from Mitt Romney. The anxiety has been similar in Florida, where Republicans are concerned that President Obama is gaining the upper hand in the fight for the state’s 29 electoral votes. Those fears are affirmed in the findings of the latest Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News polls of likely voters in both states, which show that Mr. Obama has widened his lead over Mr. Romney and is outperforming him on nearly every major campaign issue, even though about half said...

In what could be considered nothing short of media malpractice, the New York Times and CBS News published three state polls by Quinnipiac University that shows Democratic advantages in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania at levels never before seen. The allegedly scientific poll is said to give a clear idea of how the election might turnout if it were held today. But the published turnout assumes Democrats will outnumber Republicans by 33% in Florida and Ohio, while the advantage jumps by 40% in Pennsylvania. Not surprisingly - despite their own data showing he is losing Independents in both FL and OH...