The Closeness of 2012 May Have Been Exaggerated

     This is the story that the media has tried to spoonfeed us for the last two years: this is going to be a very close race, the President is in a lot of trouble because of the economy, he may lose. More than anything, this race will be nothing like the laugher over McCain in 2008.

     However, today Nate Silver admits that maybe this has been assumed too prematurely:

     "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 notion that Mr. Obama has a clear lead in the race. The Gallup national tracking poll gave Mr. Obama a six-point lead among registered voters, close to his high mark on the year in that survey. The online tracking poll conducted by Ipsos gave him a six-point lead among likely voters. Another online tracking poll, from the RAND Corporation, put Mr. Obama’s lead at roughly seven and a half percentage points, his largest of the year in that poll. And a national poll for Bloomberg produced by the pollster J. Ann Selzer, who has a strong track record, put Mr. Obama six points ahead."

     http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/sept-26-could-2012-be-like-2008/

     Based on what the polls now show, the President only trails in two states that he won in 2008. Actually, as he's now slipped into a tie in North Carolina, it's only one:

     "If the election were held today, however, it could look pretty ugly for Mr. Romney. The “now-cast” has Mr. Obama favored in all the states he won in 2008 except for Indiana, where he is several points behind, and North Carolina, which it shows as an almost exact tie. It would project Mr. Obama to win 337 electoral votes, slightly fewer than the 365 that he won in 2008."

     Romney has said that there's no need to worry over the polls, that they can be made to show anything and some he likes better than others.

     The trouble is while Romney has little choice but try to sound optimistic this just puts him in the position of yet again denying empirical reality and so sounding out of touch.

     At this point-and really, it's not so early; history shows that the race is usually much more settled in late September-the only poll that Romney can like is Rasmussen.

     Rasmussen now shows him with a 2 point lead nationally. All other polls now show the President with significant leads in the 5 or 6 point area. Gallup, which the Romney people liked last week now shows the President up by 6(50-44).

     Nate's 538 poll now gives the President an 81.9% chance of winning the election. He says that if the election were held today it would be 97.8%. The reason for the difference is the model is still taking some bite out of Obama's numbers because of a presumed convention bounce.

     The amount, however, is dissipating and should be gone within the week. The other reason is because of the separate economic indicator which has the President has a smaller 3.4% favorite to win. The economic effect also drops as we get closer. By the day of the election it's gone. For now, as the economy is not doing great-but not truly recessionary-it costs the President some in its poll though he gains by being the incumbent.

     However, as Greg Sargent has argued, Americans don't see this as a referendum on the economy. Indeed, no one in the GOP thinks this will work anymore either. We actually had Kristol saying last Sunday that the President's team has done a decent job clearing up the Bush crisis, Romney should make this an ideological debate about the next 4 years.

     For more see Rich Lowry coming out against the referendum.

     http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81723.html?hp=l1

     Truth is while he says "end the referendum" it's long been over.