October 8, 2012

48%, 48%.

Rasmussen's presidential tracking poll, today. 

Has Obama healed his debate damage?

ADDED: I just noticed that Drudge is headlining: "GALLUP: 5-POINT ROMNEY BOUNCE."

AND: Note that both polls show the candidates tied, but Gallup had Obama 5 points ahead just before the debate. Also, Rasmussen's new poll is an average of polls taken on the last 3 days, that is, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The Gallup Poll in question covers Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. So Gallup's poll corresponds to the poll Rasmussen reported yesterday, which had Romney 2 points ahead. So the basis for question — Has Obama healed his debate damage? — remains.

52 comments:

chickelit said...

The polls are so close that they are affected by polling. The people they are polling switch depending on whom they perceive is leading.

Brian Brown said...

Ahem:

Registered voters' preferences for president are evenly split in the first three days of Gallup tracking since last Wednesday's presidential debate

TosaGuy said...

Obama will soon fall back to his ceiling of 47 percent. ;)

Humperdink said...

No. The word of the day is momentum. And zero's momentum has been reduced to, well, zero.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Where have all the other polls like the WSJNBC/ WAPO/ NYT gone? They seem to have disappeared.

clint said...

"Registered voters' preferences for president are evenly split in the first three days of Gallup tracking since last Wednesday's presidential debate"

Huh. No mention of likely voters... I wonder why that could be?

Sloanasaurus said...

Rasmussen is currently using a D+3 turn out sample... so keep that in mind.

Gallup is a poll of registered voters... so keep that in mind.

The bounce from the debate was huge. If Romney is just able to stay even with Obama in the next debates, or even lose by a small margin, the bounce should be lasting. The first debate showed that Romney was a real candidate and that Obama is a loser.

Bob Ellison said...

The polls register the answers to pollsters' questions of nine percent of the electorate. Why are we even bothering with this?

Ann Althouse said...

@Sloanasaurus But we still see the trend within Rasmussen and within Gallup.

Birkel said...
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Darcy said...

Oh, yes. He's probably healed it as far as those rocket scientist undecideds are concerned.

Meh. Nothing left to do but vote and hope that Smart Set in the middle bends the right way.

Birkel said...
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Matt Sablan said...

It's October. Of course the polls are tightening. I'm not sure what to make of it -- yet. Like the last several elections, I think base turnout is more important than winning the mythical middle.

campy said...

Meh. Nothing left to do but vote and hope

If you're for Mittens, there is no hope.

Matt Sablan said...

"If you're for Mittens, there is no hope."

-- True enough; there's just change.

garage mahal said...

The polls are not tightening. They are unskewing.

Sloanasaurus said...

It's October. Of course the polls are tightening. I'm not sure what to make of it -- yet. Like the last several elections, I think base turnout is more important than winning the mythical middle.

Yes, but the polls did not tighten in October 2008. Obama kept his lead all through October.

This is a much different race. Former Obama voters are switching their votes... and former Obama voters won't be showing up to the polls this year.

TWM said...

"The polls are not tightening. They are unskewing."

Some of both actually, but either way it's bad for Barry.

Matt Sablan said...

"The polls are not tightening. They are unskewing."

-- The shift from adults, to registered, to likely actually does a lot of unskewing. As does the move to the more reasonable D+3 than the D+6-11 we've seen in other polls. I'm still skeptical of polls (as we all should be), but you are right. As the in-built skew in the polls disappears, we get a more clear vision of the political make-up of our nation (a deeply divided, partisan nation), which makes it clear why both parties moved to the 2000-Rovian strategy of increasing base turn outs.

gk1 said...

Funny, I didn't think you could "fix" anything by running around and denying you got your ass kicked when everyone knows you did. I'd be interested in seeing obama's "Putz Index", it must be spiking around now.

Birkel said...
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pm317 said...

garage mahal said...

The polls are not tightening. They are unskewing.
------------------------

OMG, is he admitting what I think he is admitting?

Darcy said...

@campy

I think you're right. But probably not for the reasons you think. I don't want my hopes to be tied to any person.

TWM said...

"Has Obama healed his debate damage?"

He's done nothing to heal it. But his followers are incapable of acknowledging their stupidity in voting for him. They still want to believe.

Hopefully the following two debates will prove this ass-kicking wasn't a one-time thing and even they can't keep up the delusion . . .

Mark O said...

There's nothing that heals a nation like calling people liars.

He's no Jackie Robinson.

Birkel said...
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Brian Brown said...

Uh-oh garagie, it looks like Gallup's Chief Economist has become a unemployment rate truther:

The lack of face-validity of the government's unemployment numbers creates major problems, particularly during a presidential election year. The situation is worsened by the huge number of complex adjustments made to the data. Rather than debate whether something is wrong with the government's estimation process, it seems reasonable to look at other measures as an alternative.

But what does he know? I mean, people questioning the latest jobs #'s are silly idiots, remember?

rehajm said...

On Mondays Rasmussen has been showing an Obama uptick of two to three points for polling done over the weekend that fades by Tuesday. And the NBCs of the world were reluctant to poll over the holiday weekend, but expect to see a slew of new ones on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Matt Sablan said...

Lack of face-validity is such a cute turn of phrase.

Curious George said...

Nope.

Not everyone saw the debate but nearly everyone knows it was a drubbing.

Next is foreign affairs, and the beat down will continue. This on the heels of Team Choom talking up Romney's "inexperience" versus their track record. Ooops. No more obvious clusterfuck than the actions that led to the embassy deaths and the effort to spin it. Everyone in America knew it was not some reaction to a movie exept Obama and his sheeple.

garage mahal said...

"Uh-oh garagie, it looks like Gallup's Chief Economist has become a unemployment rate truther:"

Gallup is in on the great poll skewing conspiracy of 2012. Hello!

Brian Brown said...

Oh man, now AF's silly "$5 trillion dollar tax cut" lie comes apart:

Princeton professor Harvey Rosen
I can’t tell exactly how the Obama campaign reached that characterization of my work. It might be that they assume that Governor Romney wants to keep the taxes from the Affordable Care Act in place, despite the fact that the Governor has called for its complete repeal. The main conclusion of my study is that under plausible assumptions, a proposal along the lines suggested by Governor Romney can both be revenue neutral and keep the net tax burden on taxpayers with incomes above $200,000 about the same. That is, an increase in the tax burden on lower and middle income individuals is not required in order to make the overall plan revenue neutral.

It has to suck to believe in such silly bullshit.

Birkel said...
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gerry said...

It's Jimmah Cahter and 1980 all over again.

My. My. My.

edutcher said...

Some of this is due to the funky jobs report. Some people responded before all the analysis came in.

Sloanasaurus said...

It's October. Of course the polls are tightening. I'm not sure what to make of it -- yet. Like the last several elections, I think base turnout is more important than winning the mythical middle.

Yes, but the polls did not tighten in October 2008. Obama kept his lead all through October.

This is a much different race. Former Obama voters are switching their votes... and former Obama voters won't be showing up to the polls this year.


Precisely. He can't get above that 50% mark.

Jay said...

Uh-oh garagie, it looks like Gallup's Chief Economist has become a unemployment rate truther:

Gallup still has the U-3 at 8.1.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Obama still has momentum, its just being directed toward the ground, kind of like the momentum a well-driven golf ball has after reaching its zenith.

All his promises have reached their expiration dates and all his hopey changey bullshit has lost the luster it once had. Now he's just a mean-spirted campaigner, draining away his last viable asset: "likeabilility."

Brian Brown said...

garage mahal said...

Gallup is in on the great poll skewing conspiracy of 2012. Hello!


Note you are incapable of a substantive post on the issue.

AF said...

I've criticized Althouse's poor treatment of polls when it benefited Romney, so to be consistent I'm going to do it when it benefits Obama (though I can't fail to mention that she continues to follow the Althouse Rule of citing Gallup only on the rare occasions it is more favorable to Romney than Rasmussen).

Anyway, I think in this case it is reading too much into the one Rasmussen poll to say that Obama has healed his debate damage, in the sense of bouncing back to where he was pre-debate. There have been a number of post-debate polls and they all suggest that Obama lost several points following the debate. There does seem to be evidence from a couple of polls that Obama stopped losing any further ground over the weekend. But Rasmussen is the only poll suggesting that he has actually regained his losses.

Cedarford said...

Romney's big foreign policy speech is today.

Looking ahead, I see Obama before he heads off to a little needed golf course decompressing...ordering Biden to be his attack dog by hammering on the 47% and anything Romney says that "offends" foreign countries.

AF said...

"Oh man, now AF's silly "$5 trillion dollar tax cut" lie comes apart:"

Jay, I'm glad I made an impression -- you're still responding to comments I made last week!

With Rosen you need to notice the crafty non-denial denial. He does not deny that the burden will increase on people making between $100,000 and $200,000, which is what Obama cited his study for. He says that it won't decrease taxes on those making over $200,000 and it won't increase on "lower and middle income" taxpayers, ie those making under $100,000.

Brian Brown said...

With Rosen you need to notice the crafty non-denial denial

Alternatively, we can read: "I can’t tell exactly how the Obama campaign reached that characterization of my work" and realize you're a silly fucking propagandist.

Gabriel Hanna said...

@garage: After your lie about the CNN poll, just shut up already.

AF said...

Alternatively, we can read: "I can’t tell exactly how the Obama campaign reached that characterization of my work" and realize you're a silly fucking propagandist.

He says he can't tell "exactly how" the Obama campaigned reached its characterization of his work. He then presents his own characterization of his work, which is not inconsistent with the Obama's campaigns characterization. At no time does he say the Obama campaign's characterization is wrong. It's a classic non-denial denial.

Gabriel Hanna said...

@AF:a proposal along the lines suggested by Governor Romney can both be revenue neutral and keep the net tax burden on taxpayers with incomes above $200,000 about the same. That is, an increase in the tax burden on lower and middle income individuals is not required in order to make the overall plan revenue neutral.

Now keep trying to pretend that's not a denial. You can join garage in hall of shame reserved for quote miners.

AF said...

Gabriel Hanna: "Now keep trying to pretend that's not a denial."

I explained it already. Note that Obama's claim concerns taxpayers making $100,000 or more, and that Rosen's response makes no mention of the number $100,000. That is a red flag.

Matt Sablan said...

Meh, Obama's campaign, via spokeswoman Cutter, said the $5 trillion thing they were pushing was a lie. I see no reason to believe the campaign would lie about lying, as that would only hurt it. Therefore, Occam razoring this, I come to the conclusion that Obama lied, Cutter's future in politics died (for correcting her boss.)

Matt Sablan said...

Darn. My post got eaten. I can't remember how I put it pithily but: Obama's campaign spokeswoman Stefanie Cutter said the $5 trillion was a lie, therefore, no one else really should be fighting a battle that the candidate's campaign has agreed they were in error on. If you are going to pick a hill to die on, it is advisable not to do so on a hill your commander has abandoned to the enemy.

rehajm said...

"I can’t tell exactly how the Obama campaign reached that characterization of my work"

Rosen is being generous here, since the Obama administration told us how they got there. They are using static scoring of Romney's proposal instead of dynamic scoring.

Static analysis is something like this: 'let's compare two tax proposals, assume no changes in economic output, and judge the effects'.

Dynamic analysis says something like: 'let's compare two tax proposals, estimate their impacts on economic output, and judge the effects'.

Obama, and CBO, are looking at things through the static prism: since Romney lowers effective tax rates, and we assume no change in output, there's a huge deficit!

Romney, and most modern economists, say wait a minute: you CAN'T assume output will be the same. The whole point of altering tax rates is to alter economic output. Therefore, you CAN"T assume output will be the same under both scenarios. The reasoning is fundamentally flawed.

Hence the difference...

AF said...

Obama up to +5 in the 7-day rolling Gallup poll (10/1 to 10/7), up from +3 yesterday.

We know that Obama was at +5 in the Gallup poll from 9/30 to 10/2, even from 10/4 to 10/6, and +3 from 9/30 to 10/6. He must have had a very good day on 10/7.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Obama up to +5 in the 7-day rolling Gallup poll (10/1 to 10/7), up from +3 yesterday.

Link?

AF said...

http://www.gallup.com/poll/150743/Obama-Romney.aspx

Got it from realclearpolitics. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/general_election_romney_vs_obama-1171.html#polls

They seem to have hidden it on their main page, using only the 10/4-10/6 number.

I love those guys at realclearpolitics because they are clearly partisan Republicans, but they are more interested in making money as the go-to poll aggregator, which keeps them honest. The net result is that I can laugh at their little shenanigans, like putting a perpetual down arrow on Obama's poll numbers, while still using them as a perfectly good source for polls, without anyone doing their little I-don't-trust-Nate-Silver number.

yashu said...

I can’t tell exactly how the Obama campaign reached that characterization of my work.

Heh, that reminds me of this scene.