Gallup: Romney busts out a six-point lead
Obama supporters buoyed by last night’s debate performance just got a glass of cold water in the face in the form of the latest Gallup numbers among likely voters:
Romney: 51 percent
Obama: 45 percent
That’s a considerably better number for Romney than reported by the Rasmussen tracking poll, which puts the race at Romney 49, Obama 48, well within the margin of error. Other national polls also report a tight race, with advantages for either candidate of two or three points at best.
Obama continues to hold an advantage in state-by-state polling, giving him a lead in the all-important electoral college. That explains in part why Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight continues to give him a 64.8 percent change of winning re-election. However, that advantage continues to erode as well.
The effects, if any, of last night’s showing haven’t manifested themselves yet, and won’t until the end of the week at the earliest. The final debate is Monday.
But with Election Day only three weeks from yesterday, it is anybody’s race.
– Jay Bookman
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721 comments Add your comment
GT
October 18th, 2012
8:15 am
The south is like a party guest that won’t go home. I think of the months right after the elections either way, the blockade being formed by the Republican congress, the nightmare of the herb doctors from the Tea Party, holding the country hostage, until we all wear garlic bags around our necks to cure this economy.
Maybe this is the best thing for the country. Get this thing over with, go directly into bankruptcy, nuke ourselves, and then let the grass roots come up. There will be no debate when the depression gets here of what could have happened, these times will look like dizzy allusions as we stand in bread lines. These avoidable wars we fought, health insurance, transportation all gone. This commonality of failure helped that last generation, my parents, become the greatest we have ever seen, greed and smoke and mirrors, lack of honesty will drown this generation. It is the only way hard headed uneducated people will see what their condition and view of the world cost us. Even Newt may lose a few pounds in this desert. Bring it on Mr. Hoover the sooner we get a feel of real the sooner the world will hold fact as a community again instead of an outline for spin doctors and herbal health.
TiredOfIt
October 18th, 2012
8:24 am
Another George (Vacation) Bush:
During Mr. Romney’s four-year term as governor of Massachusetts, he cumulatively spent more than a year — part or all of 417 days — out of the state, according to a review of his schedule and other records.
TiredOfIt
October 18th, 2012
8:50 am
Finally: http://www.romneytaxplan.com/
GT
October 18th, 2012
8:58 am
The best question of the debate in my opinion was the lady who asked how Romney differed from Bush. They have a lot of the same advisories and philosophies, a very good question. Romney compares himself against Obama, as if he is utopia. If life were so easy. The truth is a lot of people don’t blame Bush for this recession and don’t think Obama saved us from depression. I am not sure there is enough left to fake another four years of artificial growth we saw in 8 years of Bush, after Clinton balanced the budget. Easy credit for the private sector ain’t going to happen, and if it does the banks are not going to be bailed out. In the end of four years we will be right back at the threshold of a depression one more time, with willing Democrats to run and take the blame for a four year banquet under Romney. Romney made his money during these heady unreal days of easy credit that gave false numbers of prosperity and put us here. There is nothing that is going to be easy about the next four years. I almost want to see Romney pull all these levers and find they are as impotent for him as the man he has be critiquing for several years and now he will have to take four years to learn which one don’t work. In the meanwhile he will set back equality in America a decade. Romney, if elected will be the most unpopular president in the history of this country, but he for once won’t be able to pass this off to the next administration, this stuff turns too fast now day, you can’t control your bathroom breaks to fit your schedules.
Joe Hussein Mama
October 18th, 2012
9:31 am
Towncrier — “Wrong. The argument I postulated is perfectly valid.”
Wrong. The argument you presented (one does not *postulate* an argument) is full of leaps of reasoning and logical fallacies.
“You seem not to be able to read between the lines very well.”
Besides that fact that you don’t seem to be able to do it yourself, you also seem quite hidebound in your reasoning; asserting that there can’t be shades of gray here. There’s either 100% right or 100% wrong in your scenario, AFAICS. What ‘lines’ are there to look between in that? Binary choices like the one you’ve presented don’t *admit* to having lines, Towncrier.
“Jay was NOT saying that I believe all that he ascribed to me – he was dramatically overstating the case to make a point. I was doing the same. I do NOT think that all journalists in the mainstream media are liberally biased. Jake Tapper and Mike Wallace, for instance, seem to be pretty objective IMO.”
Do you see objectivity as something that’s common only to conservative journalists? Or do you believe that objectivity and bias can coexist in a single person, if that person recognizes their own biases?
“Again, neither Jay’s nor my post was meant to be a strictly logical argument. I have said this again and again, you seem unable to detect sarcasm or satire (irony in general) very well.”
As I’ve told you before, there’s nothing so magical or unique about your writing that it will communicate your thoughts, intent or argument with 100% clarity 100% of the time. And given that I’ve taught the subject at the college level, I repose more trust in my own English usage abilities than I do in yours. That said, it’s good that you acknowledge that your post didn’t contain a “strictly logical” argument, particularly given all the logical fallacies it contains.
“I was offering evidence of bias off the top of my head. You can “parse” this evidence as much as you want, but that does not mean it is not valid.”
Kettle logic. Russell’s Teapot. Your lack of evidentiary support is sufficient to make it invalid. It’s not incumbent upon me or anyone else to disprove or invalidate an argument that you haven’t proven or validated.
“Why don’t you take your argument up with someone like Arthur Brisbane (the outgoing New York Times managing editor) – I suspect he can speak to the kind of bias of which I am speaking a bit more authoritatively than you.”
Logical Fallacy: Appeal to Authority.
“When The Times covers a national presidential campaign, I have found that the lead editors and reporters are disciplined about enforcing fairness and balance, and usually succeed in doing so…Across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.”
In his opinion. I’m certainly accepting of the fact that *your opinion* holds that to be true just as Brisbane’s does, but you seem quite cavalier about leaving that part out — leading me to the conclusion that you’re trying to claim something to be factual when it’s not. IIRC, we’ve had this discussion before.
“I am arguing that there is a liberal Weltanschauung that leads many mainstream “journalists” to skew things to more accord with that perspective. It is not so much a conspiracy (but I think the Journolist suggests that it can rise to that level) as a desire to see one’s view win the day.”
You’ve also argued that political pollsters *never* oversample Republicans, but that’s not true. I was looking at this poll last evening and *just happened to notice* that it . . . yes, indeed . . . OVERSAMPLES REPUBLICANS. Yet you and scads of other conservatives will rail for days about the “biased” and “skewed” polls that “never oversample Republicans,” yet here we have one — and I wasn’t even looking for it. I believe that you and your political allies have simply (once again) *asserted* something without proof and counted on sheer ignorance and laziness to carry the day for you. I think you didn’t bother to look, I think Republican campaigners didn’t bother to look, I think that conservative posters here didn’t bother to look and I think that all of you are counting on no one else bothering to look, either.
Well, just as you’re claiming the existence of this pervasive liberal mindset that can’t help but percolate into the news and mass media in general, you’ve also claimed that pollsters are ’skewing Democratic because they never oversample Republicans.’
Well guess what? They *do* oversample Republicans. So your claim of a week ago is wrong, and I bet if I looked closer, I’d find it to be wrong a LOT. So I think your claim of seeping liberal bias is wrong, too, and I challenge you to provide evidentiary support for your two claims.
Poll discussion: http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2012/09/obama-up-by-3-in-colorado.html
Survey instrument: http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/ColoradoPostDebatePoll.pdf
“Of course I have biases. Everyone here knows my biases and views. But I am not paid to publish articles I claim are “objective”.
You’re not *paid* to post anything here.
“And I think, from reading your comments the past few months, that you do not really understand human nature very well.”
I think, from reading *your* comments over the last few months, that you expect your views to be accepted as factual and that you don’t feel that you have to support them in any evidentiary fashion. I also think that you make a great many leaps of logic that are ideologically-based. And, FWIW, I don’t recognize you as much of an expert on “human nature” despite your high-sounding proclamations about how you think it works. Anyone can make guesses, and you’re no better than me in that respect.
“Unless someone is REALLY committed to doing what is right, they will invariably and consistently have few qualms about doing clearly wrong things.”
Rejected. We spoke of this about a week or so ago when discussing religious and philosophical motivations in a societal context. You clearly couldn’t believe that an atheist could behave or conduct themselves in an altruistic manner, and that position is shining thru brightly here. Just because *you* can’t conceive of someone behaving in a certain way does not in any way demonstrate that such behavior is impossible or categorically nonexistent. That’s lazy logic, and I had thought you better than that.
“Okay, my friend. I hope your evening is a good one.”
And yours as well.
Furia
October 18th, 2012
9:33 am
Romney now up 6 points in Gallup…can you all say LAND SLIDE?
Joe Hussein Mama
October 18th, 2012
9:36 am
Towncrier — “TD, that to me is like lighting an applause sign for an audience in a TV show. If people can’t discern satire, sarcasm, general levity and so on then I am afraid they shouldn’t be making arguments on a political blog – because they are doing nothing more than providing fuel for the satirist’s fire (I have played that role a few times and may again soon). They certainly aren’t making strong arguments.”
And had you tried making that argument in one of the college classes I taught, your final grade would not have been one you would have wanted to share with your parents.
Joe Hussein Mama
October 18th, 2012
9:37 am
Furia — “Romney now up 6 points in Gallup…can you all say LAND SLIDE?”
I love how cons thought all the polls were “skewed” and raged about it for the last month.
Now they seem to think the polls all come straight from heaven.
(laughing, pointing)
Mark T
October 18th, 2012
9:39 am
http://www.mrctv.org/videos/obama-2009-if-economy-isnt-fixed-3-years-there-will-be-1-term-proposition
Kamchak ~ Thug from the Steppes
October 17th, 2012
10:21 pm
Obama promised in February of 2009 that if he did not halve the deficit that he would serve “a one term proposition.”
When you have to lie to make a point, you really have no point.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Mark T
October 18th, 2012
9:48 am
TaxPayer
October 18th, 2012
7:17 am
Clapgate! Jay’s trying to give the cons something of interest to talk about
OOOH Bindergate!…If Libs had half an education they would know he was referring to binders of applications and resumes from women…but hey, I guess we cant hold you to that high a standard
GT
October 18th, 2012
9:56 am
no but I can say depression!
Junior Samples
October 18th, 2012
10:13 am
I don’t know if there are enough deceased voters to give Obama the win. I’m sure Obama with his Chicago thug background will give it a heck of a try.
D
October 18th, 2012
10:41 am
@GT
“The best question of the debate in my opinion was the lady who asked how Romney differed from Bush”
I thought so, too. Biggest thing that bugged me about President Bush was his lack of bipartisanship. Seems to me that the very thing that chaps people the most is when their values are not being fairly represented. Bush and Obama are very much alike in that regard.
GT
October 18th, 2012
10:44 am
My Uncle Shelby, from Texas, was a Democrat all his life, but since he has been dead 10 years, he has been voting Republican.
GT
October 18th, 2012
10:58 am
Bush’s unilateral personality not only makes domestic relationships impossible, it bleeds into his foreign relations too. No one liked Bush, couldn’t even get a majority of this own country to vote for him, he was like the mean old man that came out and screamed at kids in my old neighborhood. Then the kids grew up and he wants them to forget all that. Every answer for Romney is to go to war. He doesn’t say it like that but the responses he suggest and his observations of no apologies necessary funnel into no other options but war.
Furia
October 18th, 2012
11:20 am
Romney will fix the mess Bush and Obama has left us….Go Moderates!!!
Bill Orvis White
October 18th, 2012
11:47 am
Why in the Lord’s name are you foolish liberals so surprised? Your president LIED TO YOU and those who never wanted “him” installed into the job in the first place. WHY ARE YOU SURPRISED THAT “HE’S” GOING TO LOSE? WHAT AM I MISSING HERE? The dolt first said that we have 57 states. Then “he” said “he’d” bring unemployment under 5 percent? WRONG! That is a difference of 9 million out of work. WE HAVE 23 MILLION OUT OF WORK. $20T in ObamaDebt, a stupid illegal health care bill smacked upon us and $716 billion robbed from Medicare TO PAY FOR THE STUPID BOONDOGGLE! THIS IS THE BIGGEST FAILED “ADMINISTRATION” AND WE THE PEOPLE ARE TIRED OF IT AND ARE NOW FIRING THIS IDIOT AND REPLACING “HIM” WITH A MATURE COMMON SENSE ADMINISTRATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am no joke about this. I am serious! This “man” needs quickly leave the Oval Office ASAP!!!!!!!
Amen,
Bill
Democrats Are Devils
October 18th, 2012
5:16 pm
scratch that, its a 7-point lead, bitches !!!
Furia
October 18th, 2012
9:27 pm
Gallup…Romney 52 percent Obama 45 percent! Pulling away baby!!!!!
Furia
October 18th, 2012
9:28 pm
Romney will fix this mess that Bush and Obama have left us!!!!!!!!! Moderates win the day.
HamiltonAZ
October 19th, 2012
12:20 am
Give me a leader who can deliver a speech like the Prime Minister of Australia. Remarkable.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/transcript-of-julia-gillards-speech-20121010-27c36.html