Monday, September 10, 2012

Jay Cost: Real Numbers Prove Romney And Obama Are Essentially Still Tied


Jay Cost over at the Weekly Standard is consistently one of the smartest guys in the room when it comes to American politics and his take on the supposed 'Obama is the front runner' theme is as always, of interest:

As we wait to see the extent and duration of Barack Obama’s post-convention bounce, it makes sense to do a little analytical house cleaning. In particular, a meme developed over the summer that Barack Obama was a strong favorite to win reelection, thanks to a sustained and substantial lead over his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, particularly in the swing states.

This impression has been facilitated in part by several factors: an aggressive Obama PR operation that courts the media in an attempt to create a “bandwagon” effect, registered voter polls that often over-sample Democrats, left-leaning journalists who often assume an Obama advantage; former Obama campaign consultant Nate Silver, whose black-box statistical model for the New York Times has shown an outsized lead for the president (and whose 2010 model consistently placed the battle for the House as a tossup, while giving Democrats a 20 percent chance of holding the House on Election Day), as well the proliferation of surveys conducted by Public Policy Polling, which does regular polling for the hyper-partisan union, the Service Employees International Union.

I want to look at the data from a different perspective. In particular, let’s look at non-partisan, likely voter polls that RealClearPolitics used in its averages from the month of August (multiple polls from the same pollster were averaged and counted only once). What do we see?




Cost goes on to show similar charts for the battle ground states that essentially show the same thing...a tie.

His final conclusion? : My instincts tell me that by the time of the debates, we will be back to precisely where we were in August – both candidates essentially tied and stuck 3-5 points below 50 percent. Time will tell.

I think he's 100% on the money, with one exception...the only reason it's still this close if because the Romney campaign haven't forcefully attacked this president on his failed record yet.

As Jay Cost says, time will tell.

Read the whole thing here.





2 comments:

louielouie said...

still this close if because the Romney campaign haven't forcefully attacked this president on his failed record yet.

nor will he.
mccain didn't.

Rob said...

Hi Louie,
I don't think Mitt Romney is John McCain. But we'll see.

Regards,
Rob