ROMNEY LEADS OBAMA IN LATEST POLL: HOW BAD IS IT?
Posted by John CassidyIn my neck of artisanal, hormone-free Brooklyn, the latest CBS News/New York Times poll, which shows Mitt Scissorhands leading “The First Gay President” by three points, landed with a nasty thud. “I can’t believe he might lose,” my wife said when she spotted the offending numbers on the Web. “People are really willing to vote for Mitt Romney? They hate Obama so much they’d vote for Romney?”
Evidently so—not that you’d know it from a casual read of the print edition of today’s Times. The editors buried the lead in the fifteenth paragraph of a down-page story on A17. (I’ve got a helpful suggestion: if Romney’s ahead in next month’s poll, maybe it could go in the Metro section—the one that no longer exists.) Not surprisingly, conservative news sites made rather more of the story. Under the headline “Kaboom: Romney Leads Obama by 3 in New CBS/NYT Poll,” Guy Benson, the political editor of Townhall.com, pointed out several other noteworthy findings n the survey, including the facts that Romney leads Obama by two points among women (so much for the gender gap) and seven points among independents. Two thirds of the survey’s respondents said the economy was in “very bad” or “fairly bad” shape, and Obama’s favorability rating is still stuck in the mid-forties—at forty-five per cent, to be exact.
To add insult to injury, the poll suggested the public is skeptical of Obama’s conversion to the cause of legalizing gay marriage. (This was the finding that the Times devoted most of its page A17 story to.) Sixty-seven per cent of respondents said they thought the President changed tack mostly for political reasons, and just sixteen per cent said his announcement would make them more likely to vote for him.
Put it all together like that and it’s enough to spoil the breakfast of anybody, myself included, who fears what another four years of Republican rule would do to this country. But before pushing aside your Cheerios, it’s worth putting the latest poll in a broader context. If you do that, what you find is a bit more reassuring. With just under six months to go, looking at the overall polling data, Obama retains an advantage, especially at the state level. But it’s a tight race. Even after a disastrous G.O.P. primary, Romney is close enough that he could quite conceivably win.
To make things easier, I’ll divide the polling data into three areas: the head-to-head matchup, key issues, and state-by-state findings.
Head to Head: Romney’s three-point lead in the latest CBS News/NYT poll is within the margin of error. Statistically speaking, there isn’t much change from last month, when the two were tied at forty-six per cent. Other surveys also show the two candidates more or less even. In Gallup’s daily tracking poll, Obama leads Romney, forty-six per cent to forty-five per cent. The latest Rasmussen tracking poll has Romney ahead by two points: forty-seven per cent to forty-five per cent.
For now, the poll-of-polls from Real Clear Politics, which averages all the latest surveys, has Obama leading by slightly more than two points—47.1 per cent to 44.9 per cent. In the next day or two, we’ll get more polling data from the Washington Post/ABC News and from the Wall Street Journal/NBC News. Once all three of the big monthly polls are in, we’ll have a better picture of where we stand.
Key Issues: The CBS News/Times poll confirms what both sides already know: the election will be decided primarily on the basis of bread-and-butter concerns. Sixty-two per cent of respondents said the economy and jobs was the most important issue to them in deciding who to vote for. The budget deficit came in a distant second, at eleven per cent. Then came health care, at nine per cent.
While most people still think the economy is in bad shape, which will provide encouragement for Republicans, there were also some positive signs for the White House. The number of people who think the economy is improving is gradually increasing. Thirty-two per cent of respondents said the economy was in “good” shape—the highest percentage since January, 2008. Thirty-six per cent said the economy is “getting better,” and just twenty-four per cent said it is “getting worse.” In April of last year, twenty-three per cent of people said the economy was getting better. Last September, after the debt-ceiling crisis, just twelve per cent said it was getting better.
From Obama’s perspective, much hinges on strengthening the belief that the economy is finally turning around. Two months of weak employment figures clearly haven’t helped. But there is still time for public perceptions to change—in either direction.
As for the legalization of gay marriage, the latest polling data suggests that the public is fairly equally split on Obama’s expression of support. In a new Washington Post/ABC News poll, some details of which were released this morning, forty-six per cent of respondents said they approved of it and forty-six per cent said they disapproved. The response was largely along party lines, with seventy per cent of Democrats supportive and seventy-six per cent of Republicans opposed. Among independents, forty-nine per cent approved and forty-three per cent disapproved.
In the CBS News/New York Times poll, just thirty-eight per cent of respondents said gay couples should be allowed to marry, suggesting that the President is on the unpopular side of the issue. But fifty-eight per cent said that Obama’s statement of support would have no effect on their vote. And Romney’s anti-gay-marriage stance doesn’t seem to be helping or hindering him very much. Twenty-one per cent said it would make them more likely to vote for him; seventeen per cent said the opposite.
State-by-State Polls: In the end, of course, it will come down to the Electoral College, and a few swing states. Obama’s campaign has identified five geographic paths that could see him through to two hundred and seventy votes: a Western strategy, a Midwestern strategy, a Southern strategy, a Southwestern strategy, and a Florida strategy. At least for now, the state polling data suggests that all but the Southwestern strategy are realistic scenarios.
In the West, the key states for Obama to win are Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado. Not much survey work has been done in these places recently, but what data there is offers encouragement for the President. A Rasmussen poll of Nevada carried out at the end of last month showed him ahead of Romney by eight points, fifty-two per cent to forty-four per cent. A P.P.P. poll in New Mexico, which was done at about the same time, showed Obama with an even bigger lead of fourteen points: fifty-four per cent to forty per cent.
In the Midwest, the battleground states are Iowa and Ohio. Despite the conventional wisdom that Obama will struggle in areas heavily inhabited by evangelicals and white ethnics, he is still doing surprisingly well in these two states. A P.P.P. poll carried out earlier this month in Iowa showed him leading Romney by ten points: fifty-one per cent to forty-one per cent. Similarly, in Ohio, two recent polls showed Obama ahead, and in one of them, which was also carried out by P.P.P., his lead was seven points. “Barack Obama’s led by 7 points or more now on our last three Ohio polls,” Dean Debnam, P.P.P.’s president, said in a statement. “It seems unlikely he’ll win the state by that much in November but it does mean he has some margin for error.”
Obama’s Southern path to victory rests on winning North Carolina and Virginia. Between them, these states have twenty-eight Electoral College votes, more than enough to put Obama over the winning line if he also holds on to all the states that John Kerry won in 2004. A recent Washington Post poll showed him leading Romney in Virginia by seven points: fifty-one per cent to forty-four per cent. North Carolina appears tighter, but Obama also appears to be holding onto a slim lead there. A poll from Survey USA, the only one done in the past month, showed him with forty-seven per cent of the vote, and Romney with forty-three per cent.
In Florida, the latest polls show the two candidates neck and neck. Six months ago, Obama was trailing badly. His comeback is pretty encouraging for him, but many political professionals are still predicting a 2000-style cliffhanger. Hence the constant speculation about Romney picking local boy Marco Rubio as his running mate, which could also help with Hispanics nationally.
Clearly, the state polls are one of the best things Obama has going for him. A note of caution, though. Most of them were carried out a few weeks ago, and they may not fully reflect the bounce Romney has received from the G.O.P. primary ending. It will be fascinating to see how far local polls carried out in the coming weeks follow the national trend and whether Obama’s gay-marriage gambit has had any impact. Already, some G.O.P. supporters are claiming it has turned North Carolina from tossup state to one the Republicans are likely to win.
In conclusion, I would say to my fellow residents of Brownstone Brooklyn, and to all Obama supporters: it’s too early to apply for Canadian citizenship, but it’s not too early to get worried. As James Carville warned everybody last week, “If we don’t get on the offense, reconnect with the American people, talk about how the middle class is in a struggle for its very existence, hold the Republicans accountable and fight like the dickens, we are going to lose…. Nothing is in the bag. Nothing can be taken for granted.”
