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Weekend Poll Analysis | Last Stop Election Day
No more polls will really tell anything new. Monday's news will be rehashed dope.
The Unhinged @ USMB had better make disaster plans now. Come Monday the news will be so bad for Romney/Ryan, the mad rush for sanity will be overwhelming
No more polls will really tell anything new. Monday's news will be rehashed dope.
November 1, 2012
Cassidy’s Count: Obama Looks Good Going Into Final Weekend
After all the drama of the past few days, it may seem anticlimactic to suggest that not much has changed in the election. That’s what the latest polls are telling us, though. Going into the final weekend of the campaign, it’s still a tight race, but President Obama retains a distinct advantage in the electoral college. Unless the pollsters are wrong, or there is a last-minute swing to Mitt Romney, the Democratic incumbent looks set to scrape out a victory.
Obviously, there is a lot of interest in how Obama’s adroit response to Hurricane Sandy, and the problems it has posed for his opponent...The Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll also shows no change. In its poll completed on Monday, Obama was leading by one point. Ditto in today’s update, which was based on questioning completed on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the latest Washington Post/ABC News tracker has the race tied, just as it did before the storm hit.
At the weekend, the Real Clear Politics poll of polls showed Romney ahead by about one point. On Thursday afternoon, it had the race tied. Obama’s slight gain reflects a number of new polls—not trackers—that showed him winning, notably one from the National Journal that gave him a five-point lead. Given the tightness of the other polls, this one looks like an outlier. All in all, the race remains too close to call on a national level, with the possibility that Romney could win the popular vote still a live one.
But it’s at the state level where the race will be decided. Here, the news for Obama has been...Here’s a quick rundown:
Read more Cassidy's Count: Obama Looks Good Going Into Final Weekend : The New Yorker
November 2, 2012, 11:50 am
Nov. 1: The Simple Case for Saying Obama Is the Favorite
By NATE SILVER
If you are following some of the same people that I do on Twitter, you may have noticed some pushback about our contention that Barack Obama is a favorite (and certainly not a lock) to be re-elected. I haven’t come across too many analyses suggesting that Mitt Romney is the favorite. (There are exceptions.) But there are plenty of people who say that the race is a “tossup.”
What I find confounding about this is that the argument we’re making is exceedingly simple. Here it is:
Obama’s ahead in Ohio.
A somewhat-more-complicated version:
Mr. Obama is leading in the polls of Ohio and other states that would suffice for him to win 270 electoral votes, and by a margin that has historically translated into victory a fairly high percentage of the time.
The argument that Mr. Obama isn’t the favorite is the one that requires more finesse. If you take the polls at face value, then the popular vote might be a tossup, but the Electoral College favors Mr. Obama.
So you have to make some case for why the polls shouldn’t be taken at face value.
Some argue that the polls are systematically biased against Republicans. This might qualify as a simple argument had it been true on a consistent basis historically, but it hasn’t been: instead...
Others argue that undecided voters tend to break against the incumbent, in this case Mr. Obama. But this has also not really been true in recent elections. In some states...
A third argument is that Mr. Romney has the momentum in the polls...
Nov. 1: The Simple Case for Saying Obama Is the Favorite - NYTimes.com
The Unhinged @ USMB had better make disaster plans now. Come Monday the news will be so bad for Romney/Ryan, the mad rush for sanity will be overwhelming