Obama Up By Eight Points In New Wisconsin Poll

October 31, 2012

Comments

Marquette University was one of the few polling outfits to accurately call the outcome of the Recall Election mounted against Governor Scott Walker earlier this year and, even before that, was one of the most respected polls in Wisconsin. Today, they came out with what looks to be their final poll of the Presidential race showing the President up by eight points:

President Barack Obama leads Mitt Romney 51% to 43% in a new poll of 1,243 likely voters in Wisconsin by Marquette Law School. The survey was taken last Thursday through Sunday.

In Marquette’s previous poll, the two candidates were virtually tied, with Obama at 49% and Romney at 48%. That survey was taken Oct. 11-14.

Obama has enjoyed an average lead of about two points in public polls taken in Wisconsin over the last few weeks.

The polling in Wisconsin tightened after Paul Ryan was put on the ticket in office, but there have been almost no polls showing Romney/Ryan in the lead in the state, and the ones that did were back in August right after the announcement and only showed a lead of one point. Presently, Obama has a +4,0 point lead in the RealClearPolitics polling average, and there seems to be little sign that the numbers here are going to change very much in the next week. I suspect that Obama will be holding on to the Badger State in the end.

10 responses to “Obama Up By Eight Points In New Wisconsin Poll”

Geek, Esq.

October 31, 2012 at 3:06 pm

A week ago, Wisconsin was the new Ohio according to the Romney people.

This week, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota are the new Ohio.

If they were confident in the old Ohio, they wouldn’t be scrambling around for an alternate route every week.
mantis

October 31, 2012 at 3:11 pm

Clearly, this poll has been gayskewed by Nate Silver.
LaMont

October 31, 2012 at 3:34 pm

@Geek, Esq.:

This is a great point. After the third debate I recalled many democratic and republican strategists stating that the activity in the coming weeks would show how each campaign feels about their chances of winning. The fact that the Romney campaign (or superpacs) are now spending money in Michigan reveals to me that they feel they need a better contingency than any scenario they presently have to win the White Houss while Obama’s campaign is pretty much staying the course. This says a ton about who thinks they are losing and who thinks they are winning!
Ed in NJ

October 31, 2012 at 3:38 pm

I expect to see most swing states break hard towards Obama in these last polls.

These are the polls that go into the poll ratings published after the election, so pollsters will take their thumbs off the scale.

Check out Rasmussen movement this week for confirmation of my theory.
Tsar Nicholas

October 31, 2012 at 3:48 pm

The timing of that poll is funny in sort of a parody sense. Obama himself is going to campaign in WI tomorrow. And the other day, when word leaked out that Team Obama was buying air time in MN, the Obama campaign said it actually was for WI. So if Marquette is correct about WI then Team Obama, run by the smartest people in the world or whatever, is spending time and money there for nothing.

As far as that poll goes, in and of itself, it undersampled whites, undersampled Protestants and oversampled women. It also assumes that Democrats will outnumber Republicans nearly by the same margin (5 pts. vs. 6 pts.) as that which occurred in ’08. But that all said it’s not nearly as Pravda-esque as the likes of PPP, CBS/NYT, SurveyUSA, Gravis Mkt. or Marist. Or at least it doesn’t appear at first glance to be that far off the rails. To be honest I really didn’t spend too much time looking at it. For the simple and obvious reason that if Obama needs to win WI this contest was over a long time ago, and vice-versa.

If I were a betting man, which of course I am, I’d wager that Obama will carry WI this time around too. Maybe 52-48 or thereabouts. Old political habits are hard to break.
wr

October 31, 2012 at 5:19 pm

@Tsar Nicholas: ” To be honest I really didn’t spend too much time looking at it.”

And yet in those few seconds you were able to parse exactly how many of which race, gender and religion were polled and do the math to prove to yourself that the ones of which you approve were undersampled.

And then you decide, apparently, that the poll must actually be accurate because if it wasn’t the election would have ended already.

Or something.

What is it you’re trying to prove by posting this kind of gibberish? At least Jay/Jenos/Hoot/Geek finds what little pleasure he has in life by annoying people. What’s your story?
swbarnes2

October 31, 2012 at 7:01 pm

Don’t worry, Doug. Your Republican pals are helping your side win by teaching their poll observers false things about the election code in Wisconsin, so they can harass legitimate voters. More support for folks like Akin and Walsh is your goal, right?
rick moran

November 1, 2012 at 9:23 am

If Obama really had an 8 point lead, he wouldn’t be in Green Bay today. The fact that he won the state by 11 points in 2008 and is campaigning 5 days before the election in that same state should tell you a lot more than any one poll.
Tsar’s publisher

November 1, 2012 at 10:20 am

Tsars is getting paid by the word for these posts, they may not make much sence but it’s dollars he is after.
Davebo

November 1, 2012 at 11:21 am

If Obama really had an 8 point lead, he wouldn’t be in Green Bay today…

The fact that he won the state by 11 points in 2008 and is campaigning 5 days before the election in that same state should tell you a lot more than any one poll.

Well that grasp certainly tells me a lot Rick.