The Convention Bounce Is Apparently Over, But Obama Still Leads
The President's poll lead has shrunk, but there are still signs of trouble for Mitt Romney.
Based on the most recent round of national polling, it appears that the clear and measurable bounce in the polls that President Obama received coming out of the Democratic National Convention has come to an end. We first started to see indications of this in the Gallup and Rasmussen Daily Tracking polls, both of which showed the gap between the candidates shrinking about to the one point range that it was in prior to the two party conventions. We also saw Obama’s lead shrinking in last week’s CBS/New York Times poll, where it was at three points and within the margin of error. There was, to be fair, a Fox News poll that came out shortly thereafter that gave the President a five point lead, but that was released at the same time that the tracking polls were showing the race tightening again. Today, though, there are a number of new polls out that seem to show the race tightening again, but with the President still retaining some distinct advantages over his challenger.
First up, a new Associated Press poll has the race virtually tied:.
President Barack Obama and GOP challenger Mitt Romney stand about even among likely voters, with 47 percent backing Obama and 46 percent Romney. But there are sharp demographic divides driving each candidate’s support.
Women broadly back the president (55 percent for Obama vs. 39 percent for Romney) while men favor the GOP ticket (53 percent for Romney to 40 percent for Obama). The gender gap tightens some in the suburbs, where women tilt Obama by a narrower 51 percent to 45 percent margin, while suburban men favor Romney, 54 percent to 40 percent.
White voters without college degrees favor Romney by more than 30 points over Obama (63 percent back Romney compared with 30 percent behind Obama), a steeper split than the 18-point margin John McCain held over Obama among the group in 2008. White voters with college degrees are about evenly split (50 percent Obama to 48 percent Romney), about on par with 2008.
Younger voters are less apt to be likely voters than their elder counterparts, hinting at the turnout battle to come, but voters under age 45 remain solidly in Obama’s camp, 54 percent to 41 percent. Senior citizens, on the other hand, lean Romney, 52 percent to 41 percent for Obama.
(…)
Just 27 percent of likely voters say they are better off financially than they were four years ago, and only 35 percent say the country has improved in that time. In fact, most, 51 percent, say the nation’s economic situation has gotten worse since 2008. There is a sharp political divide on whether the economy has made gains in the last four years, with 63 percent of Democratic voters saying it’s gotten better while just 6 percent of Republicans say the same.
Those economic numbers are mixed for the President and slightly helpful for Romney, but the fact that the race is effectively tied despite the fact that half of likely voters say the condition of the nation’s economy has gotten worse since 2008 indicates that there’s a not insignificant number of people who think the economy has gotten worse but are still supporting the President. That’s not really good news for Mitt Romney since one would assume that these people would be a natural constituency for whomever happens to be challenging the incumbent President. It could be a sign of the up-tick in Obama’s numbers on the economy that we’ve seen since the beginning of the month, and that would be trouble for Romney if it’s a sustained trend.
Slightly better for the President is the NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll, which shows the President with a five point lead and, as we’ve already seen, gains for the President when it comes to the economy:
Buoyed by an upswing in economic optimism, President Barack Obama has strengthened his support among voters and is now rated as equal to Mitt Romney on which candidate can best improve the economy, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds.
The survey gives the president his highest job approval since March, at 50%, and shows him leading Mr. Romney among likely voters, 50% to 45%, with two weeks before the campaign hits a major landmark with the first candidates’ debate.
The election snapshot comes as Mr. Obama tries to win reelection with the highest pre-election jobless rate since World War II, and with an estimated 23 million Americans unemployed or underemployed.
(…)
The poll found Mr. Obama to be on a generally stronger footing than President George W. Bush had been in September, 2004, before Mr. Bush went on to win re-election in a close contest. Mr. Obama holds a wider lead over his rival than did Mr. Bush, and voters give him higher marks for handling foreign policy and the economy.
The poll also has good news for the President when it comes to the economy:
More voters now think the economy will improve over the next 12 months—42%—than at any time since late 2009. More than half said the economy is already recovering, the same share as in several surveys over the summer.
In the new survey, the president pulled even with his Republican rival on who voters think is better to fix the economy, after lagging behind Mr. Romney on that question in July.
(…)
Mr. Obama faces his own challenges. More than half the electorate says the country is on the wrong track. Voter approval of his handling of foreign policy dipped by 5 percentage points from August amid the unrest last week in the Middle East, while disapproval on that front rose by 6 points.
At the same time, Mr. Romney leads the president by 3 percentage points among voters who rate themselves highly interested in the race, an advantage that could make a difference in who casts ballots on Election Day.
The Romney campaign has hammered recently on the question of whether voters think they are better off now than they were four years ago. The poll found slightly more voters saying the country is worse off since Mr. Obama took office than say it is better off, 41% to 38%.
But in a stark illustration of the work Mr. Romney must still do to win, just 36% of voters said the former Massachusetts governor is better prepared than Mr. Obama to lead the country over the next four years. Nearly half said Mr. Obama was the better prepared of the two.
The one down note for the President is that his foreign policy numbers have slipped a bit likely in wake of the protests and deaths in the wake of protests in Muslim nations. The poll showed 49% of voters approving of the President’s job in this area while 46% disapprove. That’s a 5% drop in approve from last month, and a 6% increase in the President’s disapproval number. Nonetheless, the President still beats Romney on the question of who would be a better Commander in Chief by a 45% to 38% margin, so he still beats Romney in that area. Most likely, the drop in the President’s numbers here is due to the general confusion about what the heck is going on overseas right now. If things were to develop into a full-fledged crisis, I still believe that we’d see a “rally around the flag” effect that would inure to the President’s benefit.
For the most part, though, I think the President would be okay with this slight drop in the foreign policy numbers given that he’s also got a very healthy uptick in his economy numbers. Notwithstanding the questions that some on the right have raised over the demographic breakdown of this poll, that particular phenomenon we have seen repeated in several polls now, including today’s Associated Press poll, so one has to assume that this is now a verified trend and that the President is succeeding in taking away, at least to some extent, the advantage Mitt Romney had when it came to economic issues. If that continues to take place over the coming seven weeks, then it’s going to make Mitt Romney’s task of convincing voters that the President needs to be fired because of the state of the economy all that much harder.
With all the new polling, the President’s lead in the RealClearPolitics polling average has shrunk to +2.7, which isn’t as high as it was just a week ago but is still better than it was immediately prior to the convention. It’s also worth noting that, with the exception of some of the tracking poll data, none of these polls were taken after the release of Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” tape earlier this week. How that will impact the race remains an unknown. So, the President is dipping slightly, but as the RCP chart shows, he’s still got a respectable lead over Romney and, more importantly, no indication yet of a sizable Romney surge:
Getting down to the state level, where it really matters, a new set of polls shows Obama with slight leads in three important swing states:
(CBS News) President Obama holds a narrow lead over Mitt Romney in the key swing states of Virginia, Wisconsin and Colorado, according to a new Quinnipiac University/CBS News/New York Times survey.
Mr. Obama leads his GOP opponent 51 percent to 45 percent in Wisconsin, the home state of GOP vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan. The president held a two-point lead in an August 23 Quinnipiac University/CBS News/New York Times survey and nine points in an August 8 survey. Mr. Obama won the state by 14 points in 2008.
In Virginia, Mr. Obama leads Romney 50 percent to 46 percent, matching his four-point lead from August. Mr. Obama took the state by seven points four years ago, making him the first Democrat to carry it since 1964.
In Colorado, the survey found Mr. Obama holds a one-point lead, 48 percent to 47 percent. That’s within the survey’s three-point margin of error. In the August survey, Romney led the president by five points in Colorado.
These polls also show the same positive news for the President on economic issues that we’re seeing in the national polls:
The president has gained some ground on handling the economy since last month. In August, Romney had an advantage on this issue (including a 10-point lead on it Colorado), but the candidates are now running much closer. In Colorado, 48 percent of voters think Romney will handle the economy better compared to 47 percent for Mr. Obama. In Virginia and Wisconsin, Mr. Obama has a 49-47 percent and 49-46 percent edge respectively on the economy issue.
Amid the protests and violence in the Middle East, likely voters in all three of these battlegrounds see Mr. Obama as the candidate who would best handle an international crisis – 50-43 percent in Colorado, 53-42 percent in Virginia and 53-41 percent in Wisconsin. He also has an advantage over Romney in both Virginia and Wisconsin on national security and terrorism – 51-44 percent in Virginia and 50-43 percent in Wisconsin – and a two-point edge over Romney on the issue in Colorado, 48-46 percent. In last month’s Colorado poll, Romney beat the president on the issue of national security, 50 percent to 41 percent.
So, yes, the President’s lead in the polls coming out of the convention has receded to some degree, and perhaps we’ll see it recede a little bit more ahead of the debates, which start two weeks from today. When you dig down deeper into the polls, though, you see that there’s a very serious problem for Mitt Romney hear. His signature issue, the economy, seems to be slipping away from him, and if that continues he’s going to have a very tough 48 days ahead of him.
I am not the kind of guy who dives deeply into polls. I notice the headline numbers as they roll by. In that mode I would be really surprised if the “47%” problem does not accrue over the next week. I particularly think the focus on “those dependent on government” is not a message for the independent voter. It is circling back to the base (and talk radio crazy) again.
Shorter Romney: Let’s focus on the undeserving poor.
(Instead he should have completely pivoted away from “dependency” and made it about budgetary reality.)
According to a recent Gallup Poll there is still a lot of uncertainty in this race, consequently making it one that could easily shift in either direction.
Also, Romney, instead of running away from his ‘taped remarks,’ seems to be embracing them with this op-ed piece saying, he’ll deliver recovery, not dependency, It’s a strong message, if he hangs on to that stance — one that will most assuredly bring on a flood of criticism/deridement from the left.
However, this is the crossroads we are at in this country as to where we want to go from here. If Obama is elected, more of the same will happen, with greater numbers of people succumbing to being a part of the government dependency rolls, with less people out there to pay for it. It’s simple math, and like France is doing, taxes will continue to go up in order to fill the ever-increasing gap that is being created, if not promoted, by our reliance on central government governance.
You mean like when Romney relied on the “central government” to fund the olympics, his signature accomplishment?
@jan:
The problem, Jan, is that there is no real culture of dependency. It is a talk radio fantasy. As I say in the other thread if it was just talk radio, or just motivated the wingnut troops, but it was never supposed to extend to policy it might be OK.
When you build policy on fantasy you break a country.
That would be true for the left, as well as the right, if they were currently running on fantasy.
@john personna:
“I particularly think the focus on “those dependent on government” is not a message for the independent voter. It is circling back to the base (and talk radio crazy) again. “
No one knows for sure, however, I think you are wrong on that assumption. Indies tend to be social moderates and fiscal conservatives. The message of self-reliance (versus government reliance) and deficit reduction fits more into the Romney wheel house, of how they view monetary policies, than Obama’s, IMO.
Of course those here, calling themselves Independents, will disagree. However, I think independents on this blog lean left, not only on social issues, but also fiscal ones too. In other wards, you guys are outliers in the overall make-up of the typical indie.
How is Romney going to change anything? He is on the record:
Romney has already admitted he is not up to the task.
See also, Mark McKinnon:
The true wingnut will just vote McKinnon off the island, but that again is the problem. They’ve been throwing sanity off the island for years now.
So Romney’s extreme social positions and “cut taxes, spend, spend , and go broke” fiscal policy ought to really have a lot of appeal…
@jan:
As I say Jan, there was an easy path to sanity: talk about budgets.
Talking about “dependency” is a culture war instead, and coming from a rich guy (a silver spoon guy) it is the worst sort of class warfare imaginable.
@john personna:
“When you build policy on fantasy you break a country.”
That again is where I disagree. Numbers of people defaulting to the government for assistance (who are simply discouraged) is something even the MSM is unable to spin and hide. We are at a tipping point of having more people needing help from those who are in the position to provide it. It’s very much like the Chicago teacher’s strike for more money in an enviroment of strapped and waning resources. Where will it come from? Raising taxes is not going to fill the coffers enough. This, in other words, is not a fantasy, but hard reality.
@john personna:
“The true wingnut will just vote McKinnon off the island, but that again is the problem. They’ve been throwing sanity off the island for years now. “
The positive aspect to the R party is that they have healthy disagreement within their ranks. You see very little of this kind of political wrangling going on within the dem party. When Feinstein becomes concerned by WH leaks one day, she comes out the next in a more contrite way, Same thing with people like Corey Booker. Contrary opinions to the president don’t stand for long. In the R party, the battles within just continue until they are hammered out.
When Romney was insulting half the country by saying “I’ll never convince [the 47 percent] that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”, he certainly wasn’t making a high minded argument about government dependency. He was saying half the country are permanent moochers who won’t take care of themselves, and the country would be better off if they had to pay some income tax.
It was a pretty ugly view into what Romney really believes, with the added bonus of showing he’s not even informed enough on basic issues to hold elected office.
@jan:
The number of people “defaulting to the government” is depending on how you look at it 1 to 6 percent of the population. The way I get the high end of that is to take the “non-elderly, income under 20,000” group, I’m sure you know includes a lot of veterans, disabled, etc.
It sure as hell is not the 47% Romney offers and you support.
You can “disagree” that it is fantasy, but it would be more convincing if you had some data.
@jan:
You don’t get it. The crazy has climbed to the top of the GOP ticket. It isn’t the wings.
And your day job seems to be to defend and strengthen the crazy.
Im sorry that this is more or less a throw away comment, and I truly dont want to stoop to trollish or insulting behavior, but that is just such an enormous load of unadultered horseshit that I couldnt let it pass me by. All it is is sloganeering based on a false dichotomy, and in my opinion, a very warped and narrow view of a much much larger picture.
If Obama is elected, more of the same will happen, with greater numbers of people succumbing to being a part of the government dependency rolls, with less people out there to pay for it.
Anyone got an example of Jan’s babbling about “culture of dependency” BEFORE Monday and the secret video?
Really, I think she’s posting talking points she gets in her inbox. “Day job” indeed. Making enough to pay income tax, Jan?
@Anderson:
I’m pretty sure it’s not a new thing, more a continuation. Still doesn’t make it true though.
National polls mean dick. As you know, the Electoral College is people too, my friend; and that is all that matters.
What, no made-up quotes readily at hand today, Jan? Oh, I see you brought an op-ed…
Regarding dependency, one of the most significant (THE most significant?) reform effort in that area was the creation and expansion of the EITC. Which, in turn, is a major factor driving the % of households owing no net income tax (now decried by the GOP, the party that designed the EITC). The EITC is an incentive to work. That, coupled with welfare reform, addressed the dependency issue.
What new reform is Romney proposing that would reduce “dependency” ?
Yes, we know he believes that his election will result in economic growth. Just because. He says that in the fundraiser video. That’s not policy. That’s fantasy. Just like the fantasy about the magic tax cut growth fairy. This time it’ll work! Believe harder!
As for getting real about budgets: fine by me. But that creates huge problems for Romney/Ryan. Bring that on. I’m always in favor of a serious policy discussion.
Well compare and contrast to Scott Brown again:
That version is both sane and compassionate. That’s where the GOP should be. The value network they have prevents it though. Talk radio wants Romney to double down, and Jan dutifully follows the lead.
It looks like it will be “crazy train until November” after all.
@Anderson:
Jan seems like she basically recites the same Us vs Them story over and over to herself. Unless she or her parents have rejected Social Security and Medicare, she and her dependency can go straight to hell. The whole thing is a farce, aimed at the clueless and abusive, and seems to be actually troubling a lot of real conservatives.
@Anderson:
Well, thats the thing. This mentality has been engrained in a large swath of the population for, well, for as long as I can remember. You can debate things like budgetary responsibility and welfare reform without insinuating that 47% of the public are lazy indigents looking for handouts. But the way I see it, the complaints about lazy good-for-nothings are a way of obfuscating real factors like long term poverty, lack of real social mobility, and education (you know, stuff that is hard to solve) in favor of political demonization. Its trying to win the debate without actually having one, and its one of the worst impulses I see in our system. And it is all too pervasive on every side.
Interesting video of Romney’s mother discussing how their family once took welfare & how the experience made George Romney a more compassionate man. Too bad none of that rubbed off on Mitt.
Lenore Romney discusses welfare
There is a chart of “dependency rate” on this page. It is quite different from the “recipiency rate.”
It would be a serious discussion if we could talk about the 4% number (last recorded, in 2005) and how to improve it.
But pretending it is 47% and going nuts is not the answer.
@jan:
Thanks for the link Jan, a piece in which Romney offers not one specific as to how he’ll deliver recovery, but several of the usual Republican bromides about economic space and economic freedom. Not exactly a strong message in my books. When and if he decides to tell us what he’ll actually do as President, and how that differs from Bush II, then maybe I’ll start listening.
As for not running away from his taped remarks, there’s really no way that he can without enforcing every meme that’s out there about his being a flip-flopping shape-shifting wimp. He’s stuck. He said what he said–loud, clear, and articulately. To try to back away or weasel out from those words now would be to lose his base and he desperately needs those people to come to the polls. So, he’s got no choice but to own those words and try to craft a palatable message around them.
Jan, you are ignorant. I am a member of that 47%, hell I am a member of the 15 or 20% who actually receive direct payments from the government in the form of food stamps (the maximum amount, and gasp, sometimes I even buy steak!) and health care for my kids. I appreciate the fact that this country affords my kids their regular checkups, all 3 of them have seen a doctor exactly 1 time for something other than a well child check, no rushing to the doctor for every sniffle in this house.
I also have a bachelor’s degree, my husband has an associate’s and I am currently in nursing school, receiving federally subsidized student loans. When I still worked, before my body decided to hyper-ovulate, and we paid taxes, I never begrudged anyone the help they needed, especially my Grandma on Medicaid in a nursing home for 12 years while she slowly died from Alzheimers. We didn’t “default” to the government. We “decided” that me staying home with our children and then going back to school to train for a more steady career was in the best interest of our family.
And we are so thankful that this nation has a social network, paid for by our grandparents and parents before us, that allowed us to make this decision.
@jan:
Please seek help from those who are in a position to provide it (or, alternatively, default to someone for assistance) in learning how to write proper English. Politics aside, you are simply a horrible, horrible writer. What on Earth is “numbers of people defaulting to the government for assistance (who are simply discouraged)” or “we are at a tipping point of having more people needing help from those who are in the position to provide it” supposed to mean, really? Stop using words such as “deridement” that don’t exist in the English language (“a flood of criticism/deridement from the left”).
Really, take a remedial writing class. Read more (a lot more) so you can see what a well-crafted sentence look like. Try reading your sentences to yourself aloud after you’ve written them so that you can hear how wrong they sound.
@john personna: Yep. I’d love to see Jan address the structural problems inherent in having full-time WalMart employees qualifying for both SNAP (food stamps) and Medicaid. Certainly someone manning (or, much more likely womanning) a cash register or stocking shelves 40 hours each week can not be considered a permanent victim dependent upon the government by any sane person.
Jan is really going the full Monica today.
@Gromitt Gunn:
According to Romney, those people shouldn’t get any assistance. He specifically names food and health care as things the government should not be helping anyone with.
More Republicans are distancing themselves from Romney:
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/09/19/another_gop_candidate_comes_out_against_romney.html
@anjin-san:
Oh sure, the Romneys got assistance from the government… But see, it’s always the other guy who doesn’t deserve any help.
When you hear these douchebags talk about welfare recipients, they always have this image of a fat, lazy slob resting comfortably in a La-Z-Boy with a box of Fiddle Faddle in one hand, and a remote control for his 50” plasma with cable TV in the other – and not just at the expense of the generic taxpayer, but at the expense of their own personal tax contributions. Meanwhile, Obama’s minions drop by every week to drop off their bag of crack money and pass out hand-jobs.
All but for the last 9 years of my life, I paid NO federal income tax. According to Romney and his friends on the Right, I must have been one of those slobs suckling at the government teet.
Coulda fooled me. I was working 8-10 hours a day, six days a week doing manual labor jobs before starting my own business. And I sure paid a helluva lot of taxes – payroll, sales, property, etc.
This 47% is bullsh!t. It pisses me off.
I’m fairly middle-of-the-road politically, but when I hear crap like this out of the GOP, it reminds me why I dislike Republicans a whole lot more than I dislike Democrats. The Dems have their problems, but at least they don’t insult me.
Cheers.
@ PogueMahone
I hear you. I’ve been busting my ass for 35 years. Done labor jobs, washed dishes, tended bar, managed clubs, & now I hav morphed into a white collar guy. Been paying into SS the whole time. Apparently wanting to get some of that money back later in life makes me a leech in Mitt Romney’s eyes.
@john personna:
It’s his next logical next step, the first one is ignoring anyone who isn’t white since they aren’t probably going to vote for him anyway.
@PogueMahone, @anjin-san:
Hey, all you guys gotta do is vote Romney. Then you’ll be “makers.”
@PJ:
I think he’s there already, and that is what the “culture of dependency” is about. Obviously if those “dependent” (in his view) are not deserving.
jan:
This false claim gets made a lot, in various different forms. It turns out that raising taxes could indeed “fill the coffers” completely. Link.
Show me where my numbers are wrong. Your concept of “hard reality” is to invent your own facts (example).
As of today, Gallup has Oama +1. Rasmussen shows Romney 47% Obama 46%
Look, guys… there’s not a person on the planet who doesn’t know Obama. There’s several more who don’t know Romney. UNder that situation along, Obama’s losing. Add that the polling orgs are oversampling Democrats by several points, and that the GOP rank and file is repeatedly showing for more enthusiasm for their guy… even in the Dems internal polling…
Wow bit, you mean… Romney is really winning??
Just like McCain was really winning in ’08. You called that one!
If you’re counting on a systematic polling error favoring your candidate, you’re in for a long election night. (Shamelessly stolen from TPM)
@Eric Florack: Then if you’re really certain that Polls Are Wrong and that Romney is winning, you’d be willing to back it up with a bet, yes? It seems to me that you are in position to make out like a bandit right now because Intrade has the chance of Romney winning at roughly 30%.
I’m not insisting on much. Maybe a friendly little bet of $100, investing in your sure-to-be-right prediction that Romney Will Win? Just to show that you really are willing to put your money where your mouth is?
After all, you’re sure you can’t lose.