Poll Watch: Mitt Romney’s Leading in Swing States

What’s the best way to know what libs have up their sleeves? Pay attention to what they accuse others of doing.

Traveling to campaign in Virginia from Washington today, President Obama‘s team said the news media wants a “comeback kid story” for Mitt Romney.

“We know there are going to be twists and turns and ups and downs in this campaign,” Obama press secretary Jen Psaki told news media aboard Air Force One. “We know we’ll have them in the next 40 days as well. campaign we know we’ll have them it in the next 40 days as well. Mitt Romney has set it up and his team have set it up where they want the debate to be that moment for him. They fully expect that moment is going to be their turning point. We know people want to write a comeback kid story, so we’ll see if that happens.”

Well, who’s the “Comeback Kid” in the media narrative, right now?

Dana Perino called it back in June.

She said Team Obama wanted to be the underdog in this election, and it looked like they were getting their wish. But  she also said to watch for stories starting in July that would herald Obama’s amazing recovery – how he was getting his groove back, etc.

Well, it’s coming a little later than expected, perhaps because Obama was having so many bad weeks/months in a row, the narrative just wasn’t tenable until now. The ObamaMedia has been working overtime to paint Romney as a “gaaaaaffe” prone, out of touch, rich white guy who doesn’t pay his fair share. And they think now is the time to go in for the kill. Romney’s 47% “gaffe” is causing him to lose ground to the comeback kid, is their story and they’re sticking to it..

Remember how al-Reuters covered Romney’s massive 7,000+ person rally in Colorado, last weekend? : Romney tries to put “47%” gaffe to bed with focus on jobs .  That got my attention: Shameless, ObamaZombie Media Reaching New Heights in Hackery.

Now here’s Rush Limbaugh on his show,today: Obama and Media Coordinate to Attach the “47% Video” to Romney’s Supposedly Falling Poll Numbers:

RUSH: Now, Obama is in Virginia, he’s got a campaign appearance going, and he just told a whopper.  Grab sound bite five, by the way.  He just told a whopper to the crowd.  And, by the way, let’s play sound bite five.  This is what has caused this big change.  The Romney video where he claimed that 47% of the voters are just beyond his reach, they don’t pay taxes or whatever, you remember the video from May at a fundraiser. Obama has latched on to that to now try to talk about the people of this country as great, hardworking, stick-to-it, self-reliant, rugged individuals.

Obama has done a 180.  I’m here to tell you that what this campaign is doing is not representative of a campaign that thinks this election is over and that they have it locked up.  He is in states that the polls tell us he’s leading by ten to 12 points.  He is now making campaign statements, trying to put words in Romney’s mouth that Romney has denigrated people as a bunch of victims and Obama is now becoming the champion of entrepreneurs and rugged individuals?  And this isn’t gonna fly anywhere because nobody believes that.

***

So they’ve decided at the Obama campaign to defend the hardworking people that Romney is attacking. This is a campaign that does not have a core message that it’s locked into.  It’s hop scotching all over the place, and now they think this one might work.  I’m telling you, feel free to disagree with me, I guess I could be wrong about this, but this strikes me as a campaign in disarray.  I know that’s what they’re saying about the Romney campaign.  But I think it’s the Obama campaign that’s not well-oiled and not a smooth running machine.  The very idea it takes ’em a week to gin up a coordinated response with the media on this 47%, and then they have to makeup what Romney meant, put words in his mouth. And now here’s Obama whose existence is based on victims, Obama’s reason for existing as a politician is to help victims and make even more of ’em.  That’s what a community organizer does.

A community organizer makes people feel like they’re victims.  He tells them they’re victims.  A community organizer tells people they’re getting dumped on, that they’re getting the shaft, that they’re getting the screw by The Man, by the elite, by the rich. And now all of a sudden Obama’s out, (imitating Obama) “There aren’t any victims. They are hardworking people.  The way you get ahead in this country is hard work.”  No, it’s not.  If you work hard and you become successful, you are a target of this administration.  You’re gonna be paying higher taxes. You’re the reason that there’s poverty.  You’re the reason that there’s despair.

You are the reason, you small business owners that are perceived to have loads and loads of money, you know it as well as I do, in Obama’s world, you’re the reason we have this bad economy, you and Bush.  You’re not hiring people.  You’re hoarding all of your money.  You’ve got it.  You’re just not hiring.  You’re greedy.  This has been Obama’s whole message, and now all of a sudden — here, we got a media montage yesterday, last night, and this morning, of a bunch of media people, State-Controlled Media, tying this 47% video of Romney to these polls and trying to explain this is why Romney’s plunging.

Here’s his Obama Media montage:

ALLEN:  New polls show Ohio slipping away after Romney talking disparagingly about the 47%.

MUIR:  Romney described 47% of Americans as victims.

CRAWFORD:  Romney is still shadowed by “it’s not my job to worry about the 47%.”

MORGAN:  The 47%  fiasco.

REICH:  In response to that 47% video.

STODDARD: The potency of the 47% video.

CAVUTO: Mitt Romney, the 47 thing.

TUCKER:  This 47% remark so absolutely devastating for him.

CARDONA: He’s denigrating 47% of the American electorate.

STEINHAUSER:  Those controversial 47% comments.

GUTHRIE:  Repair the damage from the 47% comment.

SILVER:  Since Romney’s 47% comments Obama’s gotten a second wind.

Yeah, yeah, yeah…HERE’s your “second wind”, drones:

Rasmussen (R) 2012 Daily Swing State Presidential Tracking Poll
 
Including “Leaners”

• Mitt Romney 48%
• Barack Obama 47%

Not Including “Leaners”

• Mitt Romney 46%
• Barack Obama 46% 
• Some other candidate 4%
• Undecided 5%

Survey of approximately 1,300 likely voters was conducted September 20-26, 2012. The margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points. The swing state poll covers 11 key states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Inside the numbers:

The president’s Job Approval in the swing states is currently at 48%. Fifty percent (50%) disapprove. These figures include 28% who Strongly Approve and 41% who Strongly Disapprove.

DaTechGuy analyzes RCP’s right track/wrong track numbers.

Right now the MSM is running a ton of polls with huge Democrat skews yet take a look at the results at the end of the chart for today:

56.3 vs 37.6 Wrong track over right track that’s a spread of 18.7 and consider this: The CBS/NYT poll and the NBC/WSJ poll, the two polls that are the most skewed have a wrong track/right track numbers of -19 & -16 respectively.

Think about that: Even with a sample that couldn’t favor Obama more if they were paid employees of the white house they can’t even get a gap of less that 10 pts let alone a favorable number.

***

VDH notes how few votes it would have taken to make 1980 a Carter victory:

In other words, until the very last week of the campaign, Reagan had an uphill fight. True, he eventually won a landslide victory in the Electoral College (489 to 49) and beat Carter handily in the popular vote. Yet Reagan only received a 51-percent majority.

What had saved Reagan from a perfect storm of negative factors — gaffes, additional conservative candidates on the ballot, a single debate, and a biased media — was not just the debate. Voter turnout was relatively low at only 53 percent. If Reagan’s conservative base was united and energized, Carter’s proved divided and indifferent.

John Nolte of Big Journalism: To Help Democrats, the Media’s Been Lying About Swing State Polls Since 1980:

How Carter Beat Reagan:

So what do we have here?

What we have is the liberal “paper of record” systematically presenting the 1980 Reagan-Carter election in 9 “Crucial States” as somehow “close” in five of the nine — Texas, Illinois, Ohio, Florida and Michigan. New York was in the bag for Carter. Only in his own California and New Jersey was Reagan clearly leading.

The actual results had only New York “close” — with Reagan winning by 2. Reagan carried every other “close” state by a minimum of 6 points and as much 17 — Florida. Florida, in fact, went for Reagan by a point more than California and about 4 more than New Jersey.

How could the New York Times — its much ballyhooed polling data and all of its resulting stories proclaiming everything to be “close” — been so massively, continuously wrong? In the case of its “Crucial States” — nine out of nine times?

Remember, in order to buy today’s media polling, you have to believe Romney has shored up his base and is winning Independents, but still losing because Obama’s going to match or best the extraordinary party advantage he enjoyed during the perfect storm of 2008.

Poll apologists just say they believe the polls. What they’re really saying, though, and can’t defend, is that during a bad economy and all the Middle East unrest, Obama’s going to win a record turnout advantage.

Zombie: The Five False Assumptions Behind Poll-Skewing:

The Purpose of Poll-Skewing

Each side has defined for itself an ultimate goal. Obama’s supporters in the media and online strive incessantly to demonstrate and publicize that Obama is ahead in the polls. Romney’s supporters strive to demonstrate that those polls are skewed, since the published totals are “weighted” (i.e. arbitrarily distorted) to match statistics about past voter behavior that are no longer true.

Now, if you had just landed on Earth from another galaxy, you likely would be very confused about this behavior on the part of the poll-wrestlers. Presuming there is such a thing as objective reality, there must be a certain true percentage of people who support each candidate — so what purpose is served by intentionally misrepresenting that reality if, at the end of the campaign, that misrepresentation will be trumped by an actual vote? Isn’t the purpose of polls to reveal a snapshot of how things really stand?

Oh you naive extraterrestrials, we reply. Originally, yes, polls were meant to document reality, but nowadays polls are designed to mold reality. If two candidates are in truth currently tied, but we announce that one of them is in the lead, then on election day he will actually win, because our false poll reporting affected how people vote. Get it?

UPDATE:

Poll Watch: PPP (D) Ohio 2012 Presidential Survey

With Poll sample +8 Democrat

Q15 If you are a Democrat, press 1. If a Republican,
press 2. If you are an independent or identify
with another party, press 3.
Democrat ……………………………………………….. 41%
Republican……………………………………………… 33%
Independent/Other…………………………………… 26%

The results show Obama winning by 6:

PPP (D) Ohio 2012 Presidential Poll

• Barack Obama 50% [50%] (48%) {47%} [50%] (49%) {50%} [46%] (45%) {46%} [46%] (44%)
• Mitt Romney 44% [45%] (45%) {44%} [43%] (42%) {41%}[46%] (43%) {42%} [40%] (42%)

Among Independents

• Mitt Romney 51% [46%] (39%) {42%} [40%] (40%) {45%} [46%] (43%) {44%} [39%] (40%)
• Barack Obama 34% [44%] (49%) {42%}[43%](45%) {39%} [35%] (38%) {34%} [37%] (34%)

Among Men

• Mitt Romney 50% [48%] (48%) {48%} [50%] (49%) {47%} [54%] (44%) {50%} [47%] (47%)
• Barack Obama 43% [46%] (44%) {41%} [44%] (43%) {45%} [38%] (42%) {43%} [38%] (37%)

Among Women

• Barack Obama 55% [53%] (52%) {52%} [55%] (54%) {54%} [53%] (47%) {49%} [52%] (51%)
• Mitt Romney 39% [43%] (43%) {41%} [36%] (36%) {36%} [38%] (43%) {35%} [35%] (37%)

Obama is losing Independents…

UPDATE:

The Iowa Republican reports that Romney is leading in the latest (unskewed) poll:

The stories of Mitt Romney’s demise in Iowa may be exaggerated.  While the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Marist poll results have caused NBC to move Iowa from being a toss-up to a lean Democrat state, a new TIR-Voter/Consumer Research poll suggests otherwise.  The poll of registered voters conducted between September 23^rd and September 25^th shows Romney with a one-point lead over President Obama in Iowa.

Respondents were asked whom they would vote for if the election for president were held today.   Forty-seven percent chose Republican Mitt Romney, while 46 percent said Democrat Barack Obama.   Two percent said neither, one percent refused to answer, and only four percent of respondents were undecided.

The poll is significantly different from last week’s Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Marist poll that showed Obama leading Romney by eight points, or the most recent Public Policy Polling poll that had Obama’s lead at seven points in the state.

The major difference between the polls could be attributed to the political make up of the sample.  Public Policy Polling’s Iowa sample was comprised of 37 percent-identified Democrats, 33 percent of identified Republicans, and 27 percent of identified independent or no-party voters.  The TIR/VCR poll was comprised of 36 percent registered Republicans, 35 percent registered Democrats, and 30 percent no-party voters.

Keep in mind, there are now roughly 20,000 more registered Republicans in Iowa than registered Democrats.

September 24, 2012 4:20 P.M.

This news release – announcing that there are now roughly 20,000 more registered Republicans in Iowa than registered Democrats –

suggests that Hawkeye state Republicans can crow about a dramatic turnaround, pointing out that back in January 2009, Iowa Democrats enjoyed a 110,000 voter registration advantage.

For what it’s worth:

WH Insider said this December 2011: Heads Up – The Cook The Books Campaign Is Underway:

Not sure if you are abroad or not but wanted to get this message to you so you know what to specifically watch out for in the coming weeks and months.  Got word there is a comprehensive polling and economic data program about ready to be launched via some administration operatives and particular media outlets.  Big time cooking the books on this polling data they will be pushing out there soon.

Told Wapo will be one of if not the first.  Urge you to read beyond the polling headline and you will find the facts behind the numbers.  All campaigns attempt to do this kind of thing, but nobody gets away with it as much as the Obama administration.  It will prove to be a huge obstacle for whoever the GOP nominee is. And this is just the start.

These polls are fabrications intended to shape public opinion.  They are not reflections of public opinion.  That make sense?  The poll itself will be regurgitated to other secondary media.  That is how we did it over and over again in 2007 and 2008.  We used the polling to work against Hillary, and then we used the same platform of tricks to use against and paralyze the McCain campaign.

Linked by Doug Ross, thanks!

You have to find the actual polling data.  It will be buried but you can find it easy enough once you figure out the links.  Then go back and compare to previous polling and you’ll note the shift. That shift is proof of the dishonesty of the media.  At least some of them.  The Obama people fed them the request, and these polls will be used to paint the picture.

Hat tip: Charles B.