I was underwhelmed to read Greg Sargent on Twitter correcting GOP hatchetman Brad Dayspring, who, characteristically, was caught in the act of twisting a distortion of a misrepresentation of the almost instantly infamous Bloomberg poll. Dayspring's very existence on Earth--which once served Eric Cantor as an aide and before that Texan Jeb Hensarling--proves only that political slime runs uphill. I once regrettably engaged Mr. Dayspring in a testy email exchange which, I noticed within minutes, was reducing my IQ by the minute; his personality truly made Thomas Hobbes' brutish nastiness seem short. I fled His CyberMalignancy as quickly as possible and with as much human dignity as I could muster.
But as to the Bloomberg thing, yes, it was absurdly overcovered and it positively screamed "Outlier." What was missing from all the coverage, though, was even a peep from the punditocracy, which knows better, about the pointlessness of national polling of a presidential race--unless one of the contenders consistently holds, say, a 10-point lead, which arithmetically means it's all over. Once one shaves a few points from the dubious 13-point lead that Bloomberg showed Obama holding, clearly that isn't the case, nor could it be, since this poll was, as mentioned, a rather singular outlier.
Yet the paradox of the Bloomberg poll was that its signaling of a substantial Obama lead might as well be true; if, that is, one tracks presidential contests through the electoral college, which is what happens to elect presidents. Obama has, consistently, held a collective lead over Romney in the battleground states, and when bundled with his reasonably secure 240 or thereabouts electoral-college count, he's sitting quite pretty.
It'll be interesting. Obama could have a pretty comfortable electoral college victory (not the trouncing of McCain, but 300+ seems reasonable if external shocks don't tank the economy) and a squeaker in the national popular vote.
The swing states he carried last time are mostly holding, or staying within reach, for him with the exception of Indiana and maybe ultimately North Carolina. But the really red states hate him even more than they did last time, and many have busily disenfranchised as many potential Obama voters as they could, too. Oklahoma for example could go 3/1 Romney instead of the 2/1 McCain got, and a trend like that will make the popular vote look askew compared to the electoral college.
Posted by: Turgidson | June 21, 2012 at 03:29 PM
Conservatives usually defend the electoral college by claiming it forces candidates to build broad coalitions rather than run up their vote totals in few areas. I wonder what they would have to say if your prediction is right.
Posted by: mdblanche | June 22, 2012 at 01:46 AM
According to the Irish betting lines, Obama is holding at 2:1 http://www.oddschecker.com/specials/politics-and-election
They also list state-by-state odds if you are interested.
To repeat myself, Obama would add another 4-5 percentage points and win an LBJ-1964 landslide if he was 100% white instead of 50% white. So, the GOP is likely take the election results to mean that they just "had the wrong candidate" again and not internalize just how unpopular their policies and behavior really are.
Posted by: Robert Lipscomb | June 22, 2012 at 08:24 AM