It'll be Obama by a nose/mile

Says a new Quinnipiac/New York Times/CBS News poll:

Obama holds an advantage of 6 percentage points [among likely voters] over Mr. Romney in Florida and Ohio. The president is stronger in Pennsylvania, leading by 11 percentage points....

Most paths to victory that the campaigns are pursuing include winning at least two of the states.

For all my ridicule of the American electorate's recurrent drifts into exasperating cluelessness, my confidence in Obama's reelection is, and always has been, unshakable. His persistent "edge" in most battleground states has settled into what might better be called a permanent lead. It's been that consistent; indeed, that reliable.

Why? Doubtless "his empathy and personal appeal," as the Times notes, have material weight. Yet just as weighty, I suspect, are the electorate's 1948-like distrust of the obstructionist, crisis-creating and crisis-prolonging GOP and the ordinary American voter's accelerating abhorrence of the Romney wrecking crew.   

Like all political predictions, my prediction means not a damn thing. So, naturally, I'll restate it, with imitation authority and an utterly empty all-knowingness: President Obama will win by a slim popular plurality (since pretty close to half of us still blindly adore the flamboyant crisis-creation of the GOP), but crush Mitt Romney in the electoral count.

Comments

[japa21]

One thing I noticed in those poll results is that first, it is of likely voters. Since I don't think that the PA ID law will pass the legal scrutiny it is under and FL screwed up its main attempt to suppress ther vote and Ohio is fairly okay right now, the fact it is likely voters is important.

Secondly, Obama is at or over 50% in all 3 polls. Instead of needing to gain support to win, he would have to lose support. Even if Romney picked up all the undecideds (pretty near impossible) Obama still wins.

I do disagree with you on one thing. I think the popular vote margin will be close to or bigger than in 2008.

[japa21]

Okay, I know I said one thing and then went to two things. So I am going to take remedial counting, again, for the 15th time.

[Turgidson]

It continues to look like Obama's electoral college coalition will mostly hang intact. The only definite loss is Indiana. The only ones that look dicey are North Carolina and maybe Florida. He doesn't need to win Indiana or NC at all, and he can still win without Florida, though it would be somewhat close in that scenario.

I agree with PM that the popular vote could be surprisingly close. Hatred for Obama has only calcified and been encouraged and applauded in the red states Obama won't contest. Like I said in a previous comment about this topic, Oklahoma could go from 66/34 McCain to 70+ for Romney. Some Obama voters won't bother to vote in a losing effort, and anti-Obama voters in states like that will crawl across hot coals to vote that Kenyan socialist out. So Romney could run up big popular vote margins in the reddest states, while Obama is unlikely to reach his 2008 totals in some of his safe states, where some manic progressives will sit out or write in Nader or some such thing since they are so very disappointed that Obama hasn't ushered in a liberal utopia like he (never) promised he would.

[Perry Logan]

I think the election will be close enough for the Repubs to steal.

[melsouza]

Seconded.

[Peter G]

I give considerable weight to your opinion, especially when it reflects my own. Human nature at work there. But I give even more weight to the opinion of Nate Silver. Remember the old E F Hutton commercials...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc2GpmLx82k

[Robert Lipscomb]

Yesterday, I read an article that did a thorough analysis. First, they compisted eight(?) polls to help cancel out the uncertainty. Then, they trended this data over a few months over a few months.because this type of data does not have huge swings over time unless there is an epic event. The data was "normalized" into a single line graph using regression analysis. Then the data was seperated by polling source and each set was compared to the trend line.

Four things were obvious.

For each source the data vaied widely on both sides of the lines. Some more than others, but still all the sources were centered around the same center.

Except Rasmussen: Rasmussen is a GOP based polling firm. Its data showed a distinct bias for Romney.

Over that period of time, Obama's lead over Romney has slowly and steadily crept from three percentage points to four.

Supplemental polling show a strong resistance to swith votes by the decideds.

From that, one can reach a conservative conlusion. Barring some epic event, Obama will win by five percentage points with six being likely.

The state-by-state data is similar. There are many sites that caculate electoral votes by state. These sites tend to overstate the number states in play and keep the race close - to keep you coming back. And the news organizations keep telling you it will be a nail-biter for the same reasons.

The likely scenario is that Obama will win over 300 electoral votes, and Romney will win over 170.

Unless something epic happens.

This is why Obama remains a 2:1 favorite even when he occasionally has a bad week.

[Lord Basil]

You are living in a dream world. All the polls oversample Democrats while likely voter models like Rasmussen are more accurate.

Reagan and Carter were at this place in 1980 and everyone broke for the Gipper in the final two weeks. Amercians do not want liberalism, Marxism, and Fascism. Period. The Kenyan Marxist homosexual is living proof of the misery liberalism can inflict.

Therefore I predict Romney will choose Allen West as his running mate, and he will win 55% of the vote or more, and at least 45 states.

[melsouza]

Lord Basil--that was great..!

[Lord Basil]

I wish West would have run for POTUS. I'd love to see him debate the Kenyan. He would clean his clock.