Mitt Romney scores a big, momentum building win! Only to lose the very next contest.
The Gallup tracker finally shows Romney putting some daylight between himself and Rick Santorum! Only to tighten back up in the next few days.
Rasmussen has Romney dead even with Barack Obama in a national trial heat! And yet both the House of Ras and Quinnipiac find Mittens down 6-8 points in key battleground states.
If there has been one thing that you could reliably take to the bank in this election cycle, it is that whatever meme you are eager to generate, no matter your partisan preference or dog in the fight, will be flipped on its head within the next few days.
Today's small offering of data is no exception. If Mitt Romney really is essentially tied with Barack Obama, shouldn't he be doing better than six points down in Nevada, according to the exact same pollster?! And if the GOP really is starting to reach the acceptance phase with their presumptive frontrunner, why is today's Gallup tracker showing Rick Santorum creeping back towards all-square with the guy?!
In theory, we are about to enter a bit of a lull in the campaign cycle: Louisiana on Saturday, and then nada until early April, when Maryland and Wisconsin chime in. But in practice, there is liable to be a lot of political jockeying as the GOP continues this act of self-flagellation that they call a nomination contest.
Which, of course, is great news for John McCain Barack Obama.
GOP PRIMARY POLLING:
NATIONAL (Gallup Tracking): Romney 34, Santorum 30, Gingrich 13, Paul 10
LOUISIANA (Magellan--R): Santorum 37, Romney 24, Gingrich 21, Perry 3, Paul 3, Roemer 3, Bachmann 2, Huntsman 1
GENERAL ELECTION TRIAL HEATS:
NATIONAL (Rasmussen Tracking): Obama d. Romney (46-45); Obama d. Santorum (48-43)
NEVADA (Rasmussen): Obama d. Romney (50-44); Obama d. Santorum (52-36)
VIRGINIA (Quinnipiac): Obama d. Romney (50-42); Obama d. Santorum (49-40); Obama d. Paul (49-39); Obama d. Gingrich (54-35)
A small smattering of thoughts await you, after the jump.
Last week, you will recall, the national polling data on the Obama versus the Republicans general election tilt were all over the freaking map. ABC/WaPo had Romney out in front by a couple of points, while Pew and Reuters/Ipsos had the president staked to double-digit leads.
Looking at the critical mass of state polling, however, it is getting harder and harder to believe that Mitt Romney is even in a dead heat with Barack Obama, to say nothing of actually leading him. Even if you take Rasmussen completely at face value (which most Democrats are loath to do), they have the president leading key states like Nevada and Florida, and by margins that are not terribly dissimilar from the margins of victory he enjoyed in 2008, when he won nationally by over seven points.
If you incorporate other pollsters, the same trend applies. The Q poll gives Obama an eight-point edge over Romney in Virginia today. That is actually an incrementally larger advantage for the president than he enjoyed in beating John McCain in 2008. Both Quinnipiac and PPP also gave the president modest leads in Pennsylvania, a key cog in the huge 2010 sweep for the GOP, and a state Obama won by ten points in 2008. This time around, those two pollsters gave the president leads of 6-7 points. That's a notch tighter than 2008, of course, but it is still a pretty comfortable edge.
In fact, if you look at state polling over the past couple of weeks (just go back and look at the Daily Kos Elections Weekend Digest for a complete list), you'll see that (outside of Rasmussen) it is pretty rare to find a state where Mitt Romney is performing dramatically better than John McCain's 2008 performance.
Of course, there is no reason to uncork champagne. No one wins an election in March, and earlier polling analysis by our superstar polling partners at PPP showed that the undecided voters in their early polling in the cycle tended to be conservative voters unlikely to be wooed by the president. Of course, that was before the primary election cycle, which has been pretty damned disastrous for the GOP, so that dynamic may well have shifted as Independent voters once more likely to consider supporting the GOP nominee now have been effectively scared away.
The bottom line is that, given where we see the states, it seems difficult to conclude that the race (at present) is a coin flip. I think, given what we are seeing in state polling, giving Barack Obama a modest re-election edge would be warranted.