Today's data underscores a couple of key themes that have been in place for weeks now in the 2012 election cycle: (a) a sharp disparity between the daily tracking polls and other presidential polling; and (b) a disparity between the national presidential polling numbers and polls emanating from key battleground states.
That, and a couple of new polls in coin-flip Senate races, highlight tonight's edition of the Wrap (as more important numbers, quite frankly, are getting crunched in Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia and Wisconsin).
Here are those numbers, including a real eye opener in the Heartland:
PRESIDENTIAL GENERAL ELECTION TRIAL HEATS:
NATIONAL (Gallup Tracking): Romney d. Obama (47-44)
NATIONAL (Rasmussen Tracking): Romney d. Obama (49-44)
NATIONAL 3-WAY TABULATION (Rasmussen): Romney d. Obama and Ron Paul (44-39-13)
NATIONAL (Reuters/Ipsos): Obama d. Romney (49-42)
IOWA (PPP): Obama d. Romney (51-41)
OHIO (PPP): Obama d. Romney (50-43)
DOWNBALLOT POLLING:
MA-SEN (Rasmussen): Sen. Scott Brown (R) 45, Elizabeth Warren (D) 45
NE-SEN--R (Singularis Group for Fischer): Jon Bruning 30, Deb Fischer 26, Don Stenberg 18
VA-SEN (Washington Post): Tim Kaine (D) 46, George Allen (R) 46
A few thoughts, as always, await you just past the jump ...
- Today's smattering of numbers again arouse my suspicions. Someone has to be off here, and my guess is that it is those daily trackers. Even taking PPP polling out of the equation (though their track record is as good, or better, than anyone in the game), how do you reconcile a lead in Ohio and a quite sizeable lead in Pennsylvania and Virginia (as Quinnipiac and WaPo had last week) with trailing or being dead-even nationally? It defies common sense. There is no question that the trackers over the past few weeks have shown a movement to Mitt Romney, and the national polls that aren't daily trackers have more or less gone in the same direction (though today's Reuters/Ipsos poll is actually a three-point improvement for Obama). But, with the exception of some modest tightening in the Q polls in Ohio and Florida, there really hasn't appeared to be much in the way of corresponding movement at the state level. If PPP is on point, Obama is doing as well marginally against the GOP in Iowa as he did in 2008, and doing better in Iowa. Thus, imagining him losing 10-12 points nationally on the margin, as today's daily trackers suggest, seems more than a tad implausible. Where's the bleeding coming from? There aren't many state polls to back up the "Romney lead" hypothesis, to be sure.
- Speaking of the daily trackers, I don't need much motivation to become suspicious of the House of Ras, but their twin billing of presidential polling today really makes my spidey sense tingle. Can anyone give me a plausible explanation for how having Ron Paul as a third-party candidate draws evenly from Mitt Romney and Barack Obama? I find it a bit mystifying that having one of the "final four" in the GOP presidential field as a third-party candidate would equate to a third-party contender drawing evenly from the Ds and the Rs. I know Paul does well with young voters, but every other poll that has invoked him as a third option has had him drawing more support from the GOP. As one would expect from a seven-term Republican congressman who has run for president twice under that party's banner.
- Downballot, we don't learn a whole lot new today. Virginia and Massachusetts are tight, which is exactly where just about everyone would expect them to be. I guess this is a sign, however, that the GOP's manufactured "crisis" for Elizabeth Warren (revolving around the whole Native American kerfluffle) hasn't even given the House of Ras a window for proclaiming Scott Brown's electoral resurrection. Meanwhile, Kaine and Allen are deadlocked. It is hard to imagine that they will be any other way, all the way through to November.