Nate Silver's 538 column, today, focuses on An Above-Average ‘Likely Voter Gap’ for Romney. A nine point lead for President Obama in a CNN poll shrinks to 2 points (49 to 47) when a likely voter screen is applied. A 7% gap compared to the 2.5% Romney advantage Silver has seen until now. Silver notices it is early, statistical noise, the complete mess of polling methodology, with cells phones, and 10% response rates can be factors, but my concern is that the right is fired up to a nearly rabid level. We will need to work harder than usual on our GOTV effort this election.
It looks — for now at least — that Mr. Obama has enough support among the broader universe of American adults to win another term. But he could easily lose his office if those Americans who might be inclined to support him are not registered, or do not turn out to vote.
Nate Silver sees Pennsylvania as another area of good news for Obama and believes the lack of an intensification of advertising by Romney here may signal he is conceding the state to Obama. PA has fallen to 8th place on Silver's Tipping Point Scale, while WI has risen to 3rd.
One state where there seems to be less doubt about the outcome is Pennsylvania, where a Philadelphia Inquirer poll on Saturday was the latest to show Mr. Obama with a solid lead, putting him ahead 51 to 42 among likely voters. Mr. Obama has led in 21 consecutive polls of Pennsylvania and his margins seem to have widened a bit recently; the forecast model now gives him an 89 percent chance of winning it on Nov. 6.
More below the squiggle including the ONN ActBlue contribution box.
Silver thinks the Mason-Dixon poll, which has Romney up 7 in Missouri is better than the Rasmussen poll showing Obama up 1 there. Mason Dixon shows Senator Claire McCaskill leading Representative Todd Akins by 9 points. Meaning that the Akin fiasco is having a negligible impact on the presidential election in Missouri, which Silver seems to think is more sensible than I do. I see it as communication failure of our side to sufficiently link Romney's and Paul's position against choice to Todd Akin's position.
Silver's forecast model sees Romney's late summer momentum fading a bit as we go into the convention, but expects the conventions will reset everything so it doesn't matter that much.
Over all, with a set of reasonably favorable state polls on Thursday through Saturday after some poor ones earlier last week, Mr. Obama has rebounded a bit in our Electoral College forecast. The model now gives him a 69.3 percent chance of winning it, up from 66.7 percent on Wednesday. There’s also been a tiny shift back toward Mr. Obama in the national tracking polls, with Gallup now showing the race tied, and Rasmussen Reports putting Mr. Obama one point ahead as of Saturday.
My main take away from today's column is that we have to somehow get more of our already registered voters, fired up and committed to showing up at the polls on November 7th. GOTV is not really my expertise, but I do encourage all Democrats to open our wallets and contribute as we are about to experience a hurricane of a $100 million spending advantage in GOP advertising.
8:13 PM PT: Here's the text from an August 15, 2012 study of the "unlikely voter"
the 90 million registered who will not vote, who favor Obama 2-1.
http://www.usatoday.com/...
By Sara D. Davis, for USA TODAY
They could turn a too-close-to-call race into a landslide for President Obama— but by definition they probably won't.
Call them the unlikely voters.
A nationwide USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll of people who are eligible to vote but aren't likely to do so finds that these stay-at-home Americans back Obama's re-election over Republican Mitt Romney by more than 2-1. Two-thirds of them say they are registered to vote. Eight in 10 say the government plays an important role in their lives.
Even so, they cite a range of reasons for declaring they won't vote or saying the odds are no better than 50-50 that they will: They're too busy. They aren't excited about either candidate. Their vote doesn't really matter. And nothing ever gets done, anyway.
"I don't think Obama helped us as much as he promised," says John Harrington, 52, a heavy-equipment operator from Farmington, Minn., who was among those surveyed. Since 2008, when Harrington voted for Obama, the financial downturn has forced him to sell his home in Arizona, move to Minnesota to be near a daughter and put him on the road to Nebraska, North Dakota and Iowa to find work.
His wife "loves" Obama and is sure to vote in November, but he's not certain whether he'll get there this time.