Party ID from pollster.com
Jonathan Cohn:
Fifty million Americans have no health insurance. Does government have an obligation to help them? The answer is no, Mitt Romney suggested during a “60 Minutes” interview that aired on Sunday, in part because people can already get care through emergency rooms:
We do provide care for people who don’t have insurance, people—we—if someone has a heart attack, they don’t sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care.
That statement isn’t untrue. But it leaves out an awful lot. ERs are great if you need urgent help with a major medical problem: You’ve had a heart attack, you’ve been in an accident, whatever. And, yes, hospitals will generally treat you regardless of insurance status, if only because the law requires it. As a condition of accepting Medicare money, hospitals must provide stabilizing or life-saving treatment. But they will not provide basic, ongoing care. They will charge a lot of money for their services. In many cases they will do their best to collect on outstanding bills, even if that means using techniques that even the retail industry eschews as overly harsh. And sometimes, as Sarah Kliff notes today, hospitals find ways to avoid providing care in the first place.
Jamelle Bouie:
Obama has managed to maintain his support among Latino voters, but for most of this year, their enthusiasm has lagged behind where it was four years ago. This summer, according to NBC News, Wall Street Journal and Telemundo, only 49 percent of Latinos were “highly interested” in the election, compared to 62 percent of all voters. Likewise, a Latino Decisions survey from the beginning of the year found lower enthusiasm compared to 2008; at the time, 38 percent of Latinos said they were more enthusiastic about 2012 while 46 percent said they were more enthusiastic back in 2008.
Since the Democratic convention, however, all of this has changed. Not only has Obama increased his vote share among Latinos—according to the latest Latino Decisions survey, he leads Mitt Romney, 69 percent to 24 percent, with 7 percent undecided—but Latino enthusiasm has spiked. Here is a nifty chart that illustrates the change:
Mark Blumenthal:
What puzzles many poll observers, however, is the contrast between these overall trends and the results of the two daily national tracking polls from Gallup and Rasmussen Reports. Both have shown a closer race nationwide over the past week, and both found an even bigger initial "bounce" for Obama in the week after the Democratic convention, which has since faded.
What's going on here?
Ed Kilgore:
Steve [Kornacki] attributes the bad feelings towards Romney to the belief that he ought to be doing a lot better given current economic conditions. In other words, Mitt hasn’t successfully executed the obvious “economic referendum on the president” strategy. That may be true for some GOP critics, but as regular readers know, I think something quite different is going on: a sizable segment of the conservative commentariat is determined to make this not a referendum on the economy—which they view as little more than a symptom of a deeper and more fundamental national loss of direction—but a referendum on the last half-century or so of American public policy and culture.
Nate Cohn:
For all the talk about Romney’s issues in Ohio, his position in Virginia could be even worse. While Obama’s 4 point lead in Ohio is similar to his advantage in Virginia, he averages just 48.4 percent of the vote in the Buckeye State, while Obama holds 49.3 percent of the vote in Virginia. Obama exceeds 49 percent of the vote in 6 of 8 Virginia surveys, compared to 5 of the 10 polls in Ohio.
Thomas Edsall:
Lehigh Valley is a case study in the rapidly multiplying problems of the Republican Party, its successes in 2010 notwithstanding. From 1968 to 1988, Lehigh County was solidly Republican, voting for Richard Nixon over Hubert Humphrey 50-46 (with 4 percent for the segregationist George C. Wallace); for Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter, 53-36; and for George H. W. Bush over Michael Dukakis, 56-43.
In every presidential election since 1988, however, the Democratic nominee has carried Lehigh County, culminating in Obama’s 2008 57-42 victory.
Gallup:
Reuters:
Even before his running mate was booed by a lobbying group for older Americans on Friday, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was losing support among such voters, whose backing is crucial to his hopes of winning the November 6 election.
New polling by Reuters/Ipsos indicates that during the past two weeks - since just after the Democratic National Convention - support for Romney among Americans age 60 and older has crumbled, from a 20-point lead over Democratic President Barack Obama to less than 4 points.