We have new swing state polls in today, a few of which were taken after this week's debates. So far, there is little sign of an Obama post-debate bounce following what was widely considered a victory for him, but he remains in the advantageous position in the electoral college as his main firewall of Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Nevada continues to hold up.
We also are getting some puzzling poll discrepancies.
Here are the numbers, followed by my analysis...
* OHIO: Obama 45%, Romney 42% -- Obama +2% since 1 week ago (SurveyUSA)
* OHIO: Obama 49%, Romney 48% -- No change from 1 week ago (Rasmussen)
* IOWA: Obama 51%, Romney 43% -- No change From 1 month ago (NBC/WSJ/Marist)
* WISCONSIN: Obama 51%, Romney 45% -- Obama +1% since 1 month ago (NBC/WSJ/Marist)
* NEVADA: Obama 50%, Romney 43% -- No previous poll (Ralston)
* COLORADO: Obama 50%, Romney 47% -- Romney +3% in 3 weeks (Public Policy)
* NORTH CAROLINA: Romney 52%, Obama 46% -- Romney +3% since 1 week ago (Rasmussen)
The biggest news from today's polling is that Obama's firewall -- Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Nevada -- continues to hold. He remains ahead in polls of those four states, some by large margins, and got particularly good numbers from the NBC/WSJ/Marist polls of Iowa and Wisconsin. These states by themselves get Obama over 270 electoral votes, which makes this firewall so crucial. We are not seeing any signs yet of an Obama post-debate bounce, but as long as those firewall states hold, Obama is in relatively good shape. The Public Policy Colorado poll is also noteworthy in that it finds Obama up 5% when including third party candidate Gary Johnson. Colorado and Nevada are two states where polls in 2008 and 2010 undercounted Democratic support, largely due to underestimating Hispanic turnout. Obama, Harry Reid, etc. ended up outperforming polls in both states by significant amounts, so Obama pulling leads in a state like Colorado is a very good sign for him.
The Public Policy Colorado poll and NBC/WSJ/Marist Iowa and Wisconsin polls were done partially before this week's debate and partially after. But both pollsters said the internal numbers were somewhat consistent throughout those days, with no indication of a major swing in any direction in the portion done after the debate. The two Rasmussen polls were done entirely after the debate, and didn't show any post-debate bounce for Obama. But they all do seem to show a stabilizing and a continuation of the slight shift back to Obama in swing states that we started to see late last week, particularly in Ohio, Iowa, and Nevada.
It's the Gallup tracking poll that is once again getting the headlines today though, as it shows Romney up 7%, meaning they have Romney gaining +1% even though post-debate Wednesday is now included in their sample. As I said yesterday, when one poll sticks out from the group, it's usually an outlier. It makes no sense at all that Romney would have a 7% lead nationally but be behind in Ohio, Iowa, Nevada, Colorado, etc. Those states are swing states for a reason. You can't be ahead there and then behind big nationally. Another issue that counters the idea that the Gallup poll makes sense -- Romney is still behind in the electoral college. That would point to a national race that is either tied or leans to Obama (unless we end up with a historically rare case of one candidate winning the popular vote but losing the electoral college like Al Gore did in 2000).
Gallup does have a history of wild results that stray from the consensus. In the past, when Gallup has been showing wildly different results than most other pollsters, as they have many times including in 19996, 2000, 2008 and 2010, they ended up being the ones that were wrong -- Gallup's national tracker in 2008 was off by 4%, their national congressional tracker in 2010 was off by 7%, in 2000 they had George W. Bush leading by 13% just ten days before the election which ended with Al Gore winning the popular vote, etc.
Just to make a point of how wild these national trackers are, the RAND tracker has Obama's lead growing to 6%, so somebody is very wrong here. The reality is that both of those polls are probably outliers. The trends that are worth paying attention to are the movement in poll averages. While Gallup has Romney up 7% and RAND has Obama increasing his lead to 6%, the rest all scatter somewhere in between -- Rasmussen has Romney up 2%, Public Policy has the race tied, IBD/TIPP has the race tied, and Reuters has Obama up 3%. In other words, very little has changed nationally over the past seven days -- when you average all these national trackers together, we get a virtual tie. And who is right is going to depend mostly on who does, and doesn't, turnout to vote. I've been stressing for a couple of weeks now that this is going to be a 2004-style election, meaning base turnout will end up deciding it.
So while we are not yet seeing any real signs of an Obama post-debate bounce, that Obama firewall of Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Nevada that I always talk about continues to hold, and seems to have been strengthened slightly compared to last week.
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