The Reality of the Electorate

As is often the case, someone will put up a post in comments that is worthy of its own post out here.

Barring any meltdowns from either side and as long as the campaign keeps going as is with no bombshells or October Surprises, I think Romney will win 52-47. I think Obama's own internal polls show that. How do I know? Just a hunch, a feeling, womens intuition, I don't know for sure. If Obama can get even more people on disability and food stamps from now till the election, that margin will narrow. (last in line)

My first thought is...where is the evidence for this (aside from Dick Morris' appearance on Sean Hannity on Wednesday)? Even Fox and Rasmussen show the president ahead in the polls. Fox had him up 7 points in Ohio last week (before the 47 percent comment) and all I heard was crickets. A couple of more polls come out that confirm this and suddenly it's on to massive mouth foaming. Gallup has the president at 50-44 over Romney (with approval/disapproval at 50-45) so I have to wonder how Mitt is going to get to that 8 points predicted in the above comment.

The only way I thought he could would be if Democrats got complacent. Certainly this is a worry of the Obama campaign and mine as well. It's still 5 1/2 weeks to Election Day and if people think the president has it in the bag, they are mistaken. In many ways, it's kind of terrible that he is up this much this early. People still need to vote. Of course, they already are voting early in many states, including Iowa which is a swing state this year. This obviously helps the president as he is running ahead right now.

All this bitching about the sampling is pretty amusing, though. The Democrats did the same thing in 2010 and the polls were all accurate. The fact is that more people identify as Democrats than they do Republicans. I guess that doesn't sit well with the Right. Now, these people could be lying but remember they are polling likely voters now and not registered voters.

Another thing to consider is that these polling companies make their money off of being accurate. If they aren't accurate, they lose business. So, it's in their best interest to poll as factually as they can.

Anyway, this whole poll flap has led me to the conclusion (something I was mulling over anyway) to put up posts with the latest polls each day. These won't just be horse race polls, mind you, but ones with substance behind the questions.

For example, here is the latest Kaiser poll which shows this

The always sturdy voting bloc of elderly people are concerned about Paul Ryan's voucher Medicare idea and think the president is going to do a better job with the program the GOP ticket. Because of Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney is behind in these swing states with older people.

The icing on the cake to all of this is the final sentence in last's comment. I realize he is joking here but it's this sort of sentiment that's about to meet the reality of the electorate on November 6th.