Friday, August 10, 2012

New Polls: Obama's lead is widening

The Olympics are wrapping up and, at the end of July, when the Olympics began, we wrote that we were basically at halftime of the general election -- and Obama had a narrow lead. Well, it’s a little bigger than that now. (People may want to quibble, but you can’t dismiss every poll on sampling.) There’s clearly movement toward the president and clearly problems for Romney personally. We had found it in our polling for the last month and it hadn’t shown up everywhere yet. Now it has. The latest evidence: three new polls out today – from CNN, Fox, and Reuters/Ipsos – all showing President Obama leading Romney by seven points or more and at or near 50%. (CNN 52-45%, Fox 49-40%, Reuters/Ipsos 49-42%). What’s more, Romney continues to have an image problem. In CNN, Obama’s fav/unfav is +14, Romney’s -1. And in Fox, Obama’s +12, Romney’s +1. (Ipsos didn’t ask fav/unfav.)
Read the rest here.

There is going to be some variation in poll numbers and usually one candidate will have a lead. But these numbers coming from several different sources suggest Romney is in trouble. It's not Spring anymore. It's August now and this is a wide gap to overcome in not quite three months.

There are still the giant infomercials we used to call conventions coming up and Romney has yet to announce his VP choice. But time and opportunities to reverse the pro-Obama trends are starting to run thin. Money is not a major issue. Romney and the GOP have been out-raising Obama and the Democrats by a wide margin. But their huge financial advantages don't seem to be translating into a pro-Romney shift in the polling numbers. On the contrary, the trend for months has been for Obama and it seems to be picking up steam. If this gap is not narrowed significantly then we could see Obama reelected in a landslide.

5 comments:

Steve Lewis said...

I don't believe it.

Peter said...

"Romney and the GOP have been out-raising Obama and the Democrats by a wide margin."

This is true. But have Romney and the GOP been outspending Obama by the same margin? They say most people don't really start paying attention until a couple months before the election, so I'm betting he's saving all the campaign money for when he'll really need it.

The Archer of the Forest said...

Polling means absolutely nothing this far from the election. We have not had conventions or debates; and believe it is not, we are not even in full election season yet. And major Obama gaff, and the polls start to change.

Jon Marc said...

Totally makes sense - they're not so different on the issues (not in how they'll actually do things anyways), and once those are out of the way Obama is a FAR more likable man than that stiff snob...

Anonymous said...

You are far too over-dramatic in your assessments of politics and religion.