Qunnippiac: Linda McMahon Has 3-Point Edge in Connecticut

@conartcritic and @laurww have been watching this one like hawks who don't like liberals.

Rasmussen put McMahon up by three last week. Quinnippiac now shows the same lead, 49-46.

In today's survey, McMahon's 54 - 42 percent lead among men swamps Murphy's small 50 - 46 percent lead among women. McMahon leads 88 - 10 percent among Republicans and 55 - 40 percent among independent voters, while Murphy takes Democrats 82 - 16 percent.

"Well it's great," you say, "that you can publish content that already appeared on Hot Air one hour ago; but can you publish content that appeared on Hot Air two hours ago?"

As a matter of fact, I can. Because a CBS-only (no NYT) poll of registered voters has Obama up by a single point, and only at 46.

Despite spending the summer attempting to demonize Romney, both men have nearly identical favorability gaps, -5 for Romney and -3 for Obama — and Romney has significantly more upside, with 32% undecided against 15% for Obama.

I don't think this favorability gap is predictive in the first place. All liberals love Obama (even if they think he's not done a good job) but in fact a lot of conservatives are planning to vote for Romney who don't like him at all. And yet, they will vote for him.

On this whole question of "Who likes who," which is very high-school, but whatever, it's the liberal talking point because no one's going to give Obama a solid rating on actual ability to do his job: Gabe is annoyed by liberals continuing to insist on something that just isn't true. The latest push is that Romney's likability is as low as Nixon's, but Gabe rebuts:

Maxwell [a liberal at Gabe's NYDN site] points to this February 2012 WaPo/ABC poll from the midst of the contentious GOP primary to draw her conclusions. Let's look at something a little more relevant -- say, CNN's most recent poll (PDF) on candidate favorability.

CNN found that registered voters didn't like Romney very much in February 2012, when only 36% viewed him favorably and 54% viewed him unfavorably. But then there's the latest data from August 22-23, when Romney's favorability rose to 48% among registered voters and the percentage viewing him unfavorably dropped to 46. That's a combined gain of 20% points in the right direction since February.

This is precisely the opposite of what Maxwell suggested. The more Americans have learned about Romney, the more they've come to like him. In the same time period, President Obama's favorability has simply hovered right around the same level. The President's numbers aren't sinking, but neither has he managed to move the electorate to view him more positively.

Partisans for either side are going to be partisan -- by definition -- but they ought not willfully assume that the wider public shares their fancies. On the liberal side of things, they cling to this fantasy that it's still October of 2008, and Hope and Change is still actually a thing.

It's not.

Speaking again of high school, it's like a bunch of gals who had a crush on the glib student body president, and who persist in this infatuation even twenty years later, even though he's a bit of a sad figure now. And compounding the pathos is their belief that you share in their infatuation as well.

Obama has not been popular since he passed ObamaCare. The polls said so, then we had a historic repudiation in the 2010 confirming that the polls were correct.

Let's update, huh? You sound like f***ing hippies who cannot ever shut up about Haight-Ashbury in 1968. The world's page has turned, and you should join us in the current chapter.

The Summer of Love is over, kids. I know you'd prefer to live in it always but that's just not possible, and the rest of us are starting to worry about you.

posted by Ace at 02:16 PM

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