Romney Headed To Wisconsin on Monday

And not a moment too soon.

A new CNN poll has Ohio Obama 50, Romney 46. With a not-at-all objectionable split (small D skew).

But one thing about that poll: It has Obama leading with Independent voters. @baseballcrank points out this is an outlier:

The reason Ohio is giving me the shakes is that I haven't seen a single poll with Romney ahead there. I see some times, and more Obama leads.

It is true that if someone wins the national popular vote by 1% or 1.5% or more, the odds of him losing the electoral college are very small.

The trouble is, the current RCP average has Romney leading by 0.9%. At that level of difference, the race really would come down to how independently-acting swing states voted. And on that count, we're behind.

Or so the polls say.

And it's driving me crazy. Only three friends are keeping me sane at this point: A chair, a rope, & a rafter.

But Baseball Crank talks me back off the chair some with this analysis.

He argues -- with charts and numbers and all sorts of crazy math -- that there is a very strong correlation between the independent vote and the the total vote received by a candidate.

Thus pushing back against this idea that Obama can afford a loss in independents but make up for it with Democratic turnout.

The problem for Obama, as Josh Jordan has pointed out here (with regard to the national polls) and here (with regard to the Ohio polls) and the Romney campaign addressed in a memo on Ohio on Thursday, is that whatever the toplines say, Obama is losing independents and losing them by a significant amount. Jordan’s analysis of the polls at the time showed Obama down, on average, 8.3 points with independents nationally and 8.7 points with independents in Ohio. If that holds (more on which below), and unless Obama can sustain the kind of significant edge in loyal partisan votes he had in 2008, he’ll end up behind.

...

Everything in the latest polls suggests doom for Obama with independents. This morning’s Washington Post poll has him down 20 with independents, 58-38. The Rasmussen national tracker has him down 17 today. Today’s IBD/TIPP poll has him down 10, 48-38. SurveyUSA/Monmouth has him trailing by 19, 52-33. The outlier, SEIU/DailyKos pollster PPP, had Romney up 2 yesterday with independents, 47-45, after the PPP tracker showed him up 10, 51-41, three days earlier. In this morning’s swing state poll, Rasmussen shows Romney leading Obama by 11 with independents.

Well, it's a good argument.

I'd feel better if I didn't even need an argument, though, you know?

What I'd like is either an RCP average of Romney +4-5%, nationally, or a few polls with Romney ahead in Ohio.

Or: Wisconsin.

Which seems a better state for us.

posted by Ace at 04:55 PM

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