A New Washington Post/ABC News poll has been released which has Barack Obama up by three over Mitt Romney, 49 percent to 46 percent, with a 3.5 percent margin of error.
The sample used to get that result is unveiled on the second page, three paragraphs from the bottom:
Partisan identification fluctuates from poll to poll as basic orientations shift and with the sampling variability that accompanies each randomly selected sample of voters. In the current poll, Democrats outnumber Republicans by nine percentage points among likely voters; the previous three Post-ABC polls had three-, six- and five-percentage-point edges for Democrats. The presidential contest would now be neck and neck nationally with any of these margins.Also, the amount of Republicans saying they support Romney "very enthusiastically" jumped by double digits, according to the Wapo/ABC poll.
As Ed Morrissey points out, in 2008 Democrats held a 7 point advantage and in 2010, no advantage:
And yet, with all that enthusiasm on display, the partisan split among likely voters in this poll is a jaw-dropping D+9, 35/26/33. The D/R/I in 2008′s presidential election was a D+7 at 39/32/29, while the midterm was 35/35/30, Is there any reason to think that Democratic participation will be so off-the-charts huge that it will reduce Republican participation by nearly a third from the midterm elections, our most recent model of the electorate? No, as the Post’s own findings on enthusiasm show.Now if the Wapo article about the poll says that Obama and Romney would be neck and neck if the sample was more representative of the actual electorate, imagine how much more the "enthusiasm" jump for Romney would have been if the same standard was applied.
The Wapo/ABC poll's sampling will give drowning liberals some hope but it is like putting water wings on them but not blowing them up so there is no air in the wings to keep them above water.
Moving on to Politico's Battleground poll, the sample only puts Democrats up four points 36 to 32 percent split with 30 percent Independents, that one has Obama up by one percent 49 to 48.
The interesting part of that poll though is something I discussed here yesterday. After all the money Obama spent against Romney to define him over the summer, after the first debate that strategy backfired because over 70 million people watching the debate discovered Romney wasn't the boogeyman the Obama campaign attempted to make him.
Via Politico:
Even as the head-to-head number held stubbornly steady for the past month, Romney improved his likability numbers. A slim majority, 51 percent, now views Romney favorably as a person, while 44 percent view him unfavorably.
The former Massachusetts governor had been underwater on this measure. In mid-September, 49 percent of respondents viewed him unfavorably. Going into the first presidential debate in Denver on Oct. 3, the electorate was evenly split 47 percent to 47 percent on what to make of Mitt.
Despite all that wasted money on a strategy that failed so spectacularly by the end of the first presidential debate, reports yesterday showed that Obama was going to attempt the same failed strategy in the second debate.
Pretty much as his whole second term agenda and campaign platform is to continue using the same failed policies.
