American Research Group conducted a poll in Ohio and found that Mitt Romney garnered 48 percent support and Obama 47 percent, among likely voters.
Given Obama's lead in Ohio in the weeks leading up to the his first disastrous debate against Romney, the news is bad, even though the numbers fall within the margin of error.
What makes the poll devastating for Obama though is that the sample used had 42 percent Dems, 33 percent Reps and 25 percent Independents. A nine percentage point advantage for Democrats and Romney still takes the lead.
Worse yet is the under sampling of Independents in the poll, when Independent registration has skyrocketed compared to Democratic and Republican registration, because that one percent lead for Romney would be much larger if Independents would have been sampled accordingly.
In the ARG poll, Independents favored Romney by a 20 percent margin over Obama.
Via BG:
Here's the ARG sample:
Democrats (42%)
Republicans (33%)
Independents (25%)
The poll also shows Romney is also winning Independents by a full 20 points, 57-37%.
Romney's winning men by four points, 50-46%, and only losing women by three, 48-45%.
Obama's lead with women has been consistent since 2008 election and the 3 point lead over Romney with that demographic should be a major red flag for the Obama campaign.
ARG isn't the only pollster seeing a large lead among women for Obama disappear.
Pew Research's latest poll shows the same dynamic at play:
In the presidential horserace, Romney has made sizable gains over the past month among women voters, white non-Hispanics and those younger than 50. Currently, women are evenly divided (47% Obama, 47% Romney). Last month, Obama led Romney by 18 points (56% to 38%) among women likely voters.
Headlines scream Romney surge, Obama sinks, but looking into the poll samples, we see what others have noticed..... Romney never was as far behind as the MSM and liberals wanted to believe and continued to tell their readers, viewers and listeners.
Pew's sample which had Obama up with women by 18 points last month, was taken with a 9 percent more Democrats than Republicans. This latest poll gave Republicans a 5 percentage point advantage.
As conservatives have been saying all along, polling organizations using skewed samples, brings about skewed results.
Meaning if ARG used an even sample instead of the D+9 or even dropped it to a D+3 or D+4, that one point lead Romney has, would be far higher.
RCP, for the first time, has Mitt Romney in the lead for the General Election polling averages.
Welcome to reality Democrats.
