A rash of new polling out today shows more good news for Mitt Romney than bad news. Quinnipiac has a big improvement for the GOP nominee in the key battleground states of Florida and Ohio, with Romney even moving into an incremental advantage in the Sunshine State.
Having said that, though, it still remains awfully difficult to see where, given current numbers, Mitt Romney cobbles together a coalition that can get him to the White House. That includes one new poll entry today that continues to give the president a solid edge in a state that was a reliably Republican state for decades.
Here are all the numbers from Thursday:
PRESIDENTIAL GENERAL ELECTION POLLING:
NATIONAL (Democracy Corps): Obama tied with Romney (47-47)
NATIONAL (Gallup Tracking): Obama d. Romney (47-46)
NATIONAL (Rasmussen Tracking): Obama d. Romney (47-45)
"CORE FOUR" STATES—FL/NC/OH/VA (Rasmussen): Obama d. Romney (46-43)
ARIZONA (Magellan Strategies): Romney d. Obama (52-43)
FLORIDA (Quinnipiac): Romney d. Obama (44-43)
OHIO (Quinnipiac): Obama d. Romney (44-42)
PENNSYLVANIA (Quinnipiac): Obama d. Romney (47-39)
VIRGINIA (Washington Post): Obama d. Romney (51-44)
DOWNBALLOT POLLING:
AZ-SEN (Magellan Strategies): Jeff Flake (R) 44, Richard Carmona (D) 40
MT-GOV (PPP): Steve Bullock (D) 39, Rick Hill (R) 39; Bullock 41, Ken Miller (R) 35
MT-GOV—R (PPP): Rick Hill 33, Ken Miller 12, Corey Stapleton 7, Neil Livingstone 5, Jim Lynch 4, Jim O'Hara 4, Bob Fanning 1
MT-SEN (Rasmussen): Denny Rehberg (R) 53, Sen. Jon Tester (D) 43
A few thoughts, as always, await you just past the jump...
- The new Quinnipiac polls were a giant sigh of relief for Republicans, who breathlessly touted the numbers, especially in Florida. And, without question, it is lights out for Mitt Romney if he cannot manage to keep Florida in the GOP column (which this poll has him doing, albeit by a single point). However, there is one data point from the Q poll that is a pleasant surprise for Democrats, which is the increased support for the president in Pennsylvania, where a number of polls have shown a surprisingly close race. And therein lies the problem for Mitt Romney. So many states are already locked down for the Democrats, they have to draw the inside straight. In the states that are not already ordained as red or blue, Mitt Romney has to win the lion's share of them just to have a shot. And if you take Pennsylvania off the boards, as well as Virginia (where WaPo confirms PPP's numbers from earlier in the week), it doesn't take much else to pull the president across the re-election finish line.
- GOP polling firm Magellan Strategies offers a little pushback today on recent polling which had Arizona essentially tied between Obama and Romney. However, the banner headline in that one might be a Republican pollster actually confirming an internal poll last week for Democrat Richard Carmona, with Magellan showing just a four-point spread in the race. This is especially intriguing, given that the Romney lead here is far wider than what we saw in either of last week's polls, making it hard to dismiss this as a pro-Dem poll.
- With PPP showing a marginal lead for Jon Tester for the first time earlier in the week, perhaps we should have set a timer to see how long it would take the House of Ras to blow in with contrary data. Right on schedule, it dropped today, giving Rehberg a double-digit lead for the first time in anyone's polling of the race. Remember, the House also gave Republican Dean Heller of Nevada his biggest lead by far as well, a lead that surpassed even what Heller's own pollsters were selling late in 2011. It looks like the Ras-sies are back to outsized GOP advantages in their Senate polling, a trait we noted about a month or so ago.
- It will be interesting to see if Ras drops either presidential or gubernatorial numbers here. For what it's worth, PPP offered up their guv numbers in the Big Sky country today, and found a tie between Steve Bullock and leading GOPer Rick Hill. That's pretty consistent: PPP has had this race close throughout. That might be slightly disappointing news for Team Bullock, however—PPP had both Obama and Tester doing markedly better in this go-round of polling compared to their previous effort here. Still, a Democrat is right there in a nominally GOP state (though, worth noting, a state currently represented by a Democratic governor in Brian Schweitzer).