If you believe the House of Ras, over the last week the presidential election has moved clearly in the direction of Barack Obama, as a once-formidable Mitt Romney lead has evaporated. Fox News echoes that movement in the president's direction, though the gap there was three weeks, instead of one.
If you believe YouGov (at least, when your Wrap curator gets the numbers right ... more on that later), Mitt Romney has surged in the past week, and has a modest advantage.
And if you believe Gallup, TIPP or PPP, the election has barely moved at all.
Wow, glad we could clear that up for you.
On to the numbers!
PRESIDENTIAL GENERAL ELECTION TRIAL HEATS:
NATIONAL (Gallup Tracking): Obama tied with Romney (45-45)
NATIONAL (Rasmussen Tracking): Romney d. Obama (46-45)
NATIONAL (TIPP for Investor's Business Daily and the Christian Science Monitor): Obama d. Romney (43-40)
NATIONAL (Zogby Analytics for the Washington Times): Romney d. Obama (44-43); Obama d. Romney and Gary Johnson (44-43-2)
DOWNBALLOT POLLING:
NE-SEN (Rasmussen): Deb Fischer (R) 56, Bob Kerrey (D) 38
NH-01 (PPP): Carol Shea-Porter (D) 47, Rep. Frank Guinta (R) 43
NH-02 (PPP): Ann McLane Kuster (D) 42, Rep. Charlie Bass (R) 42
NC-GOV (Rasmussen): Pat McCrory (R) 50, Walter Dalton (R) 41
ND-SEN (Essman Research/Forum Communications): Rick Berg (R) 51, Heidi Heitkamp (D) 44; Heitkamp 48, Duane Sand (R) 45
ND-SEN--R (Essman Research/Forum Communications): Rick Berg 65, Duane Sand 21
SC-07--R (Francis Marion University): Andre Bauer 22, Tom Rice 21, Chad Prosser 8, Jay Jordan 5, Katherine Jenerette 4, Dick Withington 2, Renee Culler 1, Jim Mader 1, Randal Wallace 1
A few thoughts, as always, await you just past the jump ...
- Those national presidential numbers continue to perplex. Within the last week, YouGov's polling has gone five points in the direction of Mitt Romney (I erred yesterday—what was listed as Obama +4 was actually Romney +4). But within that same time frame, the House of Ras has drifted seven points in Barack Obama's direction. Gallup has barely moved—a three point swing towards Obama. But PPP held essentially steady, with a one-point move in Mitt Romney's direction. For their part, TIPP did not move at all.
We expect there to be some indiscriminate drift on any given day. But it is a little strange to see no clear direction in the week-to-week numbers, especially when some pollsters are moving by magnitudes that border on being statistically significant. If you had to tease a trend out of these numbers since the start of May, I'd say that Mitt Romney is in an incrementally better position than he was at the start of the month. But every day brings a new chance for those living and dying by each poll to be energized or left despondent. And it's only May. Pace yourself, electoral junkies—this shit is a marathon, not a sprint.
- As promised yesterday, PPP dropped their House numbers in New Hampshire, and caused us to change a race rating as a result. As local blogger and political hawkeye Dean Barker long ago told us, NH-01 may well be a better bet for flipping than NH-02, though it is still a very real possibility that both seats could revert to the Democrats after the catastrophe of 2010.
- The House of Ras becomes the first to poll Nebraska post-Fischer, and they find the Republican up a whopping 18 points on Democrat Bob Kerrey. While I may quibble about the margin, I don't quibble about the placement: This is still Nebraska, and unless Obama really does put a concerted effort in here, it becomes hard to see how Kerrey deals with that political and demographic headwind. I'd like to see another pollster pop in here to offer a second opinion, though.
- Our first non-internal poll in North Dakota is out, showing GOPer Rick Berg up narrowly over Democrat Heidi Heitkamp. But as our own David Nir pointed out earlier today, there is an essential problem with this poll—it looked at a general election trial heat, but appears to have been based on a sample of likely primary voters. Since all the action is on the GOP side in the primary, this would seem to be a potentially major pull on the veracity of the sample. Whatever the methodological issues, however, the poll does confirm something long suspected—any assumption that an open Senate seat in deep-red North Dakota is a GOP lock would be in error.