With a smattering of absentee/provisional ballots still being tallied in California, the November polling fired up anew today. And, in spite of the absolute deluge of "Obama is freaking doomed" headlines that poured off the page after last night, today is arguably the best polling day for the president in a month.
So, today's Wrap is partly a retrospective, and partly looking forward to what lies ahead.
But, first, on to the numbers:
PRESIDENTIAL GENERAL ELECTION TRIAL HEATS:
NATIONAL (Gallup Tracking): Obama d. Romney (46-45)
NATIONAL (Pew): Obama d. Romney (49-42)
NATIONAL (PPP): Obama d. Romney (50-42)
NATIONAL (Rasmussen Tracking): Obama tied with Romney (46-46)
NATIONAL (YouGov): Obama d. Romney (47-42)
CONNECTICUT (Quinnipiac): Obama d. Romney (50-38)
FLORIDA (PPP): Obama d. Romney (50-46)
PENNSYLVANIA (Franklin and Marshall): Obama d. Romney (48-36)
DOWNBALLOT POLLING:
CT-SEN (Quinnipiac): Chris Murphy (D) 46, Linda McMahon (R) 43; McMahon 46, Susan Bysiewicz (D) 42; Murphy 45, Chris Shays (R) 37; Shays 44, Bysiewicz 40
CT-SEN—D (Quinnipiac): Chris Murphy 50, Susan Bysiewicz 20
CT-SEN—R (Quinnipiac): Linda McMahon 59, Chris Shays 30
PA-SEN (Franklin and Marshall): Sen. Bob Casey (D) 42, Tom Smith (R) 21
(2013) VA-GOV—R (Quinnipiac): Ken Cuccinelli 51, Bill Bolling 15
VA-SEN (Quinnipiac): Tim Kaine (D) 44, George Allen (R) 43
VA-SEN (Rasmussen): Tim Kaine (D) 46, George Allen (R) 44
A few thoughts, as always, await you just past the jump...
First, looking at yesterday, I am struck by how relatively solid the polls were last night, with the possible exception of the raft of Democratic internal polls (which, invariably, showed the race at 0-2 points during the last week). PPP was a few points too optimistic. In comparing to the exit polls, they seemed to hit the electorate pretty well, but had Independent voters being more favorable to Tom Barrett than the exit polls seemed to hint. We Ask America was quite a few points too favorable for Scott Walker. But the critical mass of polling had the race between 5-8 points.
As it happens, PPP wound up being quite prescient on the Wisconsin state senate races, telling us back in April that only the SD-21 contest between Republican Van Wangaard and Democrat John Lehman was within single digits.
The biggest polling air ball, though the info was always a bit sketchy, was the incumbent-on-incumbent violence in New Jersey (NJ-09). Eventual winner Bill Pascrell's team was telling us in May that they were "only" down one point to fellow Democrat Steve Rothman. He only wound up winning by 22 points, a result that might have been the stunner of the night for elections junkies. The relative dearth of polling, combined with the errant nature of what existed (though they never delved into specifics, team Rothman hinted their polling had them leading), left us with a result that virtually no one saw coming.
But, on balance, the bottom line is that despite the myriad of challenges facing the craft, political polling still "works."
Now, looking into the future...
- As many lousy headlines as Wisconsin generated for Democrats in general and Barack Obama in particular, the president had his best polling a day in a month. The trackers still are what they are (tossups), but a trio of new national polls put the president ahead by anywhere between 5-8 points. All three polls give Obama larger leads than he enjoyed in the previous iteration of those polls (YouGov, Pew, and our own Daily Kos/SEIU State of the Nation poll).
- Also, even as some conservative Twits ... er ... tweets gloated that the recall results mean that not only Wisconsin is in play, but the entire industrial Midwest, a new poll out of Pennsylvania by Franklin and Marshall has Obama up 12 points. That, too, is an improvement over the previous F&M poll, which spotted the president a lead of 8 points.
- Downballot, a Quinnipiac poll gives Linda McMahon a pretty surprising surge in Connecticut. Her blasting of Chris Shays in the GOP primary is far from a surprise, but being down just three to Democratic frontrunner Chris Murphy seems awfully optimistic. The presidential numbers changed a little from the previous Q poll (from Obama +16 to Obama +12), so that can't explain it entirely. But there's something just a bit strange about that polling result. Can't define it, can't point to a data point that invalidates it. It just doesn't "seem" right, given McMahon's inability to even draw within single digits in 2010, when the GOP had their big night.