There's been a lot of spin and fakery regarding Romney's momentum and fantastical routes to electoral college success. One of the last holdouts was the Romney campaigns last gasp hope that they were leading with independents and could pull it out through that route.
So that leaves flawed polls, and on this front the right has found something to latch onto: Romney’s support among independent voters. Poll after poll has shown the GOP nominee beating — and in some cases crushing – Obama among independents, in both the national horse race and in key states. An NPR poll earlier this week, for instance, put Romney 12 points ahead of the president with independents, 51 to 39 percent, and a CBS/New York Times survey found the exact same result. A Monmouth University poll last week pegged Romney’s independent lead at 19 points.
Overall, however, these polls (and others like them) all show what amounts to a dead heat, with Romney ahead – at best – by a couple of points. This has given rise to claims from the right that pollsters are making a giant mistake by including far too many Democrats in their samples – a number far out of whack with what we’ll actually see on Election Day.
Rush Limbaugh spent a chunk of his show on Tuesday making this case, while the Weekly Standard’s Jay Cost argues that Obama is the underdog next week because “[s]ince 1972, the first year of exit polling, no candidate for president has won election while losing independents by such a wide margin. Even some neutral media observers are chiming in, with Time’s Mark Halperin calling Romney’s independent support the “strongest argument” his campaign can make about his positioning in the race.
Dixville Notch NH has historically provided the first complete election results on Election Day, and their results are in.
The first presidential election results are in - and it's a tie.
President Barack Obama and his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, each received five votes in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire.
Yes it's a tie but more importantly let's look at the breakdown of how the voters are registered.
The result was unexpected, said town clerk Dick Erwin. The town has two registered Democrats, three Republicans and five independents.
The town, home to about a dozen residents, has drawn national media attention for being the first place in the country to make its presidential preferences known.
Unlike some parts of the country, election officials never have to worry about lack of interest. Dixville Notch has had 100% voter turnout since it started its first-in-the-nation voting tradition.
(Hmmm, unexpected, by whom?) Let's assume the voters registered with a party voted according to their party line, so that leaves 5 independents. Which has to mean that 2 voted for Romney and 3 for President Obama, resulting in the tie.
Which means independents are swinging to President Obama! And if we can extrapolate the 3-2 swing in Obama's direction, than Romney's last hope for turning the election his way is dead. This town has historically voted for a Republican president, in 2008 they voted for a Democratic President for the first time in 40 years.
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