Here's the latest PPP nation poll for Daily Kos/SEIU:
http://dailykos.com/...
On the surface it seems like not so great news for the President, only up 1 point on Romney, but digging a little deeper reveals something that has bothered me for some time about PPP's internals. If you look at the white vote, Obama trails Romney by 12, which is the exact same margin as in 2008. The demographic breakdown also reveals an almost exact copy of 2008, so what's the deal? The answer is simple, Mitt Romney is taking nearly 20% of the African American vote and close to 40% of the Hispanic vote. How can this be? Is Mitt Romney really pulling off a historical proportion of the African American vote for a Republican against the first African American president who carried it 95-5 in 2008? Or is it a fluke? Statistical noise? An aberration in the polling data? No, it's not, at least by PPP's standards.
http://polltracker.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
Here is a compilation by TPM of the African American vote in various polls. You can see that PPP has in fact shown Romney in double digits with the African American vote in almost every poll they've done, and Obama mostly resting in the mid 80's and sometimes dipping into the 70's. However, this appears to be the only polling form to find such a phenomenon. Almost no other poll shows Romney garnering better than high single digits of the African American vote.
And a similar phenomenon can be found with the Latino vote as well:
http://polltracker.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
PPP has consistently found Romney polling in the mid to high 30's, sometimes reaching 40%, among Latinos. This is in stark contrast to almost every other pollster which show Romney mired in the mid to high 20's, with some, especially the ones looking exclusively at the Latino vote, showing him in the low 20's with Obama getting close to or over 70%.
My question is why does this discrepancy exist? It does not exist with the white vote, which PPP has right in line with other pollsters. And it's not just in the national polling either. Their state polls have consistently shown Romney posting double digit numbers among African Americans in many states, including a recent North Carolina poll showing Romney getting a laughable 20+% of the vote.
I didn't write this diary to offer an explanation, I am genuinely puzzled. Anyone have any ideas?