The new Washington Post/ABC poll shows President Obama leading Mitt Romney 49% to 46% which is within the margin of error, reports Mark Blumenthal in 2012 Polls Continue To Show Close Race Nationwide, Obama Edge In Battleground States. More importantly, Blumenthal's analysis indicates President Obama maintains slims leads in enough "firewall" battleground states to achieve victory in the electoral college, including OH, IA, WI, NV, NH, PA, and MI.
The latest Washington Post/ABC News survey shows Obama leading Romney among likely voters by a 49 to 46 percent margin that ABC said fell "within the survey's margin of error" and the Post described as a "virtual dead heat."
The new result was also essentially unchanged from a 49 to 47 percent Obama edge on the last Post/ABC survey. Other national polls released over the last week have reported either a dead-even race or have given Romney a slight edge. These include the Gallup Daily tracking, which as of Sunday showed Romney with a 2-point advantage (49 to 47 percent).
This poll does have nine percentage points more Democrats than Republicans, and more than their last poll. The Post warned that if they correct for this, the race would be "neck and neck, at the national level.
The poll also shows growing enthusiasm for Romney, as the percentage of Romney supporters claiming to be "very enthusiastic" grew 10% since the first debate.
The Huffington Post tracking model now give President Obama a slight lead of
47.3% to 46.6%.
We seem to maintain an ever so slight, but critical firewall advantage in the key battleground states.
The tracking model's national popular vote estimate takes into account polling data compiled at the state level, where surveys reported over the past week continue to give Obama very slim leads in the most crucial battleground states. Obama holds narrow but statistically meaningful leads of 2 percentage points or better, as of this writing, in Wisconsin, Ohio, New Hampshire and Nevada, along with the other states where he leads by wider margins -- enough to net 281 electoral votes, 11 more than the 270 needed to win. The model also shows Obama leading by just over 1 percentage point in Colorado, which would bring his electoral vote total to 290.
It seems that as we go into to tomorrow night's debate, we seem to have slim, but encouraging foundation position from which to inspire our base to turn out and win over enough undecideds, and marginal Republicans to win this very close election.
Obviously, I'd like to see us shift all of these polls back up another 3% to 5% or more, and fire up GOTV to make sure we match the reports of the enthusiasm and expected high turnout. The key message for me is that our challenge is still quite doable and Democrats have reason to remain upbeat, confident, and working as hard as we can to elect as many "more and better" Democrats as we can from top to bottom of the ballots.
10:46 AM PT: These two plots illustrate our challenge with getting out the vote, and why it will be great if we can put a safety cushion of 5% back into our expected numbers. Historically, Republicans have high voter turnout rates, and they are fire out this election to throw us out. We absolutely must get as many of our voters to the polls as we can, and support of GOTV troops in every way possible.