A pretty good rule of thumb, it would seem, is that when everyone else says one thing, and you say something vastly different, it is unlikely that everyone else is the one that's wrong.
Yet that's where we find ourselves today, as the House of Ras claims a three-point lead for Mitt Romney in Wisconsin. That is despite the fact that the (corrected) exit polls from last week had Obama up by 7, and a poll by the GOP-affiliated outlet We Ask America last week had Obama up by 5.
It is possible, I suppose, that Rasmussen is ahead of the curve on this one. But, given their track record, some skepticism is probably justified.
On to the numbers:
PRESIDENTIAL GENERAL ELECTION TRIAL HEATS:
NATIONAL (Gallup Tracking): Obama d. Romney (46-45)
NATIONAL (Rasmussen Tracking): Romney d. Obama (48-44)
NEVADA (PPP): Obama d. Romney (48-42)
WISCONSIN (Rasmussen): Romney d. Obama (47-44)
DOWNBALLOT POLLING:
NC-GOV (PPP): Pat McCrory (R) 47, Walter Dalton (D) 40
A few thoughts, as always, await you just past the jump...
- By quite a margin, this was the quietest day of polling in recent memory. So a lot of light is getting cast on that Wisconsin poll. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, when you get a polling result that is that far off of the norm, it pretty much begs for either confirmation or contradiction. Looking at the script, the only really hinky thing I see there is asking about the president's job approval last, especially when it comes after some questions about GM that were more than a little leading. The demographics are behind a paywall, so it is hard to draw conclusions there, though their public write up does put Romney +5 with independent voters. That would seem to hint at a slightly more GOP than Democratic sample, on balance.
- PPP also drops a couple of numbers today, as well, which are not dramatically different than previous numbers in either race. The pollster had Obama +6 in Nevada (the president led there by eight points during PPP's last go-round in the Silver State), and they had Republican Pat McCrory up seven points over Democrat Walter Dalton (the margin there was six points the last time PPP polled their home state). PPP also saw their most recent poll in Arizona tested. They were a bit bullish on Democrat Ron Barber. They anticipated a 12-point lead for Barber, who wound up winning by a 52-45 margin. It seemed, from following the results through the night, that while PPP hit the election day numbers pretty well, they might've been too bullish on the Democratic edge in early voting.
- Speaking of PPP polling, conservative sites were practically giddy digging under the hood of yesterday's poll by the firm in North Carolina (which gave, for the first time in a good long while, a lead for Mitt Romney in the Tar Heel State). Obama is dooooooomed, they claimed in unison, because he's hemorrhaging support in the African-American community: the poll had Romney snagging 20 percent. Thankfully, Nate Silver reminded us today why making those generalizations is often a fool's errand.