WS: Now polls show "Mitt Romney's path to victory is narrowing"

WSJ:

Mitt Romney's path to victory is narrowing, new polling data suggest, presenting challenges for the Republican nominee at a moment when he is trying to rebound from a week of bad headlines by refocusing on federal spending.

President Barack Obama has opened an eight percentage-point lead in Iowa and maintains a five-point edge in Colorado and Wisconsin, according to Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Marist Poll surveys of the three presidential battlegrounds released Thursday.

The new poll results are significant in part because the Romney campaign views the three states as steppingstones to an Electoral College majority, given Mr. Romney's slippage in polls of two of the largest battlegrounds, Ohio and Virginia.

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NYT's Nate Silver: "GOP Senate map is imploding." Chance of takeover now only 21 percent

From Nate Silver in the NYT

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Pennsylvania still a battleground state?

If this latest poll is accurate, it hardly sounds like it.

President Obama, already ahead in Pennsylvania, received a small bump from the Democratic National Convention and now leads Mitt Romney in the state by 11 points, according to the Inquirer Pennsylvania Poll.

But with eight weeks left before the Nov. 6 election, with debates yet to be held, and with foreign affairs suddenly atop the national agenda, it's early to concede the state to Obama, a bipartisan team of Inquirer pollsters said.

"I'm not 100 percent prepared to say Pennsylvania is not in play," said Adam Geller, of National Research Inc., a Republican firm.

Maybe Pennsylvania is 99%? Read the rest of this post...

Poll: Americans overwhelmingly want limits to cash in elections

It's unfortunate that the Republican Party is against delivering what Americans want. The numbers aren't even close yet the GOP wants to maintain the status quo.

More than 8 in 10 Americans in a poll by The Associated Press and the National Constitution Center support limits on the amount of money given to groups that are trying to influence U.S. elections.

But they might have to change the Constitution first. The Supreme Court's 2010 decision in the Citizens United case removed limits on independent campaign spending by businesses and labor unions, calling it a constitutionally protected form of political speech.

"Corporate donations, I think that is one of the biggest problems today," said Walter L. Cox Sr., 86, of Cleveland. "They are buying the White House. They are buying public office."

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Democratic Senators holding the lead in Ohio & Florida

Republicans were hoping to be a lot closer in both states though for now, they have their work cut out for them. The Virginia battle is much harder to call and may remain that way until election day. NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll:

In Virginia, Kaine and Allen are deadlocked at 46 percent apiece with likely voters.

In Ohio, incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown leads Republican State Treasurer Josh Mandel 49 percent to 42 percent.

And in Florida, two-term Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, leads GOP Rep. Connie Mack 51 percent to 37 percent. Twelve percent of Florida voters said they were undecided about the race.

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Nate Silver: Obama's chances for re-election now 80 percent

Nate Silver in the NYT:

The question now is not whether Mr. Obama will get a bounce in the polls, but how substantial it will be.

Some of the data, in fact, suggests that the conventions may have changed the composition of the race, making Mr. Obama a reasonably clear favorite as we enter the stretch run of the campaign.

On Saturday, Mr. Obama extended his advantage to three points from two points in the Gallup national tracking poll, and to four points from two in an online survey conducted by Ipsos. He pulled ahead of Mitt Romney by two points in the Rasmussen Reports tracking poll, reversing a one-point deficit in the edition of the poll published on Friday.

A fourth tracking poll, conducted online by the RAND Corporation’s American Life Panel, had Mr. Obama three percentage points ahead of Mr. Romney in the survey it published early Saturday morning; the candidates had been virtually tied in the poll on Friday. (The RAND survey has an interesting methodology — we’ll explore it more in a separate post.)

Nate goes on to note that Obama's bounce is based on incomplete polling - the polling included days before the Democratic Convention began and/or before Clinton spoke. So if you extrapolate from there, Obama's bounce is even greater:

Over all, that means that only about 30 percent of the data from the Gallup poll post-dated Mr. Clinton’s remarks.

If you do the math, it implies that Mr. Obama must have been leading Mr. Romney by 10 or 11 points in the minority of the poll conducted since Mr. Clinton’s speech for him to have gained three points in the survey over all.

In the table below, I’ve run through the same calculation for the other tracking polls. The results imply that Mr. Obama has run about nine points ahead of Mr. Romney in the portion of the Ipsos poll conducted since Mr. Clinton’s speech, about eight points ahead in the RAND poll, and about four points ahead in the Rasmussen poll.

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New Gallup poll, bounce continues: Obama gains another point

Bouncy bouncy bouncy. Read the rest of this post...

Poll: Americans think rich don't pay enough taxes

Uh oh. It looks like the Teabagging Republicans are on the losing side of this debate.

The poll found that many Americans believe rich people to be intelligent and hard-working but also greedy and less honest than the average American. Nearly six in 10, or 58 percent, say the rich don't pay enough in taxes, while 26 percent believe the rich pay their fair share and 8 percent say they pay too much.

Even among those who describe themselves as "upper class" or "upper middle class," more than half — 52 percent — said upper-income Americans don't pay enough in taxes; only 10 percent said they paid too much. This upper tier was more likely to say they are more financially secure now than they were 10 years ago — 62 percent, compared to 44 percent for those who identified themselves as middle class and 29 percent for the lower class. They are less likely to report problems in paying rents or mortgages, losing a job, paying for medical care or other bills and cutting back on household expenses.

As this article mentions, it's not a problem that Romney is rich, but that he is strongly perceived as the candidate who will promote policies that mostly benefit the rich. Read the rest of this post...

Romney wraps up nomination with low favorability ratings

Americans simply don't like the guy and a few speeches won't change that perception. Mitt Romney has no sense of compassion or appreciation for the struggles of others and he doesn't even try to understand. One can argue that Obama needs to stand up for the middle class in a more forceful way, but he at least invests energy into the process of helping someone other than the 1%.

Anyone who makes jokes about the "funny" times when his dad closed factories causing the loss of jobs doesn't have a clue. Throwing millions around still hasn't changed his perception of being an insensitive rich guy.

Mitt Romney accepts the Republican nomination for president this week with the lowest personal popularity of any major-party nominee in polls dating to Ronald Reagan's presidency, a difficulty for Romney that's persisted throughout this election cycle.

Forty percent of registered voters in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll see Romney favorably overall, while 51 percent rate him unfavorably - 11 points underwater in this basic measure, with a majority unfavorable score for just the second time in polls since last fall.

Barack Obama does better in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, but hardly well - 50-47 percent in favorable vs. unfavorable views among registered voters, essentially the same as his 2012 average in ABC/Post polls. On this, as on other measures, as hard as they've campaigned, views of the two hardly have budged.

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Swing state female voters: Romney "out of step" on women's health issues

It's difficult to imagine why any woman would want to vote for a Republican these days. There will be a price to pay in November for their war on women. The Hill:

The survey, conducted by Hart Research Associates, lends credence to Democrats' argument that the presumptive GOP presidential nominee is on the wrong end of a steep gender gap, largely because of his opposition to abortion rights and his positions on issues such as contraception.

By a 20-point margin, women surveyed in the Planned Parenthood Action Fund poll said Romney is "out of step" on women's issues. That number increased as women heard "specific information about Romney's on-the-record statements about women's preventive and reproductive health," the Hart polling memo says.

After hearing those descriptions, 64 percent of respondents said Romney is out of step.

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Global corporate execs prefer Obama over Romney

Why are so many global corporate CEOs socialists who hate business? Don't they realize that Romney was also a CEO? Perhaps they noticed the poor economic performance of Massachusetts under government Romney or his keen ability to squeeze every cent out of his investments before throwing them away when there was no money left.

Reuters:

Twice as many business executives around the world say the global economy will prosper better if incumbent U.S. president Barack Obama wins the next election than if his Republican challenger Mitt Romney does, a poll showed on Friday.

Democrat Obama was chosen by 42.7 percent in the 1,700 respondent poll, compared with 20.5 percent for Romney. The rest said "neither".

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Poll: Voters were more excited with Sarah Palin as VP

Yikes. And folks hated her.

A new survey indicates that a great many Americans aren't enamored with the guy who wants them spending their golden years subsisting on ramen noodles and strenuously networking to land jobs as Walmart greeters.

Ariel Edwards-Levy: "Americans' initial reaction to Paul Ryan is decidedly lukewarm, with more rating his selection for vice president as negative than positive, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll taken after the announcement.

Ryan's ratings were less positive than those for any other vice presidential pick polled on by Gallup since 2000, including Sarah Palin, Joe Biden and Dick Cheney. The only other recent vice presidential selection to gain net negative ratings was Dan Quayle, in 1988.

UPDATE: USA Today has more:

In a nationwide survey taken Sunday, 39% of registered voters call Republican contender Mitt Romney's selection of Ryan "excellent" or "pretty good" while 45% rate it as "only fair" or "poor." Sixteen percent have no opinion.

That's the most tepid reception for a running mate since 1988, when then-vice president George H.W. Bush picked Quayle, an Indiana senator who immediately ran into questions about his draft history during the Vietnam War and whether he was prepared for the presidency.

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Obama still ahead of Romney, even in Fox poll

It's not an overwhelming lead, but still, President Obama has maintained a consistent 2 point or more lead in national polls for a good year now.  From Pollster.com/HuffPo:

Click image to see larger version.

And the Fox poll is even worse, it has Obama ahead by 9.  And CNN gives Obama a 7 point lead.

But keep in mind that McCain had just pulled ahead of Obama in September when Sarah Palin got selected and Wall Street, and the economy, crashed - both pretty much turning things around for Obama.  My point: There's still time for things to change.

Here's July 2009 until election day, McCain vs Obama:

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CNN poll: Americans increasingly optimistic about economy

Are they right?

"Americans are usually optimists, but in 2011, polls for the first time found that more than half the country thought that economic conditions would worsen in the next 12 months," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Now that trend has reversed itself, with only four in ten saying that the economy will be in poor shape a year from now."

Sixty percent of those questioned say the economy will be in good shape next year, a surge from 39% who felt that way last October. Despite that jump, three-quarters say that current economic conditions are poor, a slight worsening of opinion since May, but better than where things stood in January.

"Not surprisingly, the poll indicates that the economy's the public's top issue, the only topic that more than half say will be extremely important to their presidential vote in November," adds Holland.

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Poll: Americans want anti-Obamacare activists to move on

Independents are fairly close to the general numbers, though they are likely to be disappointed by the Teabagging extremists who will want to continue fighting.

In the latest survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 56 percent of respondents said they prefer Obamacare opponents "stop their efforts to block the law and move on to other national problems," while 38 percent said they prefer those opponents "continue trying to block the law from being implemented."

Kaiser, a nonprofit, independent foundation that studies health policy and opinions, polled 1,239 adults beginning last Thursday, when the Supreme Court upheld Obama's health law under Congress's taxing power.

Predictably, responses broke down on partisan lines, but independents who do not lean toward either party also preferred Obamacare critics drop their repeal push by a margin of 51 percent to 35 percent. Respondents favored the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the law by a margin of 47 percent to 43 percent, Kaiser found.

Since Obamacare is Romneycare without support for abortion, can we at least get opponents to admit that they're against Obamacare because they simply don't like Obama because he's black? It's hard to come to any other conclusion based on the history of the right wing created plan. Read the rest of this post...

Poll: Americans don't like health care reform, but don't like current health care either

Oddly, 75% have a favorable opinion of the health care they receive.  I suspect that favorability is a combination of grandmas and grandpas that have good insurance as a result of retiring from a good company, middle age people who have yet to have a serious illness that tests just how good their health care really is, and the young who think they're invincible so they don't even need health care.

I'd be curious to see how people who have, for example, to pay a copay of 20%, 30%, or even 50% of their child's appendicitis operation, which cost $20,000 (meaning a copay of $4k to $10k) feel about the quality of their health insurance.  Or the families of people with cancer or MS, who run up against annual and lifetime limits.

Asking people how good their health care is when they're healthy is like asking someone how good a job the guy did repairing the hole in the roof when it's not raining.  Health care in America is a gamble. And if you get lucky and don't get sick, everything seems to work great.  That's not the way it should work.

PS The study shows that while people don't like HCR (and remember, they probably have no idea what's in it), they also don't like, to an equal degree, the current health care system in America.  That means the GOP needs to be careful how they handle tomorrow's Supreme Court decision.  It also means that Democrats should have done a better job defending the current law, and overall change to the system.

Tomorrow could be a big opportunity for the Obama administration to actually explain to people what the health care law does.  Keep it simple folks.  Adding kids to existing plans.  Getting rid of pre-existing conditions, annual and lifetime limits.  And lowering premiums.  For starters.  This should be the message that's repeated every day, over and over.  Just like the GOP would do, and does (except they lie). Read the rest of this post...

Poll: Mitt Romney less popular than George Bush (and Barack Obama)

A new MSNBC/WSJ poll shows only 9% of people have a "very positive" feeling about Mitt Romney.  Less than George Bush, and far less than Barack Obama.

MITT ROMNEY
Very Positive: 9%
Somewhat Positive: 24%
(Combined positive: 33%)

Neutral: 22%

Somewhat Negative: 17%
Very Negative: 22%
(Combined Negative: 39%)

Don't Know Name/Not Sure: 6%


GEORGE BUSH
Very Positive: 13%
Somewhat Positive: 23%
(Combined positive: 36%)

Neutral: 18%

Somewhat Negative: 19%
Very Negative: 26%
(Combined Negative: 45%)

Don't Know Name/Not Sure: 1%


BARACK OBAMA
Very Positive: 29%
Somewhat Positive: 19%
(Combined positive: 48%)

Neutral:14%

Somewhat Negative: 11%
Very Negative: 27%
(Combined negative: 38%)

Don't Know Name/Not Sure: -% Read the rest of this post...

Poll: GOPers approve of most key provisions of ObamaCare, except individual mandate

Even Republicans agree with most of the key provisions of the law that they demonize on a regular basis.  From Greg Sargent:

* Eighty percent of Republicans favor “creating an insurance poll where small businesses and uninsured have access to insurance exchanges to take advantage of large group pricing benefits.” That’s backed by 75 percent of independents.

* Fifty-seven percent of Republicans support “providing subsidies on a sliding scale to aid individuals and families who cannot afford health insurance.” That’s backed by 67 percent of independents.

* Fifty-four percent of Republicans favor “requiring companies with more than 50 employees to provide insurance for their employers.” That’s backed by 75 percent of independents.

* Fifty two percent of Republicans favor “allowing children to stay on parents insurance until age 26. That’s backed by 69 percent of independents.

* Seventy eight percent of Republicans support “banning insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions; 86 percent of Republicans favor “banning insurance companies from cancelling policies because a person becomes ill.” Those are backed by 82 percent of independents and 87 percent of independents.

As I noted again this morning, it's all about messaging. Read the rest of this post...

Poll: Americans don't like Obamacare, but love what's in it

Ugh. Cough this up to either bad or non-existent messaging on this important issue. If (when?) the Supreme Court knocks down Obamacare, there are going to be a lot of people upset that pre-existing conditions are gone. Looking at how dysfunctional Washington has become, chances are slim that any real health care reform will happen for decades and people will once again be at the mercy of insurance companies that care only about profit.

Should Obamacare be struck down, one thing that needs to happen immediately is to force Congress to terminate their luxurious health care plan and go it alone like their constituents. For that matter, the rest of the luxurious perks that Congress receives have to be scrapped. If they're unable to work and get anything done for the public, there's no reason to give them perks that no longer exist for everyone else.

As they like to say when they chop programs for the middle class and poor, everyone needs to "modernize" and change with the times. Let's face it, Congress is out of touch and needs to learn how to work like everyone else and deliver. In the real world, under performing as they do would always result in being fired.

Onto the latest poll that will make you bang your head on the wall.

Fifty-six percent of people are against the healthcare overhaul and 44 percent favor it, according to the online poll conducted from Tuesday through Saturday.

The survey results suggest that Republicans are convincing voters to reject Obama's reform even when they like much of what is in it, such as allowing children to stay on their parents' insurance until age 26.

Strong majorities favor most of what is in the law.

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"Bias" against a Mormon presidential candidate?

Interesting that no one calls it "bias" when you're against a Republican presidential candidate.

Calling it "bias" suggests that it's a benign characteristic that has no impact on who you are as a person. If someone were a Mormon by birth, and not practicing, then their faith would be benign.  But if someone embraces their faith then is it fair to suggest that their faith has no impact on who they are, how they think, what decisions they would make in life and in office?

If a chief tenet of modern Mormonism is anti-gay advocacy, and you're gay, or know gay people, and don't want a politician in office who is going to make anti-gay advocacy a major part of his governance, then why is it "bias" to vote against him?

I think people of faith, and pollsters like Gallup, are playing a cute game by claiming that their faith is everything to them, but please don't judge them by their faith.  I suspect that if the poll asked how you'd feel about a liberal Democrat Mormon, the poll numbers in support of the candidate would be significantly higher. Read the rest of this post...