Moreover, North Carolina has been a Republican state ever since LBJ decided to sign the Civil Rights law into effect. 2008 was a perfect storm not likely to be replicated.
You know, I’ve always wondered why people discount Rasmussen polls but accept other ones that Nate Silver ranks even lower than Rasmussen (at least according to the demi-god Nate Silver)?
ETA> The weird thing is that Nate Silver’s analysis of Rasmussen is the only one I’ve seen which ranks it low. Other rankings tend to show it towards the top.
As for the statement that NC was a perfect storm in 2008, I don’t agree with that. NC has supposedly had the same thing VA had. Voter registration drives combined with emigration by professionals/liberals and moderates pushed away by the GOP. Even in 2012 Romney may only win by 3%, far less than the 12% Bush won in 2004.
If trends continue NC should be a swing state again in 2016.
Take a look at this one. It appears that some Tea Party Republicans, one who prided themselves on not compromising, are now campaigning on being able to work with the Dems.
I’m sensing flop sweat. You also don’t get lots of people on your side telling you to do things differently, and reports of infighting at hq, if you are winning.
Don’t expect to see anyone in the media, right or left, saying Romney is a goner. But I can’t wait for the Newsweek article on this election - then we will find out what is really going on there.
Not likely. Remember, they wound up nominating a candidate who was relatively moderate in the last two elections. If you think the radicals are going to admit that one of their candidates would have been beaten worse you are dreaming. Romney started closer to true conservative roots than the rest of them, and got more radical by selling out for the nomination. They will eventually figure out that the radicals need to get behind one candidate, and that guy will get the nomination. When they lost to the level of Goldwater, maybe then they will get it.
The demographics are staring them in the face - and they still ignore them still.
Rasmussen was accurate in the mid-oughts, but has developed a significant Republican bias more recently.
I don’t know how you can call the Marist polls biased when the election hasn’t occurred yet, but I agree that analysis shows Marist to be one of the less accurate polls, but in a decidedly Republican direction.
? While he doesn’t normally rank Marist that low, Silver talks at length that he thinks they’re running high for Obama right now and actually lowered Obama’s chances based on the Marist polls (among others).
“I’m not [incumbent]” only gets you so far when the country isn’t actually falling apart.
As bad as things are now, the economy IS better than it was when Obama took office. Recovery is slower than you’d want it to be, but 4 years ago we were talking about Great Depression II, not a typical bump in the road.
As crappy as the Iraq War was in 2004, the economy wasn’t terrible, people had jobs, and the war was semi-sanitized.
You want to beat the incumbent, you have to convince people to vote for you because you’re awesome, or convince them the country is failing right now. Romney and Kerry did neither.
It also probably doesn’t help that the Republicans have been making such a spectacle of being obstructionist. That’s going to deflect some of the blame that Obama would have otherwise have gotten for the economy and other problems.