One of the key points despairing liberals make is that, in their view, Obama had the election sewn up before the debate: Mitt Romney was a laughingstock, and his support amongst his own party was weak and dispirited. The debate changed all of that.
I don’t think anyone denies that the debate was a pretty important turning point. But both within the point above and without, I’d like to ponder just how much. If nothing else, it helps put the post-debate numbers in perspective and helps figure out if stuff like 18 point swings among women is likely or not.
Since I admittedly rely on polls for my idea of who is going to win, I think he still has it sewn up. To the extent that the more Romney catches up in the popular voter or even surpasses Obama, I care about it, but it still comes down to the electoral college and the swing states, where I think Obama still has a good lead overall. As for the women’s vote, or any specific group for that matter, I generally don’t pay that much attention. Romney might have 90% of the military vote, or Obama the same for the women’s vote, but who really cares? Just tell me the bottom line.
According to 538, Obama’s chances has declined by 11 percentage points. On October 1, he had an 85% chance to win. Today he has a 74% chance to win.
No one likes to see a decline - but I think despair is an unreasonable response. Obama was never (and will not) going to be able to win 100% of the vote. Romney will always have at least 25-30% of the vote, thanks to Republican voter discipline. Obama’s current numbers are as good - and certainly no worse - than he’s had since June.
Like you, I’m cautiously optimistic. Obama’s Electoral College path to 270 has a lot more possible branches and more likelihood than Romney’s. For now, anyway.
What bugs me about the debate is, with a good, solid performance, Obama had the chance to pretty much end the election in the first week of October. Romney teed up some nice softballs for him, too, but I don’t think Obama was properly prepared and he and his team had already decided to play defensively … the prevent defense, if you will. As many football fans will tell you, though, the prevent defense is often the defense that prevents you from winning the game.
So that was frustrating. With the two months Romney had in August and September, a clear, convincing first debate victory for Obama probably would have clinched things. Instead we have a rejuvenated GOP, throwing more and more money and stupid campaign ads into swing states like mine. I would have been much happier if Obama had taken care of business, and maybe some of these Super PAC ads would not be in my face every fifteen minutes.
But again … Obama is still in a strong position. It’s not a sure thing, but I’d rather have the polls the way they are now than reversed.
I don’t think that’s true at all. Obama was a significant favorite and remains so, but when your maximum lead is about 5 percent, you can’t put the election away a month ahead of time.
Those really only matter if the general election is very close (within a couple of points), but yes, I have looked at them too. Here’s what I see since the debate:
[ul]
[li]CO: O+4, O+1, R+4[/li][li]FL: R+3, R+2[/li][li]IA: O+2[/li][li]NV: Tie[/li][li]NC: R+9[/li][li]OH: R+1, O+1, R+1[/li][li]VA: R+1, R+1, O+3[/li][/ul]
Add to that polls that show O+2 in WI, O+2&3 in PA and O+3 in MI and it doesn’t look all that rosey for him.
Yes, we should be looking closely at the swing states when the popular vote is close, as it is now. As for post-debate polls, I assume R+3 means Romney is up that many points in a given state, for example. To that, I say a respectful “so what.” He still has too far to go to say it doesn’t still look rosey for Obama. I’m thinking of Nate Silver’s polling and the groups of combined polls at Real Clear Politics. What are you looking at?
As far as my comment about Obama being in a strong position, maybe “strong” is, we’ll too strong of a term - but I’d still rather be the 70-30 favorite instead of the 30-70 underdog. (Yes, I know those are Nate Silver’s percentages and not polling numbers, but that’s the Electoral College reality.)
My impression was, especially after Romney’s 47% video hit, the GOP big money was starting to Los faith in their candidate. That small but consistent lead Obama has held all summer, capped with some things from Romney’s own campaign that was hurting their chances, I just had the feeling that confidence (and money) would have started shedding away from Mitt if he had been schooled in that first debate.
Instead, now look. The people who claimed the polls were all rigged for Obama 10 days ago are excitedly pointing to those same polls as a Game Changer for Romney. I have seen a flood of more anti-Obama ads here in Iowa. The Republicans are fired up and looking for a comeback, and fired-up Republicans can be quite tiresome.
I would have rather seen them weakly waving their flags and squeaking, “Go, Romney.” while they waited for he clock to inevitably run out. But Obama’s lack of preparation for Denver has resulted in quite the opposite.
There’s still four weeks to go. Obama can halt this slide, and I expect him to. I also expected him to make a better showing last week, though. This isn’t over, and I do think a strong showing by Obama last week would have very nearly closed the door. Now we have a month-long fight on our hands. Phooey.
RCP mostly. How do you figure Romney “still has too far to go to say it doesn’t still look rosey for Obama”? Obama’s BEHIND in the head-to-head polls. That’s not rosey in any rational person’s world.
As long as he’s ahead in state-by-state polling such that I think it will be difficult for Romney to win, which I do now, I don’t care about the popular vote polls. It’s that simple.
I don’t think Obama’s polling was strong before the elections primarily because the polls showing him in the lead have Democratic affiliation trumping Republican affiliation by 9% ala 2008 elections. I think, given the enthusiasm gap, the party-affiliation gap should have narrowed quite considerably.
It really depends on how much you trust Nate Silver. I trust him implicitly, and on October 3, his Nowcast, the prediction of who would win if the election were held on that day, gave Obama a 97.3% chance of winning the election. As far as I was concerned, that meant that the election was over, as long as there wasn’t a gamechanger prior to Nov. 6. Clearly the first debate changed the game, although I am still firmly convinced that Obama will ultimately win.
