If the Obama Campaign Isn't Worried, They Should Be

Sorry so late today, Biblical Conservatives! Had a personal issue that kept me on the shelf all morning, but here's today's dose of Biblical Conservatism!

Despite what a few Drive-By Media skewed polls are now showing, Obama had better start worrying.

Let's start with a few reasons:

- Florida is now clearly moving to Romney's territory. A Rasmussen Poll released on Friday shows Romney leading Obama by 5% and over 50%.

- North Carolina is now being considered by Real Clear Politics as no longer a tossup but in the Romney column.

- Virginia is becoming more and more clearly in the Romney camp. It's been two full weeks since a poll showed Obama leading in Virginia.

- The Real Clear Politics "No Tossup Map" now puts all three of these three states in the Romney camp.

- The Real Clear Politics Electoral Map shows Romney leading Obama (map does not include any tossup states).

- Except for one anomalous poll (same poll in both), Iowa and Wisconsin are within the margin of error.

- A new poll now has Romney winning Pennsylvania by 4%.


- So many voters remain undecided at this stage in the game, and historically, undecideds break hard for the challenger.

- One final note. Two weeks ago, the Real Clear Politics "No Tossup Map" looked like this:

Today it looks like this:

No amount of tiny poll fluctuations will change the fact that the President should be worried. VERY worried, because Mitt Romney is on the precipice of victory in 15 days.



Since tonight is the final Presidential debate, tomorrow's article will go up about 1 pm EST. Thanks for reading!

ABC/WaPo Poll Should Be Ashamed of Themselves

On Monday, the Washington Post and ABC published a poll that claimed Barack Obama was up 3% over Mitt Romney in their latest poll. There's just one problem: They used a sample of +9% Democrat. (A full 2% above the +7% Democrat record turnout in 2008.)

Do you want to know what makes this publish so preposterous? Directly from the Washington Post's article reporting this story:

Partisan identification fluctuates from poll to poll as basic orientations shift and with the sampling variability that accompanies each randomly selected sample of voters. In the current poll, Democrats outnumber Republicans by nine percentage points among likely voters; the previous three Post-ABC polls had three-, six- and five-percentage-point edges for Democrats. The presidential contest would now be neck and neck nationally with any of these margins.

Friends, the Washington Post ADMITTED IT! They admitted this was a bad poll! So why, pray tell, did they publish it? Let's make pretend it was an accident. Lets pretend this was a sampling anomaly (just to be charitable). Why would they publish this poll? It was clearly misleading.
Now I can see you thinking "what would the numbers have been if they used a real believable sample? Let's give you some quick numbers, shall we?

With a +3% Democrat Sample, Romney is leading by 1%, 48% to 47%.

With a flat even sample, by the way (which I believe is very likely given the 2010 election turnout) it becomes a Romney lead of 49% to 46%. It's a complete switch.

Some might ask why this matters. Well, aside from the fact that the Washington Post stated that the poll had a misleading sample IN THEIR ARTICLE, let's look at our old friend the Real Clear Politics average. Since I have an established propensity to not publish posts until a few days later, lets show you what the RCP average was on Monday, October 15th (when I wrote this post):

Notice that the polls other than this anomalous ABC/Washington Post poll have Obama at best at +1% to Romney at +2%, giving an RCP average of Romney +0.1%. Now, let's remove the Washington Post poll entirely. Just throw it right out. That moves the average from Romney plus 0.1% to Romney +0.6%. Now when you unskew it to a +3% Democrat sample (and giving Romney a +2% lead) we get to an RCP average of Romney 47.9%, Obama 46.8% to give Romney a +1.1% lead.

So I say, as I said in the title, shame on ABC and the Washington Post. How dare they publish this admittedly biased poll. They could have weighted the poll to a more reasonable sample easily (as most polls do) if the problem was really just the sample. That's easy to do, gang. They could have done it with just a modicum of honesty.

Instead, the Washington Post chose to publish this poll, they published this link on Real Clear Politics.. If you went to the Washington Post politics page, you could find this article.  In the third paragraph, it said "Obama 49%, Romney 46%." It's not until the 8th paragraph do we see "you really can't trust this poll because the sample is silly."  Most people won't read to the 8th paragraph of a story. Some of us did.

The truth is the Washington Post should be ashamed of themselves for publishing this poll. That's the truth they won't tell you. This poll is at best a horrible mistake. At worst, it's a willful lie.

Scenarios for a Romney Electoral College Win

 The above image is the Real Clear Politics "No Tossups" Map as of Monday, October 15th.  (The only adjustment that has been made is a color change to Nevada, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, and New Hampshire as they are officially "tossups.")  What I did last week on the Biblical Conservatism Facebook Page is show a few scenarios to show Mitt Romney's path to victory.

       

Scenario One: Romney wins a few small states plus Virginia. While the RCP average has Obama still winning in Virginia but it includes a Quinnipiac poll that includes a +3% Democrat sample in a state with a +3% Republican registration advantage and a PPP Poll that uses a +6% Democrat sample. Throw those two polls out you get Romney winning by 2% in Virginia. Combine that with the fact that Suffolk University has decided VA is over and expects Romney to win, we'll call Virginia safe for Romney. Combine that with three small statesL Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada (all three of which the Obama lead is within the margin for error) and Romney wins.

In this scenario, Mitt wins Virgina (which we've established already is likely) and Ohio. That's all he would need to win the Electoral College. Anything else is gravy that helps build a mandate. 

What if Mitt Romney doesn't win Ohio? Then what? Some are continually reminding us, no Republican in recent memory has won the White House without Ohio. However, there is a simple scenario where Romney can win without Ohio. Simply put, if Mitt wins Virginia (which we've established is likely) and then wins Wisconsin (or Michigan, or Pennsylvania) and either Nevada or Iowa.

Now we look at a very likely scenario. Many voters remain undecided a mere three weeks from Election Day.  History has shown that undecided voters break for the challenger and break hard. The above scenario involves a 3:1 break in Romney's favor. The result is a huge win for Governor Romney.  It's not an unrealistic scenario, friends. In fact it's a highly realistic scenario. In these states the Real Clear Politics average has only one of these states with Obama at 50%, and that's Wisconsin (he's at exactly 50% by the way, and there's a margin for error.) In this case, Mitt gains Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia by winning 75% of undecided voters.

Even using the Real Clear Politics average (which we've discussed is not exactly the most reliable way to judge the race) it becomes clear Mitt Romney has a path to victory that is easy to see. President Obama has less options. Despite the narrative being attempted bythe Left recently, the Romney path to victory is clear.

Why Aren't Liberal Polls Publishing?

Like so many other political junkies, I like to check polls in Election Season on a daily basis. Specifically, I check the Real Clear Politics Average, since it shows multiple polls in one easy location.  And I noticed something: Since Paul Ryan was picked as Mitt Romney's running mate, the only new polls published* are the reliable Gallup and Rasmussen, who each publish a daily tracking poll.

Other than those two who are as reliable as the tides in their daily polls, do you know how many other polls have been posted? ONE. And that was published yesterday.  As of the writing of this post (on Tuesday, August 21st, for the record) it has been ten days since the Ryan pick and only one poll aside from Rasmussen and Gallup has been published. Just over two months shy of election day. Intriguing, no?

What Gallup and Rasmussen show, as of the writing of this blog is Romney beating Obama 45% to 44% (Rasmussen) and Romney beating Obama 47% to 45% (Gallup)...certainly a happy trend for those who share my ideology. 

The only other poll, noted is a Monmouth/SurveyUSA/Braun poll that shows Obama beating Romney 46% to 45%. All three are within the margin for error. The sample on Monmoth is indeed slightly skewed to Democrats, as well, friends, giving them a 6% advantage. As we showed here on Monday, even if this is based on party registration not party leanings, the Democrats have only a 4% advantage. Which is intriguing because if we, for the sake of argument, assume that subtracting 2% Democrats and adding 2% Republicans to be at the party registration line alone, you could reasonably expect that Governor Romney would gain AT LEAST 1-2% in the poll, putting him again above Obama in THAT poll.

So why would the liberal pollsters not be polling? You can rest assured they're conducting polls, friends. There's no way you can believe that this close to an election they aren't conducting polls. So my guess is their polls are bad news to Obama. It may also have to do with the Real Clear Politics average that is published daily.

Now, for the record, Real Clear Politics is not to blame for what I am about to note. Their average is based on the last half dozen or so polls. (Perhaps it would be better to go with the last 7 days worth of polls, no matter how many there are, but I will give RCP the benefit of the doubt and guess that they feel three polls isn't enough to give a fair average.)  So the current average, instead of including polls from the last ten days, includes polls from the last seventeen days.

Included in that average are polls that have polling samples skewed beyond the believable 4% Democrat advantage...and remember, that's only if you go based on party registration, not party identification, since party identification is statistically tied between Democrats and Republicans. They also do not include the gains made by the Paul Ryan pick as running mate.

So why would this be happening? Answer: Real Clear Politics is continuing to use these outdated polls in their averages, making it look like the President is still leading Governor Romney. They can continue to report a slim lead for the President "In the RCP Average" while not noting that the polls are sadly outdated. They can continue to pretend the President is winning, when he is, in fact, not. The more then can dishearten conservatives, the better the chance Obama has to win. Disheartened conservatives won't financially support Governor Romney, after all.

* Post Script: As I mentioned I wrote this article on Tuesday, August 21st. As if the Internet was trolling me, both NBC and the Associated Press published polls today (August 22nd).

- The NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll claims that Obama is leading Romney 48% to 44%.

- The AP Poll has Obama leading Romney by the far more believable 47% to 46%.

HOWEVER, a quick check of the polling samples in both shows that both polls oversampled Democrats by 6%. And if you're wondering, these are "party identification" not "party registration" so, based on what we demonstrated empirically earlier this week, it should be an EVEN SAMPLE of Democrats and Republicans.

Translation: If these two polls were using honest samples, it can be presumed that Romney would be beating Obama by at least a couple points in both polls. More on these two polls tomorrow.