A Tale of Two Electorates

The national horse race polls show Romney up an average of a point or so, while the state polls show Obama winning the key swing states.

The question from my elder son Matt this weekend was "How can both be right?"  He argued at length that there simply weren't enough votes to push toward Romney without changing the result in any of the larger states.

Some Encouragement

With this election's final act only a week from tomorrow, individual state polls and electoral analyses seem stuck.  Romney's surge in the popular vote doesn't seem to be reflected in the swing states that will determine the winner in the electoral college.  That could be because the pollsters doing those state polls aren't all that competent -- many are not national polling organizations with reputations to protect -- because they are tweaking the results to push their agenda, or because those polled are just not willing to give up their personal decision.

Gallup's First Likely Voter Poll Out

Here is Gallup's first likely-voter result.

Gallup's likely voter screen is basically the same one they have used forever.

In this poll, the Romney margin on the if-the-election-were-held-today question is 5 percentage points higher among those who pass the likely voter test than among the registered voters who don't.

The Choice We Face

I have written to you that this election is the most important since Lincoln's in 1860.  If we allow this President to continue in office for another four years we may never recover the foundation of our prosperity: our economic liberty.

Obama Will Not Easily Recover from his Denver Debacle

Mitt Romney's performance in the first face-to-face meeting with Obama was surprisingly good.  His strength in defending his proposed economic policies from sound-bite attacks was the least of it.  His assertive attitude at the podium -- fairly stated as "I have as much right to stand here as you do, Mr. President." -- was not the biggest part of it, either.  The fact that he almost never looked down to refer to notes, but rather looked pleasantly at the President as he spoke was not the key, though the contrast with Obama's near constant smirk while staring at his notes was remarkable.