The ancient “heathen proverb,” often applied to those who attempt to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict, seems appropriate to Republican presidential candidates and Pennsylvania.
New GOP-commissioned poll puts Romney 1 percentage point behind in Pa.
In contrast to other recent surveys, a new Pennsylvania poll commissioned by the Republican State Committee shows Mitt Romney trailing in the state by just one percentage point, party Chairman Robert A. Gleason Jr. said Thursday.
A number of polls have shown President Obama leading in Pennsylvania by either double digits or close to it. A Muhlenberg College poll released Tuesday had Obama up by 9 points, 50-41. An Inquirer poll published Sunday had the president up by 50-39.
Gleason said his party’s polling, conducted Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, showed the race a statistical dead heat, with Obama at 48 percent, GOP nominee Romney at 47, and 3 percent of voters undecided.
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LOL. Don’t blame PA – doesn’t matter how most of the state votes, it’s Philly that gets to decide. We’ll see if the voter id law make a diff.
PA will break your heart. Campaign in it, but don’t count on it.
(Request: Small “g” in “gods” in the headline, please. Thank you.)
(Request: Small “g” in “gods” in the headline, please. Thank you.)
He’s good. Capital “G” as in Gods of the Copybook Headings.
Oh that’s not a good poll. Romney is probably about 5-7 points down. He gets zero support in Philly but he does better among the bitter-clingers.
1. The poll was commissioned by the state GOP, which may have different priorities than the national GOP.
2. The ancient “heathen proverb,” often applied to those who attempt to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict, seems appropriate to Republican presidential candidates and Pennsylvania.
Why so? This sentiment sounds a bit dissonant with your previous pep talks.
3. If contesting PA is a waste of resources, where should the GOP be concentrating their attention?
4. I realize you’re spread thin and your Warren efforts are time-consuming. Nevertheless, iirc you haven’t sketched what a Romney victory might look like, in popular vote and in the Electoral College. This PA post brings that matter to the fore.
“3. If contesting PA is a waste of resources, where should the GOP be concentrating their attention?”
CA?
Just kidding. I’m just sick to death of the genuinely over-the-top bullsh!t Obama ads I see on every damn channel here, even ESPN.
Voter ID law won’t make a difference in Philly, its a party run town that does not even abide by current laws and has every branch of government looking to undermine democracy. To say that the Voter ID law is the biggest threat to voting in PA is absurd. The one thing the Left fears in Philly is not just letting someone vote, but letting their vote count.
I would be very surprised if the Legislature does not have at least a small contingent in Philadelphia doing “spot checks” to make sure the polling places are actually checking ID.
I have a feeling that failure to do so on the part of the poll workers would be met with criminal charges this time around, along with very public exposure of the fraud that would entail.
They do this every election, it was so brazen in 08 that people went on CNN bragging about how many times the voted. Black Panthers that were armed and standing outside polling stations and that have known to advocate the murder of (I shit you not) white babies and were left off scott free. They armed Mexican drug cartels just so the escalated violence could be used to justify more gun laws. There is no law under this president. This election they are going to cheat their asses off because they know if they fail they are going to lose everything.
I had a feeling that there were observers in the past, but the ID law will allow the State of Pennsylvania to go after the poll workers if the poll workers fail to enforce it (aka allow voter fraud).
Before there was only the possibility of going after the fraudulent voter. Now the State will be able to go after the poll worker as an accessory to the fraud, because they knew or should have known that the person was voting illegally.
Should make things very interesting.
Like i said before, that depends on whether you win. Observers or not, if you don’t control the executive branches the watchers mean nothing. This gives first mover’s advantage to those committing fraud.
I think the only way you could effectively wipe out ballot fraud is in these cities where fraud is very high, is to end the secret ballot so it won’t matter who counts the ballots, because anyone can.
You’d be surprised just how bad the voter fraud is in Philly. Voting takes place in 1,687 polling site that include bars, funeral homes, etc. The tea parties and others in Penn are working hard to get observers into each polling place in Philly. If the voter id law stays, it will be a thrill to have a chance that my vote might not be wiped out by Philly’s fraud.
http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2010/11/democracy-at-work-in-odd-polling-places/
All of the polling for Pennsylvania that shows Obama up by 5% to 9% is weighted on assumptions that the same voting blocks that turned out in 2008 are going to turn out again to vote for Obama.
This ain’t 2008.
The Democrat base is VERY demoralized, and Pennsylvania’s voter ID law has survived thus far, meaning that the Democrat Party is going to have problems getting individuals out to vote, and they won’t be able to cover it through the fraud that the Democrat party members usually use.
We need to be prepared for another “Black Panther” moment, and the Police need to be ready and willing to arrest any persons whom act in a threatening manner at polling places. The Democrat Party Operatives are going to be reduced to trying to block as much voting as possible by Republicans in the urban areas.
As for the polling showing a dead heat, that is likely much closer to the truth. It’s still a weak poll (+/- 3.45% on only 800 people) but it is with likely voters rather than registered voters, and Romney’s 47% comment will resonate with voters who live outside of the urban centers, likely encouraging them to vote. In 2008, Obama only won by about 600K votes, and The differences in Philadelphia county made up 300K of that and Allegheny and Montgomery County made up another 200K. Of those, on average, 35% of the voters were 24 or younger. That is not likely to happen in this cycle largely due to lack of excitement in the young skulls full of mush but also largely due to Voter ID blocking college students from double dipping (voting at home and while at school).
Whoops! I was looking at the population distribution, not the exit-poll results. 35% of the population is 24 or younger, not the voters. Sorry about the confusion.
Are you talking about the Rasmussen poll? Because he uses an average of 2008 and 2010 to adjust. A rough method but hardly the over weight that the other pollsters use.
Actually I was just discussing the state of polling in Pennsylvania in general that shows Obama up by 5%+. I’m not sure who the PA RSC used.
All pollsters weight their polls, but some weight them less accurately and more more blatantly than others.
The only way you get to a 5+% number is by weighting the polls using numbers from the last presidential election and assuming that the same number of youth and Democrat voters turn out (and even then, the Dem pollsters are “over-weighting” the Democrat turnout by 2 to 3 percent and “under-weighting” the Republican turnout by 2 to 3 percent).
Either the polling numbers will significantly tighten in the next 3 to 4 weeks as the pollsters scramble to save what shreds of their credibility they have left, or on election night when its at least VERY close or, better yet, Romney wins they’ll be out on the unemployment lines the next morning for calling it so badly.
That’s just wishful thinking Chuck. There is still tremendous enthusiasm for Obama in Philly and they are very well organized. If anything, I would argue that there is a bit of apathy from the Republican voters in this area.
You are a plugged in voter, but most around here are not. The news outlets whitewash anything negative about Obama so the outrage we have here is not evident from the everyday Philly voter.
There are no ads running on TV right now. Pro Obama or Anti Obama…just nothing. We haven’t had the carpet bombing yet.
Put another way, Obama got 595,980 votes from Phila Ctyand I think he’ll push that over 600,000 easily. Support for Romney in the city is hard to find.
“Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make drunk with power?”
Obama, are you listening? Are you?
I would looooove this to be true. But Rasmussen just had a poll with a 10+ point advantage to Obama in Pennsylvania. Let’s not build up hopes falsely on this. I hope the trend is going in Romney’s favor, but we need to enlighten a lot more voters in Pennsylvania.
Hi EBL,
Having looked at the basics of it, the Rasmussen Poll is weak too. Likely voters is good. The small number of respondents is bad (500) because it leads to a +/-4.5% error rate. At that rate of error, it’s possible that Obama is actually only up by 1% (you apply error to both results).
The Democrat voting block is likely over-weighted by 1.5% to the Democrat party. Rasmussen is better about this than most, but he also over-weights from time to time.
My guess is that this ends up being just a “urban heavy” sample (meaning more calls from Philly, Scranton and Pittsburgh were answered. September 19th was a Wednesday, and a weekday poll tends to lend itself to a heavier unemployed, low-blue collar and night shift) or college student response than a weekend poll, which tend to be more balanced.
I hope you are right Chuck!
Chuck, by my reckoning, your +/-4.5% error rate on a population of 500 is the error on the spread between the two candidates. The lead claimed for Obama is two standard errors.
At my age & at this time of night, I could have made a slip. Perhaps a statistically knowledgeable LIan can confirm or correct my answer.
It would be difficult to overstate how much the “T” is fired up this year. (The T is Pennsylvania minus Pittsburgh and Philly) Pittsburgh and especially its surrounding areas are very much aware this time around that Obama is gunning for the coal industry (that came out late in the 2008 election and not everyone believed it at the time). So it comes down to the T and Philly being tied with the Philly suburbs as the tiebreaker. If Romney can make the sale and peel off two or three of the Philly suburb counties, I’d say there’s a good chance. I hope the state police is gearing up for election day, it could get “fun” in Philly ….
Pennsylvania is 53% Catholic. And due to the Obama Administration’s Leftist identity polics (Abortion/Gay Marriage/Obamacare contraceptive mandates) I have been expecting the following —
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/09/24/politico-gwu-poll-race-still-a-virtual-dead-heat/
…One more data point: Despite a poll that came out last week, this survey shows Romney winning the Catholic vote by eight points, 51/43, but the Baptist vote by only one point, 49/48. The Catholic vote has been a pretty clear bellwether in American elections over the last several decades. If Obama is losing independents and Catholics and is only down to a +4 gender gap, the road to victory looks pretty narrow indeed.
What this survey does not reflect is what the Catholic Church’s lay organizations are going to do to deliver that vote to Romney.
This doesn’t mean the Democrats can’t cheat their way past that based on Philly voter fraud.
It just means they are going to have to spend a lot of money fighting in Pennsylvania than they originally planned upon.
The diversion of money to Pennsylvania will show up in unexpected Democratic poll collapses elsewhere.
I think people are underestimating the the impact on the Catholic Church’s derision of the HHS mandate. A couple of weeks ago, churches in our area were given an “election guideline” that highlighted Religious Freedom. Without coming out and saying it, I think a very clear message was sent.
Catholics have not forgotten. Nor are they going to by Nov. 6th.
Check out the following links regards catholic lay organization voting efforts:
http://www.catholicvote.org/index.php?/site
http://www.catholicvote.org/index.php?/site/issues_details/catholic_church/
Will do. Thanks for the links.
There is a very good catholic voting history at this link:
SPECIAL REPORT: Catholics in 2012, a series: Wisconsin/Ohio/Florida
http://www.completecatholicism.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1479#1
And, Mitt is ahead by 14%+ for middle class voters. Normally both parties are neck & neck.
May As Well not Even Waste The Gas To Go Vote As The PAers Would Say? You know The Very Ones Who Had The Arlan Spector Switch Senator. May Their Memories Of This Be Remembered At The Polls Who ‘Cling To Their Guns And Religon’ That It Was OTUS himself. In Other Words “Little People Whom Serve Me And I Give Them White House Beer Making Recipts And RSVP Choomp? No, These Are Decent Caring Individuals. If We Had More Like The Ones I’ve met In PA, It ould Be A Better World.