Every election cycle, the American people are inundated with polls. Polls with blacks, white, Hispanics, women, Jews, Catholics, young people, and the Asians are disseminated ad nauseam – despite most of them being flawed or so skewed concerning the sample spread that it’s not worth commenting on in any analysis. When Romney hit a slump towards the end of September, which led to his dip in the polls, the left thought it was over. No one was more convinced of this than Pew Research president Andrew Kohut, a public-broadcasting regular, who had to change his tune on the October 8 broadcast of the PBS Newshour.
We know that Kohut is not a fan of Romney or Republicans, but it goes to show you how some in the media can jump the gun and look foolish. A blog post featured on NPRon September 19 had Kohut saying “Obama's lead at this point in the race…is stronger than the last three winning presidential candidates." Only Bill Clinton, running in both 1992 and 1996, had bigger leads in mid-September. Clinton's edge over incumbent President George H.W. Bush at this stage in 1992 was 53 to 38 percent; he led Republican Sen. Bob Dole 50 to 48 percent at this stage in 1996. Obama was tied with Republican Sen. John McCain at this point in 2008.” This was when Obama was leading Romney by eight.
Furthermore, “the survey found, however, that Obama leads Romney on most key issues, including, and "notably," Kohut says, "health care, Medicare and abortion. Pew also found that Obama's support is stronger and more positive than Romney's.” And then, the debate happened.
On that night's All Things Considered, Kohut insisted "you can see the overall drift of the polling is now stronger for Obama and the race is close in some polls and Obama leads in others. But in no polls do we see Romney ahead, and that is a very significant factor as we look forward to the main campaign and the debates.
Romney took Obama to school and independents/undecided voters not only have given Mitt a second look – but also have viewed him more favorably. After all, President Obama was looked upon as lazy and disengaged. As a result, Kohut said last night on PBS that:
we have to go back to Romney winning the debate. He won the debate by 46 percentage points. That's the largest victory in history, according to the Gallup poll. And it gave a tremendous boost to his personal image, which was a real problem in September coming out of the conventions and coming out of the gaffes and problems that he had.
So we see in our poll by a margin of seven points, people say he's the candidate with new ideas. He ties Obama now on the -- for strong leader, when a couple of weeks ago and when we did our September survey, it was Obama who was seen as the strong leader. And for the first time in this campaign, Romney's personal favorable rating has hit the 50 percent mark. It's been very, very low. He's brought it back up. He's made the race even among registered voters. And he has a slight lead in our poll among likely voters, unlike the big margin that Obama had a month ago.
The left had no idea that their guy was a horrible debater. The infallible persona that is Barack Obama was shattered on October 3.
