Or is he? When I saw the results of the NBC/Marist poll today, which has Obama leading Romney by a good 4 points or more (depending on state), I admit, my initial reaction was, “I don’t believe ANYTHING NBC puts out.” The bias of NBC for Obama has been evident for over 4 years now, thus my lack of faith in their polls. Heck, even NBC admits it is biased. When it comes to polls, it is all in who and how one asks the question.
It seems I should have been just as skeptical of Marist, as as HotAir’s Ed Morrissey makes clear in this review of the numbers:
[...] In other words, Marist uses a model in Florida that assumes Democratic turnout will be six points higher than in 2008 and seven points higher than in 2010, while Republican turnout remains largely the same, which means that independents vanish. In Ohio, Marist assumes Democratic turnout will be only slightly lower than 2008, while Republican turnout craters below their nadir in 2008 and ignores the big GOP turnout in 2010. Only Virginia looks like a somewhat rational predictive model for the 2012 election, although they significantly oversample independents.
Don’t forget that we’re also looking at registered voters in these models, too, not likely voters. By this time, pollsters should be able to start applying likely-voter models, and in fact the Marist poll’s tables do have some data on which to build those models. That data doesn’t look good for Obama, though. Asked to rate their interest in the presidential election from 1 to 5 with 1 being the most interested, 72% of Virginia Republicans gave a 1, while only 60% of Democrats and 56% of independents did the same. Combining 1 & 2, the D/R/I for enthusiasm in Virginia is 72/78/67. For Florida, 1-only D/R/I is 68/73/52, 1&2 D/R/I 77/81/66. In Ohio, respectively, it’s almost even at 63/63/54 and 75/74/64.[...] (Click here to read the rest.)
In other words, as Scooby Doo would say, “Ruh roh…”
And it gets worse for Obama (not that you can expect some of the MSM to actually acknowledge this). It seems that President Obama is driving away Roman Catholics in droves. Coach Is Right has broken down the particulars:
[...]In the 2008 election Catholics voted for Obama 54/46. That margin was, as much as any other, the reason for his election. There is less and less chance that Catholics will be lining up to support Obama this year as a Pew poll has revealed. What Pew found was that until Obama’s war against the Catholic Church he was leading with Catholics by 9 points. Today that lead is gone and he is behind by 5 points.This 14 point swing away from Obama translates to 18 million lost votes and major trouble in these states with sizable Catholic populations: Pennsylvania (53%) New Jersey (39%) Wisconsin (29%) Florida (26%) Ohio (24%) and Michigan (24%).
Among Catholics 29% now say they are less likely to vote for Barack Obama because of his ham handed attempt to dictate new secular doctrine to their Church. When juxtaposed to the 13% who say they are now more likely to support Obama’s reelection, the yield is a net minus 16 points. He cannot and he will not survive such a gapping (sic) hole in his support. Monday’s 43 lawsuits from Catholic entities was only round one and Obama is already on the ropes. So far Cardinal Dolan is way ahead on points.[...] (Click here to read the rest.)
Despite the attempts by some of these outlets to paint a rosier picture for Obama than exists, no doubt in an attempt to discourage people like me, it seems things are bleaker than they want us to believe.
I imagine things are bleaker than they want to believe. I mean, really, how can we not be as enthralled with The One as they continue to be, despite all the policy blunders, the economy, the ever-increasing national debt, ever shrinking GDP, and on and on? Oh, wait – I know, because we are sentient beings.
I know we have all heard the saying, “numbers don’t lie.” Butt how those numbers are gathered, and just who does the gathering, can, and clearly, does. Way to keep it clean and accurate NBC/Marist. I didn’t expect more from the former, and now I expect less from the latter.
But that’s just me. How about you?
