The latest Rasmussen Reports Daily Presidential Tracking Poll released today shows Mitt Romney back in the lead over President Obama by a 47 percent to 46 percent margin and three percent preferring another candidate. When voters leaning to one of the candidates are included, Romney has a 49 percent to 47 percent lead over the president. The poll also finds the president having a 49 percent approval rating while being disapproved by 51 percent. This is where Barack Obama has been in this poll for months, with the exception of briefly having an approval rating at or above 50 percent for a few days earlier this month that appears to have been a “bounce” after the Democratic National Convention.
The Rasmussen poll also found that 49 percent of Republican voters are following the race on a daily basis while just 42 percent are doing so. Likewise, other national surveys of the presidential race have, including the Washington Post/ABC News poll released earlier this week, found a higher “enthusiasm” factor about the race among Republican voters than that of Democratic voters.
The map above is an alternative analysis of the electoral vote standing for this presidential race done for QstarNews.com by the author of this article. The methodology for this particular map is quite simple. For each state, the polling data listed for that state at Real Clear Politics is viewed, and when obviously skewed media polls are removed, the remaining credible polls are averaged. If that average shows Obama at 50.1 percent or better, that state is shaded blue for Obama. Any result below that for Obama, and the state is shaded red for Romney. This reflects just about all the undecided vote going to Romney by the time voters cast their ballots in the actual election.
The remaining key events left during this campaign are the three presidential debates between President Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Even among most polls that are skewed, such as the Washington Post/ABC News poll released earlier this week that show Obama with a 49 percent to 48 percent lead, the race is at best tied or within the margin of error of the polls. A strong performance by Romney in that first debate could easily lead to Romney having a four to seven percent lead in most credible polls.
Strong performances in the other two debates could easily double that lead for Romney. Additionally, Romney is expected to have a strong advantage in available money for purchasing advertisement buys both nationally and in the key swing states. This advantage could move enough percentage points in the polls to win many or all of the states that are still in play by mid to late October.
Given what the current polls are showing, even a 54 percent to 40 percent margin among independents for Romney in that heavily skewed CNN/ORC poll, it is reasonable to predict that Romney could very well win among independent voters by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent. Democrats could support President Obama by a 85 percent to 15 percent margin while Republicans show support for Romney by a margin of 90 percent to 10 percent. With Romney closing the sale for his candidacy with strong performances in the debates, the enthusiasm factor among the Republican based, and the lesser of such a factor among the Democratic base, leads to Democrats voting 10 percent less and Republicans voting 10 percent more. These factors, and the electorate resembling the partisan trends measured by Rasmussen Reports in interviewing tens of thousands voters, which shows the electorate this year made up of 37.6 percent Republican voters, 33.3 percent Democratic voters and 29.2 percent independent voters.
Calculations using those numbers and parameters described above suggest a popular vote projection of Romney winning 58.3 percent to Obama's 41.7 percent. That is comparable to the popular vote majority received by Ronald Reagan in 1984. If Romney's popular vote percentage is anywhere between 55 percent to 58 percent, some of those blue states on the map above are likely to have turned red on election night. Put simply, given that Obama's continued disapproval by the majority of likely voters, and the possibility that Romney could finally close the sale for his candidacy with stronger performances in the three debates with Barack Obama, the swinging of just about all the undecided voters to Romney along with a strong turnout by the Republican base could lead to a Romney landslide.
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