Mitt Romney will not win election 2012.
So why does everyone think so?
A range of polls on Wednesday showed Romney continuing his impressive October run, but also showed Barack Obama on the verge of conquering the battleground states needed to win the Electoral College and the election.
Wait, what?
Gallup Daily Tracking, a seven day rolling average of polls, showed Romney leading 51% to Obama’s 46%. A Washington Post/ABC tracking poll was a bit more modest showing Obama up 49% to 48%. The left-leaning Americans United for Change in Florida showed Obama and Romney tied at 47% each in that vital swing state. The right-leaning Rasmussen reports shows Romney winning the swing state battle, while the left-leaning Public Policy Polling shows Obama light-years ahead of his rival in the exact same battleground states.
Polls, polls, polls, who to believe? With 13 days left until the election, America finds itself in one of the tightest races for the White House in modern history.
The shocking thing here is that many polls/ media outlets/ pundits are actually saying Obama is "losing" this election. Earlier this month we saw ultra-Obama supporter Andrew Sullivan have a complete freak-out about his man “losing” the first presidential debate. Since then the "liberal" media has taken on this doom and gloom narrative for the president.
And Mitt Romney has profited from it.
In September Mitt was down so much in the polls that an Obama re-election was a virtual certainty. Since then, Romney has waged an unprecedented PR campaign. The GOP candidate hasn’t exactly done well in selling himself (first he’s severely conservative, now he’s moderate ... WHICH ONE IS IT?), but has done very well in giving off this #winning aurora … something that a story-hungry media has bitten hard on in order to keep the narrative of election 2012 exciting.
As Jonathan Chait puts it in his NY Mag story, “Romney says he's winning — it's a bluff."
“Romney is carefully attempting to project an atmosphere of momentum, in the hopes of winning positive media coverage and, thus, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. ... Karl Rove employed exactly this strategy in 2000. As we now know, the race was excruciatingly close, and Al Gore won the national vote by half a percentage point. But at the time, Bush projected a jaunty air of confidence. Rove publicly predicted Bush would win 320 electoral votes. Bush even spent the final days stumping in California, supposedly because he was so sure of victory he wanted an icing-on-the-cake win in a deep blue state. Campaign reporters generally fell for Bush's spin, portraying him as riding the winds of momentum and likewise presenting Al Gore as desperate.”
Obama is now being painted as the desperate one … he’s the guy who has to fend off the critics about who-knew-what-when Re: Libya (an issue that has absolutely no ramifications on the health of our country), the guy who has to explain why he the economy is still not as good as it was 12 years ago (I bet John McCain would have had just as hell of a time rebuilding the economy were he elected president in 2008 — heck, anybody elected president after that financial sh*tshow would have had a tough time rebuilding our economy).
Sill, the narrative doesn’t match the reality of what American voters think. Fifty percent of voters now think the economy is improving. A majority of Americans believe Obama has a better grasp of foreign policy matters — literally the only policy area a president has control over (aka, the biggest part of the president’s job).
Romney — the economic wiz — has laid out a tax plan that even his running mate can’t explain. On foreign policy issues, he said that he would go all-out gun-ho on Iran for developing nuclear weapons, but would be friendly with Pakistan because they have nuclear weapons (? …Confused.).
With just under two weeks until the election we have a guy who thinks he’s president, but has’t given any real reason as to why he should be president … and we have the president (who hasn’t done the best of jobs, I’ll admit), who is actully doing his job very well, whether the "liberal" media likes to aknowledge it or not.
So many polls, but which data point would actually point to who will win on Novemeber 6?
Job approval for Obama:
Obama’s job favorability is on the rise, at 53% and trending up. As PolicyMic's conservative pundit and politics expert Jesse Merkel explains, approval ratings are everything in an election year. Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush all had approval ratings under 50%. The other thing they all had in common? They all also lost their bid for a second term. Fifty Percent is the magic mark. If you’re above that heading into an election year, you’re chances remain promising.
George W. Bush at this time in 2004 was at 49% approve, 47% disapprove. I don't need to tell you how that election turned out.
