Mitt Romney's performance at the Republican National Convention in Tampa last week doesn't appear to be moving the needle in his favor:
- Gallup finds Romney's speech producing the least impact in voters' intentions of any nominee's convention speech since 1984. Romney's speech also got the lowest "excellent" and "good" ratings since 1996.
- Public Policy Polling finds holding the convention in Florida didn't boost Romney there: post-convention, Floridians still give Obama the edge, 48% to 47%.
- PPP finds Obama leading Romney in his home state of Michigan 51% to 44%. 57% of those polled don't consider Romney a Michigander. Among Michigan Independents, 36% say the GOP convention made them less likely to vote Republican, while 25% said it made them more likely to vote GOP.
- PPP finds Romney has pulled 3 points closer to Obama in Colorado. The President is holding steady at 49% in Colorado, while Romney has risen from 43% to 46%. PPP says Romney has firmed up his GOP base, but the President maintains a consistent lead among Independents.
Perhaps Mitt Romney is not seeing a bounce because he's mired in his own fibbery. Consider: Gordon Howie is shouting this morning about President Obama lying his way to a second term. Howie bases his sloppy, hyperbolic argument on Obama advisor David Axelrod's job creation claims. We can have a fair debate about how many jobs the President has created and about which month we should start counting at.
But to say the President is lying about job creation is an exaggeration exposing what seems to be an all too common GOP tactic: accuse the Democrats of exactly the sin Republicans are committing. To wit: Steve Benen is documenting the lies told by the Mitt Romney campaign. Over 30 weeks, Benen has documented 533 lies from Mitt Romney.
533 to 1—if Romney keeps lying at that rate, that's the Electoral College margin he'll hand to President Obama.
It's kind of hard to bounce, Mitt, when you're stuck in the mud of deception.
That's what people in the trade call a "dead cat bounce." Cory.
Regarding job gains/losses, I suggest that it's disingenuous of Howie et al to count pre-stimulous job losses. Those are obviously the ripples from the Bush plunge into the dunk tank.
Similarly, Howie fails to acknowledge that Obama has done all this with one hand tied behind his back. Public sector jobs have actually gone down under the current administration, whereas, during the GOP recessions (Reagan and Bushes), public sector jobs were seen as the way out.
I'm not going to drag out the charts. Gordo can look them up himself. Maybe it will help improve his critical thinking skills.
Stop blaming the other guy across the aisle and work with them. It doesn't matter if you are Democrat or Republican: if you can't do your job because of your poor attitude, resign and let someone else take over.
Michael, good advice. Tell it to the Tea Party members of Congress.
Great point, Michael: Rep. Noem should step down because she's ineffectual, especially in opposition. Regardless and irrespective of her political affiliation South Dakota would be better represented by a Democrat since our party will be in power for at least two more years.
They are all ineffective because of their leadership.
Did the strip clubs in Tampa at least get a bounce from the convention? How many of the GOP delegates got a bounce?
Bill's guru Nate Silver basically said the convention bounce of the GOP is normal for the last three elections. Additionally, because the electorate has been extremely stable for the last 6 months, any bounce is in a way surprising.
This said, I think after the Dem Convention the bounce will be about the same and we will settle in about where we were before. I think both candidates will have 247-248 Electoral Votes (as of prior to the GOP convention and will have post the Dem convention) with the remaining roughly 45 Electoral Votes to close to call.
The debates will tip the scales one way or another. And, they only have to tip the scales to affect less than 1 in 200 voters to be decisive in those states.
Predictions today are just fun but in reality extreme speculation.
Let's freely admit that the GOP convention was a dud. Clint Eastwood was the highlight, with the candidates and all of their surrogates generating yawns - if they weren't just ignored altogether. The fact is that Romney is not likeable or believable, and nobody can change that. There is a malaise in the GOP with the only uniting factor being opposition to President Obama/the will to win power to further cut taxes for billionaires and start wars.
Whoever decided to cap off the GOP convention with Clint Eastwood should have been publicly fired. The fact this hasn't happened should give a clue how Romney will handle disasters in the future, if a campaign is our best evidence how a nonincumbent will perform in office.
Clint well are you going to pull that hog leg or just whistle dixie.
I just thought of an interesting meme the Obama campaign could use.
Start with a station wagon that's a look alike to the Romney's former car. Make wax figurines of the smiling Romney family inside with a wax figurine of their terrified dog in a cage strapped to the roof, complete with fake urine & feces running down the sides and rear of the car. Take that car around to Willard's appearances & put a sign on it. "The 1% rides inside the car."
Heres the deal guys:
The GOP convention wasn't designed to appeal to me or to you firmly in the Obama camp. Same with the Dem convention. Our "opinion" or assessment is meaningless. It is those in the middle and I think the verdict is out on the GOP convention and will be for the Dem Convention.
More importantly, the conventions are like the start of a football game. The GOP rec'd the opening kickoff and the scripted plays are to see how the other side reacts. If it results in a score, it is a bonus. Now it is the Dem's to see how the GOP reacts to their plays.
The value of the convention is how these opening moves affect the remaining game. Assessment by our untrained eyes is just armchair quarterbacking. The key is how the "eyes in the booth" plot out the rest of the game.
Nah, that sign is too long. Should say simply, "The 1% rides inside." Sends a clear message that the 99% are in for a @#$^ ride with Romney driving.
Well, now that you brought it up, Troy, Nate Silver projects Obama at 308 electoral votes on Nov. 6 and a 74.8% chance of winning. But of course, you already knew that. Maybe instead of just a bounce, what you guys need is a miracle :^)
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/
Whatever both candidates say or have said in the past is being trumped by what American's really want to hear. And that is which candidate has a better plan on cutting the size of government and slashing the debt load we are under. Republicans in the past have cut taxes and increased spending. Democrats in the past have raised taxes and increased spending. The only time in my life when we actually saw a balanced budget was while Gingrich was driving the GOP controlled House and Clinton was running the White House. What would be interesting to know is how many billions of dollars are sitting in the bank accounts of major corporations waiting to see who wins the White House before investing those dollars. And it is possible that certain business's see positive growth from different candidates.
(Roschach those strip clubs were not on SD Delegations agenda but the poor guys in SF who were blathered all over the news for attempting to hook up with Police Hookers sure have taken a beating publicly.)
Charlie,
You had to mention the sting didn't you. :) Fact is, our police chief Bartel is doing a great job addressing the changing vehicles for dealing with the growing challenges of being a city vs. a small town. This "reverse sting" is just one of the new approaches the police here are using. By the way, I've asked at least 20 people if they knew any of the "johns" and they didn't so the consensus is they are not visible people in our community.
Charlie you make a lot of sense. And nobody would expect to find pole dancers on the SD delegates' agenda. If those arrested guys in Sioux Falls had agendas you probably wouldn't find "hire hooker" on it either.
Troy makes a valiant effort to try to poo-poo the lack of a bounce. Trends show that it could be a signficant factor -- especially since it puts Romney in the company of two other presidential candidates who lost.
From Gallup:
Past presidential nominees have seen their support among registered voters increase five points on average after their party's nominating convention, according to Gallup's review of the history of convention bounces going back to 1964.
Romney becomes one of three recent nominees -- and the first Republican -- who did not receive a convention bounce, joining George McGovern in 1972 and John Kerry in 2004. Both McGovern and Kerry, like Romney, challenged incumbent presidents, with McGovern suffering a landslide defeat to Richard Nixon and Kerry losing a close election to George W. Bush.
I think a more appropriate term for Mr. Romney would be: "weasel."
An even more appropriate term for Mr. Ryan would be: "crap weasel."
Dave,
I'm not poo-pooing anything. First, there used to be more than a week between conventions giving more time for a bounce. Second, the race has been stable since March and has barely moved not matter what has happened (gaffe's like "you didn't build that" or jobs reports). In prior years, there was greater volatility.
The test will be whether Obama gets a bigger bounce, equal (my guess), or less.
From Bill Flemings's guru, Nate Silver:
"But do you notice a pattern here? The three smallest bounces for the challenging candidates came in the last three elections. Bounces aren’t what they used to be, perhaps because voters are saturated with information months in advance of an election, increased partisanship and sterilized conventions that may have become too polished for their own good.
The catch is that each of these things is a structural factor, and therefore might predict that Mr. Obama won’t get much of a bounce either. Maybe this is just the new normal; the assumption that our forecast model had made in advance of the convention was that Mr. Romney would get only a four-point bounce."
I don't think it really much matters. All most people really remember and keep alluding to about the RNC is that empty chair that got a long lecture by an old ranting and rambling man. Bring on Betty White to the DNC. Now, that's a person I want to hear from!
Is any of this the truth? Can someone fact check this?
Very Interesting Bit of Detective Work, Obama!
1.
Back in 1961 people of color
were called 'Negroes.' So how can the
Obama 'birth certificate' state he is
'African-American when
the term
wasn't even used at that time?
2.
The birth certificate that the
White House released lists Obama's birth as August 4, 1961. It also lists Barack Hussein Obama as his father.
No big deal, right? At the time of Obama's birth, it also shows that his father is aged 25 years old, and that Obama's father was born in " Kenya , East Africa ". This wouldn't seem like anything of concern, except the fact that Kenya did not even exist until 1963, two whole years after Obama's birth, and 27 years after his father's birth. How could Obama's father have been born in a country that did not yet exist? Up and until Kenya was formed in 1963, it was known as the " British East Africa Protectorate".
3.
On the birth certificate
released by the White House, the listed place of birth is "Kapi'olani Maternity Gynecological Hospital ". This cannot be, because the hospital(s) in question in 1961 were called "KauiKeolani Children's Hospital" and "Kapi'olani Maternity Home", respectively.
The name did not change to
Kapi'olani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital until 1978, when these two hospitals merged.
How can this particular
name of the hospital be on a birth certificate dated 1961 if this name had not yet been applied to it until 1978?
HOW NO ONE GETS
A REASSIGNED SS NUMBER
An intensive investigation has revealed the identity of the man whose Social Security number (SSN) is being used by President Obama:
Jean Paul Ludwig, who was born in France in 1890, immigrated to the United States in 1924, and was assigned SSN 042-68-4425 (Obama's current SSN) on or about March 1977.
Ludwig lived most of his adult life in Connecticut . Because of that, his SSN begins with the digits 042, which are among only a select few reserved for Connecticut residents.
Obama never lived or worked in that state! Therefore, there is no reason on earth for his SSN to start with the digits 042. None whatsoever!
Now comes the best part! Ludwig spent the final months of his life in Hawaii , where he died.
Conveniently, Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Payne Dunham, worked part-time in the Probate Office in the Honolulu Hawaii Courthouse, and therefore had access to the SSNs of deceased individuals.
The Social Security Administration was never informed of Ludwig's death, and because he never received Social Security benefits there were no benefits to stop and therefore, no questions were ever raised.
The suspicion, of course, is that Dunham, knowing her grandson was not a U.S. Citizen, either because he was born in Kenya or became a citizen of Indonesia upon his adoption by Lolo Soetoro simply scoured the probate records until she found someone who died who was not receiving Social Security benefits, and selected Mr. Ludwigs Connecticut SSN for Obama.
Just wait until Trump gets past the birth certificate and onto the issue of Barry O's use of a stolen SSN. You will see leftist heads exploding, because they will have no way of defending Obama.
Although many Americans do not understand the meaning of the term "natural born" there are few who do not understand that if you are using someone else's SSN it is a clear indication of fraud.
Let's all get this information out to everybody on our mailing lists.
If the voters of this great nation can succeed in bringing this lying, deceitful, cheating, corrupt, impostor to justice it will be the biggest and best news in decades for our country and the world.
Resources:
http :// www . kapiolani . org /women-and-children/about-us/default. aspx
Post-colonial history (from Wikipedia)
http :// en . wikipedia . org / wiki /History_of_Kenya
http :// en . wikipedia . org / wiki / Kenya
Why hasn't this been discussed in the major media?????
SuperSweet,
Thanks for making your "side" look ridiculous.
I, for one, hope you get a TV or radio show (maybe a blog, cough, cough) to amplify your voice.
This post was sent to me and I am just looking for someone with the resources to do the fact checking on it as I don't buy into to all this stuff that is flying around. Read the first two sentences of the post.
If you got it as an email, I would guess there is a point for point debunking on snopes.com.
I think Troy's point of a lack of bounce is fairly right on. I don't know if polls can measure the new mechanics of elections focused on specific counties in an election. From what I have been reading, it doesn't sound like the parties are focusing on swing states, but are focusing on swing counties in the swing states.
Dougal: Mitt Romney himself invited Eastwood to speak at the convention, after Eastwood endorsed Romney at a fundraiser. If anyone gets fired for that decision, it's the man at the top.
The latest CNN poll, conducted post-convention, backs what Troy says: one-point bounce, average for the 21st century.
SuperSweet, Justin's right: here's a Snopes.com article debunking the top half of that junk mail about the birth certificate. Here's a Snopes.com article debunking the Social Security Number silliness. In general, mass e-mail forwards have no informational value. Delete them without pause or concern.
the chair got a bigger bounce then Romney
Thanks Dr. Heidelberger. I wish that was not true that Romney himself signed off on it, and nobody bothered to override control of the message. The person to be fired is the one in charge of editing messages from the podium. This person exists.
As to the birther crap, if Donald Trump's ridiculosity and Clint Eastwood's empty chair is the best the Republicans have got in 2012, they will get shellacked.
"It's kind of hard to bounce, Mitt, when you're stuck in the mud of deception" ...
... and that deception is so obvious!
Troy we joked about the ominous number of strip clubs in Tampa Bay, and even asked the bus driver on their proximity to our hotel (just before getting backhanded across the head by my wife :) ) . He was sitting next to an armed police/sheriff guard and did not respond, smartly. But the guys in SF who are scouring the internet for illegitimate conjugational cohabitation certainly do not have a moral agenda, or a relationship of proper merits with either their friends or their wives.
To be fair and balanced I do believe that both Obama and Romney are very true to their friends and to their wives and families, so making the case on moral dictation in daily walks through life get a zero sum balance of negativity from either party towards either candidate. But from there the differences grow astoundingly and acutely polarizing.
Wow' the Governor of Massachusetts just publicy said that marrying anyone you love is what the Democratic party and Barack Obama is all about. Now that is polarizing................
Oh great! Mitt Romney made an appearance at the DNC. Of course it was during the video tribute to Senator Edward Kennedy and their debate when Mitt declared just how pro-choice he was!
"Wow' the Governor of Massachusetts justeach publicy said that marrying anyone you love is what the Democratic party and Barack Obama is all about. Now that is polarizing................"
Whats more polarizing Mr. Hoffman: Saying it's ok for two people who love each other being married regardless of sex and has no effect on anybody else or a party that wants to take away insurance away from people who can't afford it and has an effect on all of us?
Troy, I now find myself drifting your way on this issue after thinking about it off and on for most of day. I agree that we are dealing with a "new normal," caused not only by instant communication of social media but by, I believe, the influence that so much super PAC money has by super-soaking voters with positive and negative political advertising this campaign season.
The statement Michelle Obama made tonight that will sway those voters on the fence is:
"We learned about honesty and integrity, that the truth matters, that you don’t take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules."
Juxtapose that against the media fact checking barrage of Paul Ryan, against Mitt Romney paying 13% taxes, tax avoidance in offshore banks, Etch-a-Sketch values or as Mayor Castro said...extreme makeover Mitt.
truth matters... key line, Jana! What does it profit a man to gain a one-point bounce and forfeit his soul?
Speaking of 'truth matters.' The Mitchell Daily Republic has this up on their website: http://mitchell.areavoices.com/2012/09/04/thune-gets-pants-on-fire-rating-from-politifact/
"South Dakota’s own John Thune has been called a liar by PolitiFact for saying the Obama administration sought to ban farm kids from doing chores."
Here's the lie:
From the Miami Herald political blog:
(Thune) said the Obama administration ‘proposed banning farm kids from doing basic chores!’
…
We explored Thune’s claim and found that the truth wasn’t close to what he said.
From PolitiFact:
The summary of the proposed rules stated they “would impact only hired farm workers and in no way compromise the statutory child labor parental exemption involving children working on farms owned or operated by their parents.â€
Sadly, there is no price to pay for lying within the Republican Party. Their ethics have been polarized into a drop box.
It's good that the media is starting to stop looking past the lies and acting only as stenographers. Heck, Pat Lalley at the Argus even said they are going to be fact checking our own candidates here in South Dakota. So maybe when Kristi pulls this same lie out during her campaign, the media will actually call her on her lie.
Pretty sure Kristi pulled out that lie -- briefly -- during the Dakotafest debate. Wouldn't be surprised if she uses and re-uses it (perhaps abuses it is a better term) up until November.
Kristi used the "farm kids banned from chores" lie at her Sioux Falls public meeting.
RomneyCare paying for MA inmate's sexual reassignment: RT @Jon Lauck.
I wonder if the Mitchell, SD woman who was delivering her child at the same time as Obama, would find the Supersweet post interesting.
Republicans are all about backward to 1929 and Democrats are favoring opportunity to move forward. The national GOP has little to show for itself in the last 30 years. It is an irrelevant relic-- the buggy whip party.
Letterman or some other wag noted that Romney is just another common man. He bags his own gold. He pushes his own buttons in the garage 4-story elevator. He may even clean up the manure from his dressage horsey where his wife can go bouncy-bouncy even if SD delegates didn't get either a bounce or bouncy-bounce out of the Tampa Fiction Theater.
The GOP is scared spitless in Ohio: focused on removing Gary Johnson from the ballot
http://www.ideastream.org/news/feature/48828?
Cringe-worthy: Willard confronts a Viet Nam vet for marrying.
http://www.upworthy.com/mitt-romney-accidentally-confronts-a-gay-veteran-awesomeness-ensues?g=2
Obama gets a post convention bounce! Not sure how this matches up to the theories from Troy etc, but I think this does throw a wrench into explaining away the lack of a bounce for Romney.
Sorry...here's the link to the Gallup poll:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspx
Nate Silver predicts a slightly bigger bump for incumbents than for challengers. It could be meaningless, but only up to a point. Keep an eye on it. The thing that sticks out for me today is the marked increase in job approval in Gallup's daily tracking poll:
http://pollingreport.com/obama_job1.htm
Also, here's the Silver article on bumps:
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/sept-5-looking-ahead-after-charlotte/
Jana... great minds... LOL.
Gallup also has Obama up in "trial heats" but not by as mych. More significant, perhaps is the break from the trend. We'll have a better idea middle to end of next week.
http://pollingreport.com/wh12gent.htm
Note, Jana, that the Gallup poll you cite is Obama Job Approval, not Obama vs. Romney. Still, the latest number, 52% approval, is from Sep. 4 to Sep. 6. That would have included most of the convention action, though most if not all of the Sep. 6 calls probably happened before the Obama and Biden speeches last night. And that 52% is the highest approval rating I see on his graph since May 2011, after killing bin Laden.
Here's some more polling data in:
Obama takes slim post-convention lead over Romney: Reuters/Ipsos poll
http://www.cnbc.com/id/48946039
"In what appears to be a convention-induced bounce, Obama jumped ahead in the latest daily tracking poll with 46 percent of 1,434 likely voters saying they would vote for him if the November 6 elections were held today, topping Romney's 44 percent."
"The numbers only moved a little bit but they moved in the direction that suggests that we may be seeing the first inkling of a post-convention bump," Ipsos pollster Julia Clark said.
"Romney in the past few days had held a 1 or 2 percentage point lead in the poll in the wake of the Republican convention last week."
This should have the GOP squirming a little bit more.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/obama_approval_index_history
Check out the Obama's approval rating in the last 5 days. Yep, that's a 9 point swing in approval.
Wonder if any of our Republican friends that stop by might have a good answer for this one. Of course, they might say that Rasmussen has a well known liberal bias.
Why yes, Jana, there appears to have been a GOP convention bounce... for Obama.
Yes there might be a little glitch in Troy's theory.
But I more hopeful that people have seen how empty and dishonest the Romney/Ryan campaign is and figured out that Michelle Obama was right that the belief that - "We learned about honesty and integrity, that the truth matters, that you don’t take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules."
CNN poll indicates a landslide for Obama. The detail is interesting and should be distressing for Romney.
Here's the story:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/10/cnn-poll-obama-up-six-points-over-romney/
And here's the detail:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/10/cnnorc-poll-september-7-9-presidential-election/comment-page-1/
What struck me was the lack of enthusiasm for Romney. Of course, given the total lack of full throated endorsements after he clinched and the attacks from his "friends" in the primaires it isn't hard to understand.
Heck, even Michele Bachmann is under the gun.
Here's the story:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/10/michele-bachmann-poll_n_1871069.html
Here's the detail:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/105479028/Jim-Graves-September-Internal-Poll
Sorry for all the links...but here's another from Kos that lays out the significant details of the CNN poll.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/10/1130079/-Nine-things-we-learned-from-CNN-s-latest-poll