This is freaking a lot of people out:
Mitt Romney leads President Obama by four percentage points among likely voters in the nation's top battlegrounds, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, and he has growing enthusiasm among women to thank.Nate Silver responds on Twitter:
As the presidential campaign heads into its final weeks, the survey of voters in 12 crucial swing states finds female voters much more engaged in the election and increasingly concerned about the deficit and debt issues that favor Romney. The Republican nominee now ties the president among women who are likely voters, 48%-48%, while he leads by 12 points among men....
Among all registered voters in the survey, Obama leads by nine points among women and by two points overall, 49%-47%.
Looking at breakouts of "swing states" from national polls is just dumb when there are dozens of actual swing state polls out every week.
— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) October 15, 2012
It's basically a choice between looking at a few hundred interviews vs. thousands of them. Not a close call.
— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) October 15, 2012
Also, (i) everybody defines swing states differently and (ii) not all swing states are equally important.
— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) October 15, 2012
The Obama campaign has some thoughts as well:
- Gallup’s likely voter model predicted a 15 point advantage for Republicans, 55-40, on October 31, 2010.That's not the same as GOP poll denialism a few weeks ago, which posited a vast left-wing conspiracy to fake numbers. This is just critiquing Gallup's numbers, which have never seemed ideologically driven, but could be wrong. We'll see what future polls find.
- The final result was a 6 point margin, 51-45.
- That year, Gallup's registered voter survey was much closer to reality at 48-44.
