Jim Geraghty
National Review Online
9/21/2012
I reached out to Republican pollster John McLaughlin for yesterday’s piece on how undecided voters are likely to break, and he made some separate comments about polls, their impact on motivation for each side, and how the campaigns want to use skewed poll numbers to depress the opposition.
How he’s defining likely voters right now: “For the most part we’re polling likely voters. It’s a loose screen. We keep people who say they’re only somewhat likely to vote. But the vast majority say that they are definitely or very likely to vote. They’re voting.”…
…On what a realistic partisan breakdown would look like: “The 2004 national exit polls showed an even partisan turnout and Bush won 51–48. Had it been the +4 Democratic edge of 2000, John Kerry would have been president. 2008 was a Democratic wave that gave them a +7 partisan advantage. 2010 was a Republican edge. There’s no wave right now. There are about a dozen swing states where in total millions of voters who voted in 2008 for Obama are gone or have not voted since. There are also hundreds of thousands of voters in each of several swing states like Ohio, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, and others who voted from rural, exurban or suburban areas in 2004 for Bush who did not vote in 2008, because they were not excited by McCain or thought he would lose. They are currently planning to vote mainly as a vote against President Obama.”…
Read the entire article at National Review Online.
Update: Kirsten Powers: The media seems to be taking their orders from the Obama administration
Kirsten Powers on Fox News earlier today blasting the media for their lack of curiosity in this Benghazi story, saying they should be embarrassed that Univision was the first to ask the president about the security situation on 9/11…
Update 2: Finish hard, and fight through the finish line at Legal Insurrection. A good read which includes this video:
