Pollster Dick Morris: 'The Trend Line Is Distinctly Pro-Romney'

I know, I know, Dick Morris. But let's not forget that he was ex-President Clinton's personal pollster, and whatever else you might think of Mr. Bill ( or Morris, for that matter) Bill Clinton was not the kind of pol to hire an idiot for that supremely important position. So here's how Dick Morris sees it:


The media is trying to create a sense of momentum and of inevitability about the Obama candidacy. One benighted Newsweek reporter even speculated about a possible Democratic landslide.

On Friday, I saw the real numbers. These state-by-state polls, taken by an organization I trust (after forty years of polling) show the real story. The tally is based on more than 600 likely voter interviews in each swing state within the past eight days.

The trend line is distinctly pro-Romney. Of the thirteen states studied, he improved or Obama slipped in nine states while the reverse happened in only four. To read the media, one would think that Romney had a terrible month. In fact, the exact reverse is true.

Romney is currently leading in every state McCain carried plus: Indiana, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Nevada, North Carolina, and Colorado. If he carries these states, he’ll have 228 electoral votes of the 270 he needs to win.

To win the election, Romney would then have to carry Florida where he trails by two points, and either Virginia (behind by two) or Ohio where he’s down by only one.

OK.

First of all, 600 likely voters in each swing state is a fairly small sampling, but it might indicate a trend at this point in time.

More indicative to me is the fact that Romney is consistently out fundraising President Obama and that it's still essentially a tie even in the most favorable polls by the usual suspects after the absolute barrage of negative ads the president's re-election campaign put out there.

My theory all along is that the president's race adds at least ten points to his job approval and 'likeability' ratings. There are a lot of people unwilling to talk against the first black president and create a possible impression of 'racism', even to an anonymous pollster. Needless to say, those constraints won't apply in the privacy of the voting booth.

And I think the right track/wrong track percentages (60% plus for 'wrong track')bear me out.

Where I see the race now in the battle ground states is dead even,with a slight leaning towards Romney. A lot of people already realize that Barack Obama is a miserable failure. Which is exactly why the president's campaign has focused on Romney, a tacit admission of that failure because the campaign is limited to trying to convince the American people that as bad as President Obama has been, Mitt Romney would be a lot worse.

At this point, I think a lot of people are taking a closer look at Mitt Romney to see why they might want to vote for him, as opposed to voting against Barack Obama. Romney's VP pick, his speech at the GOP convention and his performance at the debates is going to help them answer that question.