(Video) What British Muslims Really Think

This video on what British Muslims think is especially interesting. First, because it involves a survey that was conducted by Trevor Phillips, the former chair of the British government's Equality and Human Rights Commission, someone who was actually part of the bureaucracy involved in bringing so many Muslim migrants to Britain. Second, because it involved an extensive study by a well known and renowned survey company with a much larger than average sampling using techniques that were especially designed for accuracy rather than speed or cost effectiveness.

Mr. Phillips, to his credit, appears to analyze the results in a non-biased way, openly admits his surprise at the results and acknowledges what they mean. Well worth a watch, as this applies to more countries than just the UK:



On the other hand, (spoiler alert) I disagree with his conclusion that more forced integration of Muslims into non-Muslim British society in the entire solution.

Most British Muslims, according to the results of very study he uses would never agree to it. A significant number would never consent to giving up their sharia courts, or be capable of changing their innate beliefs on the treatment of women, Jews, homosexuals or infidels in general. Instead, they would insist on British society changing so that their beliefs and practices would be the new norm. Anything else they would loudly scream is 'racism.'

Given the craven way the the British government has comported itself thus far when it comes to appeasing Islam domestically, Mr. Phillip's suggestion would simply mean exactly that, a major change in British society to accommodate Islam, sharia and everything that involves.

This is, after all, a country where the police spend their time 'cautioning' (Britspeak for the police threatening fines and arrests) people who merely express their opinions on certain subjects like the problems involved with the Muslim migrants instead of tracking down British Muslims who are home now from fighting for ISIS, conducting surveillance on certain suspicious jihadi mosques or cracking down on 'Asian' sex grooming gangs targeting young, often underage British girls. And in England,that can mean girls younger than 15.

New Polls: Black And Hispanic Voters Are Turning From Clinton To Trump

According to new polls, Donald Trump is up to 20% among black voters, and rising. And among Hispanic voters, a very diverse group Trump is actually exceeding Romney, especially in key battle ground states:

In some places, Trump is actually outperforming Romney. In Nevada, for example, President Obama ran up a 47-point margin of victory among Hispanic voters in 2012, according to exit polls, defeating Romney 71 percent to 24 percent. A recent Marist poll in the state for NBC News and The Wall Street Journal showed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton leading among Hispanics, but by the smaller margin of 35 points, 65 percent to 30 percent.

A series of Univision polls earlier this month surveying Hispanic voters in four battleground states — Arizona, Colorado, Florida and Nevada — also put Trump in the same ballpark as Romney four years ago. Clinton’s lead over Trump among Hispanics in Colorado was smaller than Obama’s margin in that state in 2012.

A Bloomberg Politics "poll decoder" on Tuesday averaged several national surveys and found Clinton leading among Hispanics by 38 points. But Obama won the group by six points more in 2012, according to exit polls.

 


Actually, I think both these numbers for black and Latino numbers supporting Trump are understated. People in many of these communities might say one thing to pollsters and their peers just to go along to get along, but for a surprising number, what happens inside the voting booth is going to be quite different. None of this will be any surprise to people who have actually attended his Yu-uge rallies and seen the diversity of the people whom attend them.

 

The reason for that is obvious. Trump is talking bread and butter issues to the communities that have been hardest hit by Obama's policies. He's talking jobs to people that desperately need them. He's talking ending illegal migration to people that have to live with the results of increased housing costs, lower wages and diminished prospects. He's talking school choice to people desperate to get their kids out of dysfunctional public schools and better law enforcement to people that have to live with the reality of crack houses, gangs flourishing in their neighborhoods and the ever present danger of their children being murdered as collateral damage in street wars.

What's even more important is that he's going to their neighborhoods and talking directly to these people, not just issuing policy papers and statements. Mitt Romney had the baggage of his LDS faith, an issue for some Catholics and Evangelicals. But what I think really cut his numbers down among blacks and Latinos was that with rare exceptions he ignored them. There were few if any campaign offices in minority neighborhoods, little phone banking or canvassing and definitely very few if any rallies or campaign events,let alone poll watchers. That's why in places like detroit and Philadelphia you had precincts with 120% turnout and not a single recorded Romney vote.

Trump is doing exactly the opposite, and it's going to show up to a surprising degree on election day.

Fun fact: there's an organized campaign to get bigoted Trump hater Jorge Ramos removed from his slot as a news anchor at UniVison. And while Brent Bozell is heading it, the campaign is being driven by Latino journalists and public figures.

Whore Hay won't be leaving, of course but the very fact that his nonsense is being increasingly recognized is unprecedented.

The times, they are a'changing.

 

Is Trump Stoppable?

 
 
An interesting discussion over at Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight...as always, some of the better reality based political thought out there.

Gallup: Obama At 38% Approval

And a solid 54% disapproval rating.

Given a number of people's paranoia about being thought 'racist' even to a pollster, I would say that this president's real approval ratings are actually in the low 30's.

Setting aside the rampant voter fraud that occurred in 2012 and would occur now, President Obama would not be re-elected if he ran today against Mitt Romney.

The wheels are off , buyer's remorse is rampant and the fiction is cracking at an increasing pace. Res ipsa Loquitar


"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." - Abraham Lincoln

Gallup:Israel's Critics Are Younger, Less Educated And Informed, And Mostly Democrat

 

 Americans’ pro-Israel sentiments remain near an all-time high, according to Pew’s  numbers, and CNN measures public support for Israel’s recent actions against Hamas at a robust (57/43)..which since it's CNN, probably means the real numbers are a lot closer to Pew's.

But Gallup has an interesting new poll out that puts thing in a different light..



While America is still overwhelmingly pro-Israel, the part that skews anti-Israel has a very  interesting demographic. Hamas has very little support, but as Gallup itself revealed in their internals, what brings the pro-Israel numbers up so high is self-identifying Republicans and GOP leaners. They back Israel by a huge 44% margin over those who do not, whereas Democrats backing Israel lose out by 16 points to those who don't.

The profile of those who don't consider  Israel’s  war against  Hamas as “justified” are young people (-26), non-whites (-24), women (-11), and people with a high school education or less (-11) . This is also known as the Democratic coalition.



Another breakdown comes when you look at people following the events occurring closely as opposed to your typical low information voters whom don't and rely on soundbites from the likes of MSNBC:



None of this is exactly a surprise to me. I've written before that one important goal that President Obama,our first truly anti-Israel president worked hard on was to make support for Israel a partisan issue. He's succeeded.

Anyone who's been paying attention over the last 5 years understands that, and 2012 underlined it. That year saw President Obama, running unopposed for re-election strip out nearly all of the pro-Israel language of 2008 from the 2012 Democrat party platform.

When prominent Jews and others in the party objected and the White House realized it didn't poll well, we saw one of the most amazing moments in American politics. The Obama campaign tried to amend changes in the platform by voice vote on the floor of the national convention in Charlotte,NC, and the nation watched as at least half (and probably more) of the delegates on the floor at the Democratic national convention tried to vote down the amendment including references to G-d and Jerusalem as Israel's capital in the party platform. There was a near riot when those changes were shoved through over the obvious wishes of the assembled delegates in spite of the proposed amendment clearly not getting the required two thirds majority after three futile tries.



Will Jews and other pro-Israel Democrats get a clue from this and realize where the Democrats are moving? That remains to be seen.To my mind, the party is split right now, with much of its older, more establishment members still pro Israel. But the party’s present and future base? They're moving in a very different direction, and those Democrats who consider themselves pro-Israel had better realize it and think about what they're supporting.

Pew's Cowardly Dhimmi Poll Is An Absolute Disgrace

 

Pew Research is a non-partisan, self founded arm of the Pew Foundation who does polls and surveys both in America and overseas. Their most recent one is part of their Religion In Public Life project, and is entitled, 'How Americans Feel About Religious Groups.'

A number of questions were asked about how people in different groups feel about other religious groups, and even atheists were included as both subjects for others and as respondents.

The results are quite interesting. For instance, according to the poll, the three religious groups ranked on Pew's 'thermometer' as eliciting the warmest and most positive reactions were Jews(63), Catholics (62) and Evangelical Christians (61). The two groups getting the most frigid reactions were atheists (41) and at the bottom of the pile, Muslims (40). members of the groups were allowed to vote on their feelings for their own group..with a giant glaring exception that was a despicable example of political correctness at its worst.

Pew, unlike many of polls these days is wide open about revealing their mechanics..exactly what questions were asked, who was polled, how many of each group were polled, how those polled broke down in terms of party affiliation, age, sex, education, race, etc. They even broke down the results with the responses of the members of a particular group included and the total results among the other groups with the responses of a particular group excluded.

Guess which group they didn't poll.

 


There are over three and a half million Muslims in America, and Pew somehow couldn't find a reason to interview a single one for their survey.

Why?

It's well known that a significant number of Muslims are extremely intolerant of Christians, Hindus, and especially Jews, and that the Qu'ran and Hadiths actually promote this. Was Pew afraid of revealing that in their findings?

Were they afraid that revealing it might even spark a lower rating for Muslims the next time out?

Or was it merely an attempt to show Christians and Jews as intolerant of Islam while not revealing how intolerant of other faiths many Muslims are?

 

Pew might try to hedge and say that they didn't interview anyone but Jews or people belonging to Christian groups. So then, why interview people who characterize themselves as atheists and agnostics, around 20% of the poll survey?

And for that matter, why not include Buddhists and Hindus in the survey? Was that an attempt at a cover for Pew's avoidance of surveying Muslims?

No matter how you slice this, it's absolutely ridiculous and I'm surprised at Pew, a reputable organization pulling this.

They aren't fooling anyone who's paying attention.

BREAKING!! Israel Names The Kidnappers

 

Israel has named two of the kidnappers responsible for abducting teenagers Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach.

They are Hamas operatives Marwan Kawasmeh (29) and Amar Abu-Eisha (33), and both were  freed as part of the Shalit deal.Both have been arrested numerous times.

 

The Shin Bet was originally able to pinpoint them because they have been keeping tabs on the terrorists released in the Shalit deal. They were the only ones unaccounted for

Both had told their employers ahead of time that they wouldn’t be at work for a few days. And both have been missing from their homes in Hebron’s Hares neighborhood ever since the kidnapping took place on the night of June 12. According to one of my sources, there is clear evidence linking these two to the kidnappings, and the Israeli authorities were aware of their involvement for some time.

One possible scenario I'm hearing is that the three  teens were lured into helping push a 'broken' car  by a single Arab driver who had accomplices lying in wait down the road. That would answer a lot of questions if that's how it went down.

I'm guessing it probably came from the burnt abandoned car that was left behind. It was probably set afire in an attempt to destroy any DNA or other evidence, but apparently the attempt failed.

I obviously was not told this in so many words, but if they're revealing their identities it's likely the IDF knows where the boys are being held, have them boxed in  and are trying to get the kidnappers to surrender them alive , perhaps to the Palestinian Authority.I would not be surprised at all if that was being discussed in Ramallah, and as a matter of fact, Israeli PM Netanyahu publicly called on Abbas, Israel's 'peace partner' to prove his bonifides by ditching Hamas and the unity agreement:

 

“A short time after the kidnapping, I said that those who perpetrated this activity were terrorists of Hamas,” Netanyahu said at an Israeli Air Force graduation ceremony. “And indeed today the security services of Israel have published the names of two of the perpetrators of this heinous crime.”

The prime minister went on to call on Abbas — who, during a recent meeting in Saudi Arabia with foreign ministers from the Muslim world, spoke out against the kidnapping – to bring the reconciliation process with Hamas to a full halt.

“I now expected President Abbas, who said important things in Saudi Arabia, to stand by those words and to break his pact with the Hamas terrorist organization that kidnaps children and calls for the destruction of Israel,” Netanyahu said.

Abbas can't afford to do that politically because of the popularity of Hamas and because they're the ones he plans to turn over 'Palestine' to once the west has legitimized them and it's time for him and the Fatah Old Guard to use their Jordanian passports and take the money they've stolen over the years from their own people to a comfortable retirement elsewhere. But what Netanyahu said needed saying, if only to point out to the West their hypocrisy in funding a terrorist, genocidal organization like Hamas while they kidnapping Israeli children and lobbing missiles at Israel's civilians from Gaza.

Even the Arabs who identify themselves as Palestinians in Gaza and in the areas of Judea and Samaria occupied by the Palestinian Authority apparently understand this contradiction, even if the EU and the Obama Administration turn a blind eye.

In a new poll conducted throughout the Palestinian territories, reportedly conducted by a leading Palestinian pollster commissioned by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy last week, 60 percent of those polled, including 55 percent in West Bank and 68 percent in Gaza, reject permanent acceptance of Israel's existence.

Two-thirds of those polled are in favor of continued “resistance” against Israel. And those who say they support a two-state solution see it a s a strategic device to "take all of Palestine later.”

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy is not exactly a pro-Israel organization either. It was founded by none other than the poisonous Martin Indyk, the Obama State Department’s special envoy during the last attempt by Secretary of State John Kerry to broker peace talks.

In any event, the kidnapping seems to be proceeding towards a climax. Stay tuned and pray as hard as you can for the safe rescue of those three boys.

How Polls Work - And How Pew Got The Answer They Wanted On ObamaCare

 

The Pew Trust recently came out with a poll that the Obama media eagerly seized on - that the majority of Americans want congress to tweak the law to make it work rather than repealing it.

Ace reveals how Pew managed this nice little piece of propaganda:

Well, imagine how you, personally, would inquire into the preferred course of action of Obamacare supporters. You might give them the options of "Work to improve it anyway," or "Stay out of the way of it/Let it collapse under its own weight," and so forth.

Here are the options -- two of them -- that Pew gave respondents to choose from:

What do you think elected officials who oppose the health care law should do now that the law has started to take effect? Should they [X] or should they [Y]?

Do what they can to make the law work as well as possible

Do what they can to make the law fail

Emphasis added.

In other words, people weren't given a 'repeal' option. Their choices were limited to tweaking this failed bit of socialist mayhem or sabotaging it.

Most people would still choose a less aggressive, underhanded-sounding response, like "Let it collapse under its own weight."

But Pew refuses respondents that choice, insisting that people either declare their desire to "make Obamacare work the best we can, by Golly!" or declare themselves hostage-taking terrorists of the sort often decried by one Harry Reid.

Why, you'd almost think that major institutions of the media are entirely captured by the political left or something.

It would be even more interesting to see whether Pew used another common tactic - vastly oversampling Democrats, or picking respondents from largely Democrat dominated urban areas.

Since Pew is self-funded, their polls normally are fairly legitimate,but obviously someone got to somebody here - almost certainly in response to a direct request from the White House.

Welcome to the world of 'polling'.

Gallup: 72% Of Americans Have a Favorable View Of Israel

According to Gallup's annual world affairs poll, conducted from February 6-9, 71% of Americans, up from 66 percent last year.

The Palestinian Authority? Only 19%, surprising after all the positive press they've been receiving in the Obama Media.

Our friends the Saudis come in at 36 percent, the Egyptians at 45%.

Iran? A mere 9%, and I'm sure the feeling's mutual.

In related news, over 200 members of congress want Israeli PM Netanyahu to address a joint session when he come to the U.S. next month.

Poll: 71% Of Obama Voters, 55% Of Democrats Regret Re-Electing Obama

Buyer's remorse...not that it does any good now.

According to a to a new Economist/YouGov.com U.S. poll, over 70% of all Obama voters and 55% of Democrats are sorry they voted to re-elect President Obama.

This matches up,interestingly enough, with  an November 2013 ABC News/Washington Post poll
that showed Mitt Romney beating Barack Obama if the election were held again then by four points,  49%-45%.

The YouGuv poll is a bit more honest that the WAPO one, in that it actually lists its mechanics. A small sample at 999 respondents, and of course hypothetical, just like the WAPO 2013 poll.

Asked “Do you regret voting for Barack Obama?”, overall, 71 percent said yes, 26 percent no.

— 80 percent of whites said yes, 61 percent of blacks said no and 100 percent of Hispanics said yes.

— 84 percent of women said yes, and just 61 percent of men agreed.

— 55 percent of Democrats said yes, as did 71 percent of independents.

The YouGov poll also has another interesting wrinkle in asking respondents if they would change their votes to the other candidate if there was a do-over. While 90% of Romney voters said they would still vote for Mitt, only 79% of Obama voters said they would. As a percentage of the voters each of them actually got in 2012 (66 million for Obama and 61 million for Romney), that works out to a 3 million spread in Romney's favor, 55 million votes to Obama’s 52 million.

And that's without correcting for the widespread voter fraud that occurred in 2012.

This is pretty much an unprecedented drop for a sitting president. Even George W. Bush retained relatively high numbers until 2006.

Obama: 'Racism Is Why My Approval Rating Is Down'

Remember, nothing is ever his fault.

President Barack Obama said that racial tensions may have softened his popularity among white voters within the last two years, according to a story posted on the New Yorker magazine’s website today.

“There’s no doubt that there’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black president,” Obama said in the article by David Remnick, appearing in the magazine’s Jan. 27 edition.

“Now, the flip side of it is there are some black folks and maybe some white folks who really like me and give me the benefit of the doubt precisely because I’m a black president,” Obama said in his most direct comments on how race has affected his political standing since he’s been in office.

No...really? Of course utter incompetence, fiscal irresponsibility, ObamaCare and scandals like Benghazi, Fast and Furious and using the IRS as his personal goon squad have nothing to do with anything.

This is his response to a Gallup poll rating of 39% approval, 53% disapproval.

Must be raa-aa-acism. When in doubt, pull out the card. It's certainly worked well so far.

Me? I'd say, to paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., that this president is upset over being judged by the content of his character..but he blames it on his skin color.

No Shame..CNN Reports 53% Approved Obama's SOTU With A Sample That Was 44% Democrat , 17% Republican!

 

It's getting to the point where they will simply put out whatever fits the agenda.

President Obama's  State of The Union Address last night had  low ratings anyway, but CNN was quick to report that it had an approval rating of 53% out of those whom did watch.That was the headline.

Buried in the article was the fact that the sample was 44% Democrat and only 17% Republican. I mean, why not make it 100% Democrat? They might get even more impressive results that way...

Election Predictions Roundup

A number of interesting points of view here, worthy of a round up.

Let's start with Jay Cost, who predicts a Romney win:

When I started making election predictions eight years ago, I had a very different perspective than I do today. I knew relatively little about the history of presidential elections or the geography of American politics. I had a good background in political science and statistics. So, unsurprisingly in retrospect, I focused on drawing confidence intervals from poll averages.

Since then, I have learned substantially more history, soured somewhat on political science as an academic discipline, and have become much more skeptical of public opinion polls. Both political science and the political polls too often imply a scientific precision that I no longer think actually exists in American politics. I have slowly learned that politics is a lot more art than science than I once believed.

Accordingly, what follows is a prediction based on my interpretation of the lay of the land. I know others see it differently--and they could very well be right, and I could be wrong.

I think Mitt Romney is likely to win next Tuesday.

For two reasons:

(1) Romney leads among voters on trust to get the economy going again.

(2) Romney leads among independents.

Cost sees the economy as the issue this year, and with the expected Dem turnout and Romney's edge among independents ad being decisive. Full disclosure...I've known Jay since his old Horserace Blog days and his track record is a pretty good one.

Michael Barone, probably the dean of American political writers sees the key to the election in Romney's rise in support in affluent suburbs:

..polling shows Romney ahead in Colorado, which Obama carried by 9 points last time, and the race closing in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, which Obama carried by 14, 10 and 16 points, respectively.

That tends to validate my alternative scenario that Mitt Romney would fare much better in affluent suburbs than Republican nominees since 1992, running more like George Bush did in 1988. The only way Pennsylvania and Michigan can be close is if Obama's support in affluent Philadelphia and Detroit suburbs has melted away.

This also helps explain why Romney still narrowly trails in Ohio polls. Affluent suburban counties cast about one-quarter of the votes in Pennsylvania and Michigan but only one-eighth in Ohio.

A pro-Romney affluent swing is confirmed by the internals of some national polls. The 2008 exit poll showed Obama narrowly carrying voters with incomes over $75,000. Post-debate Pew Research and Battleground polls have shown affluent suburbanite Romney carrying them by statistically significant margins.

In particular, college-educated women seem to have swung toward Romney since Oct. 3. He surely had them in mind in the foreign policy debate when he kept emphasizing his hopes for peace and pledged no more wars like Iraq and Afghanistan.

My other alternative scenario was based on the 1980 election, when vast numbers of voters switched from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan after their single debate one week before the election. In that debate, the challenger showed he had presidential stature and the incumbent president seemed petulant and small-minded.

We saw an even more vivid contrast between challenger and incumbent in the Oct. 3 debate. In the next two debates, Obama was definitely more focused and aggressive. But Romney held his own, and post-Oct. 16 polling showed him improving his standing even though many debate watchers thought Obama won on points.

What we may be seeing, as we drink from the firehose of multiple poll results pouring in, is a slow-motion 1980.

Karl Rove, whatever one my think of him understands retail politics. He makes his 51-48, at least 279 electoral votes prediction for a Romney win, and his analysis of Ohio is particularly interesting:

Adrian Gray, who oversaw the Bush 2004 voter-contact operation and is now a policy analyst for a New York investment firm, makes the point that as of Tuesday, 530,813 Ohio Democrats had voted early or had requested or cast an absentee ballot. That's down 181,275 from four years ago. But 448,357 Ohio Republicans had voted early or had requested or cast an absentee ballot, up 75,858 from the last presidential election.

That 257,133-vote swing almost wipes out Mr. Obama's 2008 Ohio victory margin of 262,224. Since most observers expect Republicans to win Election Day turnout, these early vote numbers point toward a Romney victory in Ohio. They are also evidence that Scott Jennings, my former White House colleague and now Romney Ohio campaign director, was accurate when he told me that the Buckeye GOP effort is larger than the massive Bush 2004 get-out-the-vote operation.

Democrats explain away those numbers by saying that they are turning out new young Ohio voters. But I asked Kelly Nallen, the American Crossroads data maven, about this. She points out that there are 12,612 GOP "millennials" (voters aged 18-29) who've voted early compared with 9,501 Democratic millennials.

Are Democrats bringing out episodic voters who might not otherwise turn out? Not according to Ms. Nallen. She says that about 90% of each party's early voters so far had also voted in three of the past four Ohio elections. Democrats also suggest they are bringing Obama-leaning independents to polls. But since Mr. Romney has led among independents in nine of the 13 Ohio polls conducted since the first debate, the likelihood is that the GOP is doing as good a job in turning out their independent supporters as Democrats are in turning out theirs.

He also deconstructs a recent poll:

Desperate Democrats are now hanging their hopes on a new Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News poll showing the president with a five-point Ohio lead. But that survey gives Democrats a +8 advantage in turnout, the same advantage Democrats had in 2008. That assumption is, to put it gently, absurd.

CNN shows the president up by 3% in Ohio, inside the margin of error, but again the turnout assumption relies on 2008 and the mechanics reveal a +6 oversampling of Democrats.


Rasmussen sees Ohio dead even.In fact, he sees the entire election as too close to call.

I also note that President Obama drew a measly 2,800 crowd in his last Ohio appearance..while Mitt Romney's draw in his was around 25,000.

Jim Geraghty notes that the president is spending his last campaign weekend in Wisconsin, while Mitt Romney is campaigning in Pennsylvania, which tells you the candidate's internal polls are telling them something. Or as Geraghty puts it:

Obama is in big trouble in Wisconsin. He is spending his last weekend in a state that last went Republican in the 1984 Reagan landslide.

Team Romney is going hard after Pennsylvania because both internal and public polling show significant movement toward Romney in recent days. Yesterday, Rep. Ryan and Sen. Marco Rubio drew large and enthusiastic crowds in Pennsylvania. On Sunday, Romney will hold a campaign rally in the Philadelphia suburbs. Who would have thought that Obama would spend the last days of the campaign defending a solidly blue state, while Romney makes a play for another one?

We'll see whose right in just a few days.

Gallup: Romney Leads In Early Voters 52-45

Remember all the Obama Media tooting about how the president was leading among early voters?

Ummm, no.

Gallup says that around 15% of all likely voters have already cast their ballots, and out of those voters, guess what? Mitt Romney is leading 52% to 45%, a full 7 points.

Or to quote Gallup, 'that is comparable to Romney's 51% to 46% lead among all likely voters in Gallup's Oct. 22-28 tracking polling.'

That is a 22 point drop from where President Obama stood at this point in the election back in 2008.

It's also worth recalling that Gallup's 2008 survey of early voters interviewed only 1,010 registered voters. Yesterday's early voter poll interviewed a huge survey of over 3,300, which makes the 2012 poll a lot more accurate.

Romney Up On Gallup 52-45 - Outside Margin Of Error

Mitt Romney's momentum continues to accelerate.

The latest Gallup shows him up over president Obama 52-45% - outside the margin of error.Apparently I was right about likely voters not being fooled by the debate spin.

Two very different commentators note the significance of this. Karl Rove notes that no presidential candidate in history has ever lost if he was above 50% in mid-October, and FOX's resident lefty loon Bob Beckel said "if the numbers are accurate" -- that there's no way an incumbent can push a challenger back below 50%, once he's above it.

Mitt Romney is also ahead, for the first time, in the electoral count - and they haven't even given him Florida or Colorado yet, where's he's clearly ahead.

The Romney campaign also reportedly feels comfortable enough about North Carolina that they're decreasing staff and ad buys there to concentrate on Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Obama Won On Points? That's Not What The Polls Say

I find the polls on last nights debate interesting.

CBS says its polls gave the win to Obama, among registered voters 37-30. And CNN's registered voters gave it to Obama 46-39. Not likely voters, but registered voters, only 2/3 of whom bothered to vote last time out.

And then you get into these polls' internals.In CNN's case, they won't even reveal the numbers, but say:

According to the survey, Obama had a 47%-41% edge on which candidate was more likeable. But on some key issues, Romney came out on top, including an 18-point lead on the economy, 54-40.

"Mitt Romney was seen as better able to handle the economy, taxes, and the budget deficit among the debate audience, but it seems that issues were trumped, or at least blunted, by intangibles, including the expectations game," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

Romney also won out in CNN's poll on who appeared to be the stronger leader(49%-46%) and over 60% saying President Obama didn't offer a clear plan for solving the country's problems.

The CBS poll, which also showed Obama 'winning' was even more revealing. It showed Romney ahead 65-34 on the economy, 51-44 on taxes,and 59-36 on the deficit.

Translation? When it comes to what I'll call the Jerry Springer factor, people were willing to give President Obama some ground, especially since expectations were what they were. But on the actual issues that are going to determine the election, the pocketbook issues, Romney won big.

The latest Gallup? Mitt Romney 51%, Barack Obama 45%.

Debate Polls Roundup - Romney Destroyed Obama

 

Well, the tribe has spoken, and the long and the short of it is that no presidential candidate, let alone a sitting president has ever taken this kind of decisive beating before.

The CNN-ORC polls, courtesy of Instapundit. On who won the debate, Romney 67%, Obama 25%.

In a CBS poll of uncommitted voters, 56% say opinion of Romney changed for the better, versus 13% for Obama. Their CBs News poll also has 46% saying Romney won versus 22% for Obama, with the rest calling it a draw.

Keep in mind that I'm certain these outlets did everything they could to skew their polls...but Barack Obama simply didn't give them anything to work with, and they  still have a fragment of a reputation as legitimate news sources to uphold.

Then there's Frank Luntz, a pollster with over two decades of experience, who put together a focus group for the debate of consisting of undecided Colorado voters:

At least half a dozen focus group members who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 now say they will vote for Romney. Virtually everyone in the group said that Romney won the debate and exceeded their expectations.

Luntz, who has been in the polling business for at least two decades, says he has never seen such a dramatic shift in opinion as a result of a debate.

Of course, the ultimate voices showing how big Mitt Romney won came from Obama partisans. For instance, most of MSNBC seemed like they should be on suicide watch...especially Chris Matthews:

Whaddya Know? Polls Now 'Changing' To Show A Dead Heat

This would be comical if it wasn't so insidious.

The same polls that showed President Obama ahead by ten, even 15 points are now issuing new polls that show a dead heat, almost overnight.

How 'bout that?

What's happening is that with the election a little over a month away, these bogus polls need to tighten things up if they want to preserve a shred of their reputation. Expect that to continue.

By the way, I don't suggest that 2012 will be a replay, but its worth remembering that at this point in 1980 Jimmy Carter was leading Ronald Reagan by 8 points in the polls. And Ronaldus Maximus still ended up having the last laugh.

American voters are going to be watching the debates, and in spite of the usual partisan leftist moderator, Mitt Romney is going to be able to make his case unfiltered directly to the American people for a change.That's going to have a lot to do with what happens in November.

Ah, Those Polls...The New Campaign Tool

Usually, I limit the attention I pay to polls, because I realize that there's only one that counts, and it happens on Election Day.

But we're seeing a new development here, and it's insidious and worrisome.

Sometimes in past elections, you'd see an outlier poll or three that was obviously skewed. What new this year is that we are seeing an organized attempt to corroborate seriously cooked polls commissioned by the Obama Media with a serious media narrative by those same outlets that keeps working on drumming in the message that Mitt Romney is losing badly and that President Obama is inevitable.

The idea, of course is to dampen Republican voter enthusiasm, fundraising  and turnout.

Aside from oversampling Democrats, the Obama Media polls are getting the results they're getting from overestimating Democrat turnout.Let's examine how this works.

In 2008, the electorate that elected Barack Obama was 39% Democrat, 32% GOP and 29% Independent, a  D+7 electorate. And Barack  Obama defeated McCain by 7 points, the same margin.
In 2004, the electorate was 37% Democrat, 37% Republican, and 26% Independent.. President Bush beat John Kerry by 3 points nationally.

What alomost every Obama Media poll is doing is assuming to get their results is that the  Democrats equal or increase their share of the electorate over 2008, which was their largest in decades. That isn't going to hasppen.

2008 was a special year, with a seriously unpopular lame duck Republican in teh White House, with economic anxiety that was primarily created by the Democrat congress but was manipulated by their friends in the media to cast a taint on the GOP nominee that year, John McCain.

The Democrats had a young, charismatic Barack Obama selling hope n' change to camouflage his non-existent resume, someone who was a mirror for whatever people wanted to see in him.Since he had no real record, he was able to run on promises. And to add to the mix, John McCain was a flawed candidate disliked by much of his own party, ran one of the worst campaigns in living memory and,because McCain opted for public financing while Barack Obama famously broke his word on that subject and went private, McCain was outspent roughly ten to one.

None of these factors exist today. President Obama has a record he needs to run from, the financing is pretty much a level playing field this year, Barack Obama has a muchg tougher candidate to face  and Republican enthusiasm is a lot higher than it was in 2008, with higher percentages of Republicans and independents in the battle ground states and lower percentages of registered Democrats. Recent polls from AP, Politico and the daily tracking polls from Rasmussen and Gallup all figure in what will be a relatively lower turnout of Democrats in 2012 as compared to 2008, and they all  show the race essentially tied. Only those polls showing an electorate with Democrat affiliation equal or greater than 2008  show Obama with any sizable lead.

The proof on the ground  of this is that we're seeing President Obama speaking at smaller venues to smaller crowds than he did in 2008. If he was really pulling away, he be speaking tol arger crowds in bigger venues.

Another factor driving things is that the Obama Campaign spent a massive amount of money on ad buys right after their convention, while the Romney forces held off for the stretch. That may or may not have been a wise strategic decision, but we'll see.

My sense of this is that the country is divided right now, and that there's a great deal of flux in at least 10-15% of the electorate. In spite of the media's best efforts to keep it out of the news, a lot of Americans are waking up to the fact that the country is in dire economic straits and that things are getting worse, not better. And the economy is going to be the main issue of this election.

Mitt Romney has yet to sell  at least a part of the electorate that he is the man to lead us to an economic recovery, and the Obama Campaign's 'look a squirrel' strategy has done a decent job of distracting people from the president's own abysmal record, with the active participation of the ever helpful Obama Media.

However, in the debates, even though they are being hosted primarily by Obama partisans, Governor Romney  will have a chance to talk to the American people unfiltered and President Obama will likewise have to face up to his dismal performance.Americans are going to watch the debates and make up their minds.

One thing you can expect, of course, is that no matter how well Governor Romney actually does in the debates, the Obama media will call it for the president and release new polls showing the president 'won'. Expect skewed exit polls showing President Obama winning handily and early calls of states ala' Florida in 2000 to occur in a final effort to suppress GOP turnout.

Many of these people refer to themselves as journalists when  in fact,they're just campaign operatives.

Most of them have no idea how damaging this is.

Distrust of America's media is at an all time high, and what's even worse in many ways is the fact that a significant part of the media no longer evenmake an effort to hide thei rbias any more.

That's a very dangerous place for a free society to be in.

John McLaughlin On The Polls Right Now And Using Them As A Campaign Tactic

 

Pollster John McLaughlin is a sort of GOP pollster to the stars, the sort of person people pay a great deal of money to  for their internal polling.

 His remarks to NRO's Jim Geraghty are of interest, to say the least.

On Likely voters: "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 How Campaign use polling to sway elections: “In a close race, the operatives are trying to manipulate the turnout through their paid and earned media. The earned media includes lobbying and trying to skew the public polls. Historically the most egregious case was the 2000 Gore campaign’s lobbying the networks’ exit pollsters for an early, and wrong, call in Florida. This suppressed the Florida Panhandle and Western state turnout.” (Polls close at different times in different parts of the state, because the state stretches into two time zones.) “In our post-election Florida poll, we found that thousands of Panhandle Floridians heard the call and although their polls were still open for an hour in a close national race decided not to vote. Panhandle voters went two-to-one for Bush. The CBS early wrong call nearly triggered a national crisis.”

By the way, expect a tactic like that by the media this year.

On how the numbers on partisan turnout are being skewed: “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.”

On Obama's strategy:  “The Democrats want to convince [these anti-Obama voters] falsely that Romney will lose to discourage them from voting. So they lobby the pollsters to weight their surveys to emulate the 2008 Democrat-heavy models. They are lobbying them now to affect early voting. IVR [Interactive Voice Response] polls are heavily weighted. You can weight to whatever result you want. Some polls have included sizable segments of voters who say they are ‘not enthusiastic’ to vote or non-voters to dilute Republicans. Major pollsters have samples with Republican affiliation in the 20 to 30 percent range, at such low levels not seen since the 1960s in states like Virginia, Florida, North Carolina and which then place Obama ahead. The intended effect is to suppress Republican turnout through media polling bias. We’ll see a lot more of this. Then there’s the debate between calling off a random-digit dial of phone exchanges vs. a known sample of actual registered voters. Most polls favoring Obama are random and not off the actual voter list. That’s too expensive for some pollsters."

Most people whom actually get into the mechanics of these polls ( and a lot of polls aren't even releasing them anymore, having been busted once too often)   find out very quickly  that double digit oversampling of Democrats is quite common, especially in battleground states.

McLaughlin is quite correct that the real purpose of these polls is to affect turnout and early voting, which is already going on in a number of states.

I essentially see the election as tied. Mitt Romney's challenge  if he is to win decisively  is to cut through the Obama campaign's 'look a squirrel' strategy and get the American public to focus on President Obama's dismal record. He has to challenge the president, get under his skin. He did it yesterday responding to the president's weak, self-pitying 'you can only change things in Washington from the outside' response at the Univision forum by saying "We're going to give President Obama an opportunity to change things form the outside come November."

 The debates will be a major opportunity to do more of the same.