Polling Report [5.21.12]
Tennessee? Really? Tennessee?
A new Vanderbilt University poll shows President Obama has pulled into a virtual tie with Mitt Romney in traditionally conservative Tennessee.
Romney barely edged Obama among likely voters, 42% to 41%. However, Romney has a much larger lead among registered voters, 47% to 40%.
Well, if you remember, I had Tennessee colored in as light red on my map, meaning that it was lean Romney, meaning that the most recent poll only showed a Romney lead of between 5 and 9.9 points. This poll will now color Tennessee yellow, as a Toss up state. In the end, I don’t believe it will be a toss up state, but for now we will go with what the polls tell us.
Meanwhile, Gallup finds taht 56% of Americans think Barack Obama will win the 2012 presidential election, compared with 36% who think Mitt Romney will win.
Democrats are more likely to believe that Obama will win than Republicans are to believe Romney will. Independents are nearly twice as likely to think that Obama, rather than Romney, will prevail.
That worries me a little. Everyone wants to vote for a winner, and they perceive Obama to be a winner. But I also don’t want complancy to set in.
Here is our new map:
Obama 266, Romney 170, Toss-up 102
I’m making my Obama donations through this “win an invitation to an evening with the President and First Lady at Sarah Jessica Parker’s place in NYC” link. I figure I’m donating anyway, so I might as well enjoy an evening in New York.
FWIW – Romney’s “Day 1” ad is in heavy rotation in Eastern North Carolina/Tidewater VA.
From a guy in Tennessee I can only say that in the right wing area which I live that are a number of republicans we know that don’t like either and sure don’t feel as though Mitt knows much about them. The car elevator and wife with 2 Caddy’s just doesn’t set right with a lot of the right wingers here. They can’t vote for the Obamaman but voting for Romney just isn’t part of the program either.
I’m in TN right now for a work project and am pretty astonished at the number of Obama/Biden bumperstickers I see on the way from my hotel to the office each morning.
Nationally, Obama’s lead over Romney has increased. It’s not that Obama is polling better. In fact, both are polling worse. The number of undecided has increased, and it’s a sizable increase.
This is nicely reflected in the TN poll. Many Republicans are threatening to not vote at all. All Obama needs to do to win is to encourage the right wind to stay at home.