Month: October 2012

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the ratings for the cable network coverage of Tuesday's presidential debate have numbers surged ahead of the first debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney. That's good. Now we have to see if the President repaired any of the damage he did to himself in the polls. Obama has regained the lead in all national polls but the Gallup poll (which is now looking like an extreme outlier when compared to the other tracking polls) and Rasmussen (although Obama is improving in that poll as well). Looking at the Gallup poll, while I will not parse that poll like my conservative brethen, I will point out something that is extremely interesting:

East-- Obama 52, Romney 48 (O+4) Midwest--Obama 52, Romney 48 (O+4) South --Romney 61, Obama 39 (R+22) West--Obama 53, Romney 47 (O+6)

Anyway, here is our map. No changes from yesterday despite more polls:

"Well, you want to jump out of your seat and rush down to the debate stage and take a swing at him." -- Tagg Romney, in an interview on WPTF-AM, when asked how it felt to hear President Obama call his father a liar during last night's debate. Well, what a violent bully this Tagg Romney is. I wonder what horrible single mother raised this violent and disgusting thug? Who taught him that when things do go your way you get violent? I wonder if Tagg You're It is going to get a call from the Secret Service.

Watch online here now! Governor Markell and Jeff Cragg are debating at 8 pm. Lt. Governor Denn and Sher She Didn't Build It Valenzuela are debating now. I got home late and missed the 7 pm start time. Sher is being downright nasty in her closing statement.

There is some NSFW language about 20 seconds in, but that just adds to it. It is rare because as these guys realize how ridiculous it looks it just gets…

It is horrible that this is true, but half the battle of these debates is the media narrative. With a week to go before the next debate, the rest of the week will be dominated by the media discussing just how great the winner of the debate was and just how evil and horrible the loser of the debate was. It is a vicious circle that tends to compound the polls. A 50% Romney victory the night of the debate turned into a 71% victory two days later. Now the shoe is on the other foot. John Cassidy finds that "the overwhelming majority of the pundits proclaimed the President the victor":

Even Charles Krauthammer and Laura Ingraham said that he won on points. With this type of unanimity, the media narrative for the next few days, which is at least as important as the debate itself, will run in favor of Obama and against Romney. The G.O.P. candidate [...] will be criticized for his blunders on Libya, guns, and women.

Check inside for more reactions and some videos of the highlights of the debates.

Our last Senate Forecast Update was seven days ago, so we are due to update our little chart. I have gone back and looked at all the Senate polls from the past week, including today's wealth of YouGov polls, and updated the chart. Based on all the Senate polls of the last week, the Democrats in the Senate would pick up Massachusetts and Maine (well, Angus King will pick it up, but he is nearly assured of caucusing with the Dems, especially if President Obama wins election and the Dems retain the Senate), while the Republicans looks set to pick up Montana and Nebraska. There are two races that are exactly tied at this moment: North Dakota and Virginia. If the Dems lose both of the tied races, then the final tally would be Dems 51, GOP 49, a net pickup for the GOP of two seats.

Holy mother of God do we have a lot of polls today. We have so much polls that I have divided this Polling Report up into two sections. The first section deals with the Presidential race, and the second section, which will be posted later this afternoon, deals with the down ballot races for Senate and Governor, in which we will have a Senate Forecast update. So here is our new Electoral College map as it stands here today. Remember, my methodology is as follows: 1) the map is based exclusively on the polls below and on the most recent credible poll from that state if there is no poll from the state below; 2) we do not base our projections in the map upon any Rasmussen or Republican polling outfit, 3) if we have two or more polls on a single day from the same state, we average the results together, and 4) the map legend reveals why each state is colored the way they are colored.

Pandora will have a post up shortly on Romney's stunning and revealing statements that revealed him to be a male chauvinist asshole, and I will have a detailed post up on Libya later this morning after the Polling Report (which we have a lot of, by the way), but here is what is being said across the mainstream and liberal and conservative media this morning. And I hear from Dana Garrett that Joe Scarborough has that sour puss on his face that reveals when his guy lost and Joe knows it.

Sometimes a picture says it all. In the unfocused background, you have the President smiling and amused. In the foreground, you have a lying asshole bully being smacked down and knowing it.