The dramatic Romney surge in the latest Pew poll may have less to do with besting Obama in the first debate than with some dramatic shift in party identification in Pew polls. According to numbers reported by Pew, Democrats fell from 37 percent in the September poll to 32 percent in October while Republicans rose from 28 to 33 percent among registered voters. With such numbers and high support for the nominee among partisans, it's no surprise that Romney leads Obama. With the same partisan breakdown in October as in September, Obama would still be leading, even among likely voters.
So what's behind the Republican surge in party identification? As far as I can tell, the September-October shift is the largest recorded by the Pew trend line. But is it a real surge? If so, Republicans would have scored a partisan realignment of sorts, all in the wake of a terrific debate performance. That seems far-fetched. More likely, the sample for the October poll just ended up with more Republicans and fewer Democrats than before. Maybe because of random luck, or perhaps because Romney's strong and Obama's weak debate performance encouraged Republicans to respond to the poll and discouraged Democrats. Let's see whether other polls also show a seismic shift of the partisan balance right now. If not, the switch in the horse race claimed by the latest Pew poll may not be for real.
Was Obama panned by the media for his debate performance? Yes, and moreso on late night comedy shows, which influences some people.
Did it change the polls though?
I'd argue "a little." Obama hasn't so much lost support as Romney's gained some. And the Pew poll, while certainly a well-respected outfit, is statistically like to occasionally have outliers. Is this an outlier? Perhaps. I think so. But we'll only know in a week or so, to see if it was the beginning of a Romney surge, or just some rather loud statistical noise.
I think the latter, but again - we'll see. What you won't see from me is, "This must mean the poll is SKEWED!!!"
Romney and Ryan are going to win!
All the polls are starting to swing,
Happy days are here again!"
Pew is the first of them to adopt a voter pool that resembles the actual registered voters on the ground.
Gallup will follow tomorrow when they erect their likely voter screen.
The only reason these latest results are surprising is that the media polls have been grossly undercounting GOP voters for the past several months and you have been fed a constant diet of waste product results like so many mushrooms.
Reagan won 479 electorial votes, Carter won 49.