How Mitt Romney is actually defeating Barack Obama in the presidential race

Fascinating analysis to be sure. Bolding is mine.

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How Mitt Romney is actually defeating Barack Obama in the presidential race


Elections 2012 September 24, 2012

By: Dean Chambers from the website UnSkewed Polls


If the electorate is Republicans by two percent, meaning 36 percent Republicans to 34 percent Democrats, Romney would win 52.90 percent to 47.10 percent.



If the electorate is Democrats by two percent, meaning 36 percent Democrats to 34 percent Republicans, Romney would win 50.70 percent to 49.30 percent.




Despite all the noise created by all those media-commissioned skewed polls that appear to have President Obama leading, Mitt Romney is actually winning the presidential race as of today. The newest Rasmussen Reports Presidential Daily Tracking poll released today shows Obama 47 percent to Romney 46 percent, and shows them tied at 48 percent when leaning voters are included. The Gallup tracking poll, which is based on a sample that tends to favor Democrats by a few points, released today shows Obama leading just two percent, 48 percent to 46 percent. The QStarNews Daily Tracking Poll released today shows a Romney lead of 51 percent to 45 percent.



Polling data and analysis of voting patterns indicates that Romney is going to win most of the key swing states including the five surveyed by Purple Strategies just a few days ago. The last QStarNews analysis and projection of the electoral college covered in this column predicts Romney winning 301 electoral votes, 31 more than needed for election as president.



As former Clinton political consultant Dick Morris and others have pointed out, the undecided vote in a presidential election will always heavily favor the challenging candidate by election day. A reasonable figure to use as a factor on this is to estimate that approximately 75 percent of the current undecided voters, who are voters that have already decided they will not vote for Barack Obama but have not finalized a decision to vote for Mitt Romney, will break for Romney at some time between now and election day.



Looking at the Rasmussen poll showing leaning voters with the candidates tied at 48 percent, leads to a conclusion of Romney winning 51 percent to 49 percent. The Gallup poll, unskewed, would produce a difference similar to this earlier Gallup poll unskewed that indicated a five percent Romney lead, very similar to the Romney lead reported in today's QStarNews Daily Tracking Poll.



But many still wonder how the other polls can show such varying results for the presidential race. This is because the mainstream media-commissioned polls over-sample Democrats to produce skewed results that favor the Democrats. The recent CNN/ORC poll was based on a sample that included 50.5 percent Democrats. The makeup of the electorate, according to exit polls, in 2008 was Democrats 39 percent to Republicans 32 during an election in which Barack Obama won the race 53 percent to 46 percent over John McCain. Even if one assumes the 2012 electorate will match that, which most analysts consider highly unlikely, a poll sample including 50.5 percent still over-samples Democrats by 11.5 percent.



The electorate in 2010 was made up of 35 percent registered Democrats and Republicans with almost all the rest being independents. Rasmussen Reports partisan data measured from hundreds of thousands of voters by Rasmussen Reports, which measures the partisan percentages at 37.6 percent Republicans, 33.3 percent Democrats and 29.2 percent independents.



If we assume that Romney will win 56 percent of the independent vote to Obama's 44 percent, a conclusion that is quite reasonable given most of the polling data available, we can look at how the race turns out at varying levels of weighting of the Democrats and Republicans.



Using Rasmussen's 37.6 percent Republicans to 33.3 percent Democrats, Romney would win the election with a 54.10 percent to 45.90 percent margin.



Using a weighting that assumes Republicans and Democrats will be 35 percent each in the actual electorate that votes in the election, Romney would win the race 51.8 percent to 48.2 percent.



If the electorate is Republicans by two percent, meaning 36 percent Republicans to 34 percent Democrats, Romney would win 52.90 percent to 47.10 percent.



If the electorate is Democrats by two percent, meaning 36 percent Democrats to 34 percent Republicans, Romney would win 50.70 percent to 49.30 percent.



Democrats will have to have a four percent edge among the voting electorate, meaning 37 percent Democrats to 33 percent Republicans, for Obama to win the popular vote by a very narrow 50.40 percent to 49.60 percent majority. Assuming those numbers and adding just a five percent higher turnout level among Republicans would wipe out that Obama margin and give Romney a slim lead.



If one believes the real election day results are somewhere near the middle of the range in the above scenarios, that points to an electorate that is even to possibly one or two points in favor of the Democrats, which nonetheless still translates to Romney being announced president-elect on election night. Romney is winning this election right now.