Talk Elections

New York State voters approve 56 - 38 percent of the job President Barack Obama is doing, his best score in almost a year and up from a 50 - 46 percent approval rating February 15.

Today, women approve of the president 59 - 34 percent, up from 52 - 42 percent in February. Men approve 52 - 43 percent, up from a negative 46 - 49 percent. Independent voters split 45 - 45 percent, up from a negative 41 - 54 percent.

Obama leads Romney 56 - 33 percent and tops Santorum 59 - 30 percent.

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institutes-and-centers/polling-institute/new-york-state/release-detail?ReleaseID=1733

Obama being at 60 or higher in CA, NY, MA and IL and leading in NV, NM, WI, MI, OH, PA, VA and FL definitely means that Obama is ahead by at least 5 right now nationally.

Don't know what Rasmussen wants to construct with showing Romney ahead by 3 in their daily tracking .... ???

He must have a Fox appearance coming up.

Maybe all the Plains and Southern states are >60% Romney.

Given that it's Romney, it's unlikely that he's seriously outperforming McCain in the Southern states.

Rasmussen's Romney lead is simple to explain. They have this odd system of weighting by party ID where there's more Republicans than Democrats. The country almost always has a slight but clear Dem edge in party ID so naturally this shifts their results to make FOX news viewers happy.

Database entry: https://uselectionatlas.org/POLLS/PRESIDENT/2012/polls.php?action=indpoll&id=3620120402015

He uses likely voters instead of registered voters.  More expensive, but more accurate.

No, it's not. His numbers are all over the place. This time, Obama is leading Romney 47 to 44. Just 3 days ago Romney was leading Obama by 2. What is accurate?

Not at this point. Given than there is no Democrat primary, Democrats aren't concerned by the election yet, so, they appear unmotivated and unlikely to vote.

A likely voter screen is only more accurate starting September.

   I'll be honest in that I have not personally sifted through and compared Rasmussen to others and cross-referenced actual results, but typically he uses likely voters AND typically that is a BETTER method.  It might not be right now, idk.   

I think the rule of thumb is that Likely Voter models start to make sense around Labor Day, when most voters start to pay more attention.

Yeah, "Likely Voters" becomes a better model as the election grows nearer because it becomes clearer and clearer who is actually, you know, likely to vote.