And he'll probably win by 2% on election day as well. It's not a coincidence that his approval rating is averaging out to around 50% approve, 48% disapprove at the moment. Sure there's been some wiggle around this two point lead (no more than 2-3% either way), with Republicans becoming more enthusiastic/Democrats less enthusiastic (after the Ryan pick, after the Romney debate victory), and vice versa (during the "Summer of Bain", after the DNC, after the 47% remarks), but at the end of the day, bounces recede and the race returns to an Obama +2% status quo. It was beginning to do this in the week before the debate, when Obama's numbers suddenly started declining for seemingly no reason. And then the debate happened, so Romney got a bump of 2-3%, putting him somewhere between a tie and a narrow lead. And now that bump is disappearing again and we're returning to the Obama 2% lead status quo.
Obama leads with women, minorities and young voters. Romney leads with men, whites, and old voters. The two candidate's leads with these groups have stayed pretty constant. There's likely not going to be some huge event that undoes the past year of demographic polarization twenty days before the election. Obama will win by about two percent.
Nate Silver tweeted a link to a blog post that says something similar earlier today (
link), though the point is much more simple than that guy makes it out to be.
