The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Obama’s ‘Bounce’ That Wasn’t

Posted on | September 11, 2012 | 15 Comments

“To put it as bluntly as possible, the economy sucks, and the attempt by Democrats to exculpate Obama for this situation — to place the blame on Republicans, or to say that the economy would suck even worse if Romney were elected — is perhaps more difficult than Nate Silver’s statistics suggest.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, “Omens of Doom,” The American Spectator, Sept. 10, 2012

The media’s effort to manufacture the appearance of a decisive shift toward President Obama — not merely a predictable post-convention “bounce” in the polls — dismayed, discouraged and enraged Republicans who were not psychologically braced for it.

When people are attempting to manipulate your perceptions, your awareness of their effort is your first defense. Your second defense is your knowledge of the underlying reality. Long experience in following campaigns and polls would forewarn you that (a) all presidential campaigns get a poll “bounce” from their conventions, (b) the liberal media’s enthusiasm for Obama would make his “bounce” larger, and (c) none of this changes the underlying reality that the economy sucks.

Americans are not as stupid and gullible as the liberal media would like to think, and so the coordinated effort to turn Obama’s “bounce” into a decisive shift in the campaign has predictably failed:

Last week’s Democratic National Convention helped President Obama improve his standing against Republican Mitt Romney, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, but did little to reduce voter concern about his handling of the economy.
The survey shows that the race remains close among likely voters, with Obama at 49 percent and Romney at 48 percent, virtually unchanged from a poll taken just before the conventions.
But among a wider sample of all registered voters, Obama holds an apparent edge, topping Romney at 50 percent to 44 percent, and has clear advantages on important issues in the campaign when compared with his rival.

What does this tell you? Even after a week of the media’s giggly schoolgirl gushing during the Democrat convention, the most active and engaged citizens — “likely voters” — harbor such profound doubts about Obama’s economic policies that it is still a dead heat. Whatever actual edge Obama has over Romney occurs among the “low-information voters” who aren’t even sure they’ll vote.

Yesterday’s CNN poll that produced such indignation — showing Obama leading 52-46 — was a  statistical outlier, a dot far outside the main cluster of the scatter chart.

The idea that the electorate shifted a full six points in the span of a week (the same CNN poll had the race tied at 48% a week earlier) is absurd. People do not suddenly change their minds that way, merely because of speeches at a convention — especially a convention where the incumbent seeking re-election is less popular than President Blowjob.

This is not to say that media manipulation is irrelevant or harmless. John Nolte rips Politico today for its transparent effort to create an “Inevitability Narrative” for Obama:

[Politico editors John] Harris and [Jim] VandeHei and their team of shameless JournOlisters don’t give a damn about the jobless or the poor or the middle class or the concept of objective and honest reporting — all Harris and VandeHei and their team of shameless JournOlisters care about is dragging Their Precious One over the finish line.
Obama-hugger gets more attention than 368,000 people dropping out of the workforce.
Romney not mentioning the troops in his speech gets more attention that Obama blowing his speech entirely.
Democrats booing God and Israel at their convention gets 1/50th the attention Clint Eastwood received.
Ryan’s marathon brag gets more attention than middle class incomes falling.
Romney’s tax returns get more attention than the increase in poverty.
Ryan being branded a liar for telling the truth about that GM plant in Janesville gets more attention than manufacturing contracting three months in a row.
And over the next 57 days, the dishonest, corrupt Politico will only get worse.

The “news” at Politico is all about gloomy clouds for Romney, while the sun is always shining in Obamaville.

Do not be deceived, and do not be discouraged.

The economy still sucks.

 

 

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Category: Barack Obama, Election 2012, Media Bias, Mitt Romney, Polls

Comments

15 Responses to “Obama’s ‘Bounce’ That Wasn’t”

  1. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    September 11th, 2012 @ 12:03 pm

    Republicans need to cowboy up. As noted the data looks manipulated and intentionally so to build false momentum. Even if you assume Obama is slightly up, it is the equivalent of a field goal advantage in the third quarter.

    The debates will matter. People are not thrilled with Romney (he was not my first choice either) but they are seeing whether he can be an acceptable alternative to Obama.

    Talking about cowboying up, Romney should try attacking Obama like he attacked Gingrich and Santorum in the primaries. Stop pussy footing around.

  2. Finrod Felagund
    September 11th, 2012 @ 12:46 pm

    Usually I’m one of the first to slam bad polls, but I don’t think the polling at this point is as egregiously bad as it has been. Obama did get a convention bounce, but it’s already dissipating; in Rasmussen he went from being tied or slightly behind 80 percent of the time to a 50-45 lead two days ago, but that’s already diminished to 48-45, and I expect it to diminish further to +1 Obama or less by the weekend. This is showing up in other Rasmussen polling as well; Obama’s approval rating has peaked at 52, highest Rasmussen has had it in 1.5 years, and Rasmussen’s generic congressional ballot is at D+2, the first lead for the Dems since January.

    In that context, 52-46 isn’t that far off, for right now. I wouldn’t expect to see those kinds of numbers for Obama legitimately the rest of the way, though, unless this whole thing just goes completely pear-shaped for Romney.

    This too shall pass.

  3. yahoo-Z4XPKI6FROEKZOUH22IJDNDP6U
    September 11th, 2012 @ 12:50 pm

    I am really growing tired of all this manufactured pessimism.

    Romney is going to mop the floor with the JEF. It is up to us to STAY FOCUSED!!!

  4. Charles
    September 11th, 2012 @ 1:11 pm

    Here’s the phallusy: sometimes it rains on days with only a 20% chance of rain. If Nate Silver could predict the stock market, the price of gasoline, and whether it’s going to rain in 56 days, he’d be rich. Maybe he is rich, but not very rich is my guess.

    To extrapolate from President Obama having, for example, a 1.5% lead in Iowa to saying he has a 74% chance to win Iowa is to misunderstand something fundamental about politics. It’s not random. It’s not the weather. There are people working to change the way the wind is blowing.

  5. Laurence
    September 11th, 2012 @ 2:42 pm

    The Right Newz asks the right question:

    http://therightnewz.com/?p=9104

    How Can Mitt Romney, Who’s Getting 96% Republican Support and Leads By 14 Among Independents, Be Trailing Obama By 6 Points in the CNN Poll?

  6. Adjoran
    September 11th, 2012 @ 3:14 pm

    Any poll which will not disclose its crosstabs at this point in the race should be disregarded completely, as should polls of “all adults.” They just are not relevant, but when aggregators like RCP or Silver include them in their averages, they have a biasing effect on the results.

    The ALL-TIME RECORD for partisan turnout margin since it has been measured is the D+7 of 2008. Most of the media polls show a Democrat edge of between +4 and +11, highly unlikely with the depressed enthusiasm of Democratic voters, the increased enthusiasm of Republicans, and the negative views of the economy of both the electorate at large and independents in particular.

    So if you want to allow these leftist propaganda fantasies to upset you, Allahpundit has space in his crying room, but bring your own adult diapers.

  7. How About That Skewed CNN Poll? | The Lonely Conservative
    September 11th, 2012 @ 4:19 pm

    […] under-sampled independent and Republican voters. (Read More)This is all by design, by the way, as Stacy McCain pointed out earlier.The media’s effort to manufacture the appearance of a decisive shift toward President Obama — […]

  8. Finrod Felagund
    September 11th, 2012 @ 5:00 pm

    What he said, exactly.

  9. A Fool's Game
    September 11th, 2012 @ 5:06 pm

    I am discouraged, but not by the polls. I believe that Obama will because:
    1. The sort of media bias (in both the news and entertainment media) that is well-documented by RSM — for most people, it’s the air they breath, and they can’t imagine that’s no more real than the Matrix.
    2. An alarmingly large number of people are now on government assistance of some kind, and many, many more aspire to be so. While some of these are clear-sighted enough to vote for Romney in hopes of that rising tide that will lift their own boats, many more despair that the economy even can recover, and will support Obama in hopes of a better shot at getting on the dole.
    3. More people than you realize will blow off whatever they know firsthand about the economy in favor of what they are told, and will choose to vote their balls. They want sex, they want porn, they want abortions, they want gays to marry, and they want Christians to be made to shut the **** up, and they know Obama will give them these things, and they believe that Romney will prevent them (alas, he probably wouldn’t put a stop to any of these).

    So, happy as I’d be for RSM to be right in his confidence that Romney can win, I’m skeptical that he actually will.

  10. smokedaddy
    September 11th, 2012 @ 5:08 pm

    btw one of the commenters at powerline reversed engineered the poll results, based on known results, Dem margins, Repub margins, and Indy margins, and figured the sample must have been Dem +12. Yes, +12. D-38 I-28 R-26 would work.

  11. Election Inspection: Heebie Jeebies On The Right « The Camp Of The Saints
    September 11th, 2012 @ 5:10 pm

    […] writing about the overtly and flaunting pro-Obama sentiment at Politico, Stacy McCain writes: The “news” at Politico is all about gloomy clouds for Romney, while the sun is always shining […]

  12. McGehee
    September 11th, 2012 @ 6:22 pm

    Democrats and the media (BIRM) are trying to hold off the preference cascade with a house of cards.

  13. McGehee
    September 11th, 2012 @ 6:25 pm

    1. The sort of media bias (in both the news and entertainment media) that is well-documented by RSM — for most people, it’s the air they breath, and they can’t imagine that’s no more real than the Matrix.

    Wrong. The only people who still don’t get that the media are biased are people who tell pollsters who they’ll vote for, then don’t bother to vote.

  14. Adjoran
    September 12th, 2012 @ 1:03 am

    In fact, if Silver could predict the price of any stock or commodity 56 days out with as much as 50% accuracy, he could be richer than Trump in a year.

  15. Finrod Felagund
    September 12th, 2012 @ 11:22 am

    It didn’t even take getting to the weekend. Rasmussen for Wednesday 9/12: Obama 46, Romney 45.