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Friday, May 11, 2012

An Interesting Juxtaposition

I happened to look at the Real Clear Politics site this morning and noticed two items that really should not go together. The first was an article by Ron Brownstein in the National Journal in which he talks about the Democrats "blue wall", the states that they have won in each of the last five elections. According to Brownstein, the changing nature of the electorate makes these states nearly certain to go for Obama and reduces the Republican chances of a victory to near zero. The second item is a poll Released this morning by Survey USA of registered voters in Oregon. (Oregon is one of those blue wall states.) The survey questioned just under 1500 registered voters and found Obama leading Romney by 47 to 43 percent. This is quite a worrying statistic for the Obama campaign. Remember, the GOP candidate tends to run about 4% better in polls of likely voters than in those among registered voters. In other words, the Survey USA poll is showing that Romney is basically tied with Obama among voters who have made up their minds in Oregon. Remember also, undecided voters normally break strongly against the incumbent. This means that were an election to be held today, it is likely that Romney would actually win in Oregon.

Obviously, we have almost six months left until election day. Much can and will happen before the voting starts. But there is clearly a major problem out there in the country for Obama. And the blue wall? Well, just remember what they say in all those ads: past results are no guarantee of future performance.

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