Gallup Increases Romney's Lead to 51-46%

After dipping yesterday to a four point lead, today’s Gallup 7-day tracking poll puts Romney back to a comfortable five-point lead, 51-46%. This is the 14th day in a row Romney has been at 50 or above and the 19th day in a row where Obama has been unable to rise above 47%.

Today’s Rasmussen Report tracking poll tightened to just a two-point Romney lead, 49-47%, and the Washington Post tracking poll held for the third day in a row, showing Romney up by one, 49-48%.

With just nine days to go, the glacial movement in Mitt Romney’s favor appears to still be happening in the all-important swing states. In Florida, Romney has led in 6 of the last 7 polls. In Virginia, Romney’s led in 6 of the last 9 polls. The latest poll out of Colorado shows Romney up 1. And in Ohio, Romney finally landed on the scoreboard with a Rasmussen poll showing him ahead 50-48%.   

What probably has the Obama campaign worried more than anything is Obama’s inability to reach 50 nationally, even in those polls where he narrowly leads, and in most swing state polls.

Also, a surprising majority of these polls are all skewed in favor of Democrats with D+3 to D+7 samples. For example, the Washington Post national tracking poll today has a D+7 sample, which means that if the electorate looks exactly like 2008 (D+7) as far as a turnout advantage for Democrats, Romney’s ahead by 1.

But here’s where thing get worse: Even though almost every state and national polls skews towards Democrats, no one believes Democrats will enjoy that level of an advantage. A recent Gallup poll with a monster sample actually predicts Republicans will turn out with a three-point advantage over Democrats.

Even more terrifying for Chicago must be the fact that Obama can’t hit 50 in a majority of these skewed polls — even when he holds a lead.  

It’s looking like Election Day will come down to the actual vote versus what pollsters predicted in their turnout samples. Because there’s no question that if polls reflected something closer to a D+1 to D+3, Romney would be up nearly everywhere.  

 

 

Follow  John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC