America’s two top pollsters, Gallup and Rasmussen, both increased Romney’s lead over Obama in the wake of the second presidential debate. With a one-third post-debate sample, today’s Rasmussen has Romney up 49-47% and Gallup’s 7-day tracker has Romney up 52-45%. Romney gained a point in both.
Most everyone was expecting Gallup to tighten today, including me. And you just know the Democrats and the media prayed to Gaia for a little movement their way.
Yesterday, I offered one possible explanation for the differences in the two polls. You can read that here.
Though it’s entirely too early to tell what permanent effect (if any) a frantic and more conscious Obama performance in the second debate might do to the margins, a look at where the campaigns are at now does give us a clue.
There are rumors that Obama has all but given up on Florida, Virginia, and Colorado. The president is now practically living in Ohio and desperately hoping he won’t have to personally visit Michigan or Pennsylvania. The polls are most certainly closing in those two states which looked like sure things just a few weeks ago, but a visit would be a devastating admission of a campaign on the ropes.
When “inevitability” is a large part of a shallow reelection game-plan, a trip to your own backyard would shatter that illusion to pieces. The corrupt Politico might even have to cover it.
But a visit might just be necessary. The only message Obama seems to have now is this silliness about “binders” and that the other guy is so bad you simply must vote for the devil you know. Even MSNBC is hitting the president for his complete lack of a second-term agenda — as is Mitt Romney, whose message is now focused solely on the economy and jobs.
Obama’s smallness is finally catching up to him. A campaign running on “binders” is a campaign that’s completely out of gas and hoping to coast to a victory.
I’m told that no one as far behind in a Gallup poll as Obama is now has ever won the presidency. If that’s true, he’s going to need something bigger than “binders” to turn a flailing campaign around.
Romney’s job isn’t to sit on his lead, far from it. He needs to stay on offense, win Monday’s debate on foreign policy decisively, and stay on offense. He’s already passed the acceptable alternative test Obama and his Media Palace Guards worked so hard to fail him at. Now he needs to look and act like America’s next President.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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