CNN has just released the results of an opinion poll which shows Obama very suddenly up by 6 percentage points over Mitt Romney. Last week Obama and Romney were tied.
The new CNN/ORC poll released Monday showed that Obama received a four-percentage-point "bounce" from last week's Democratic convention, giving him a 52%-46% advantage over the former Massachusetts governor.
After the Republican National Convention in late August, the same poll showed the candidates at 48% each.
Acording to CNN/ORC International "1,022 adult Americans" were interviewed by telephone from September 7th through September 9th. The breakdown by political party is only partially provided.
BASED ON 441 REGISTERED DEMOCRATS -- (SAMPLING ERROR: +/- 4.5% PTS.);
BASED ON 397 REGISTERED REPUBLICANS -- (SAMPLING ERROR: +/- 5% PTS.)
Using the 1,022 adult Americans as 100% of the sample, we can calculate that independents are significantly under-represented.
- Democrat — 441 — 43.15%
- Republican — 397 — 38.85%
- Independent — 184 — 18.00%
And then we have the Washington Post-ABC News poll. Among likely voters this one has Obama up by a percent, 49% to 48%, but the bigger spread appears among registered voters.
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.
These results might seem plausible, given that there is ordinarily a post-convention bounce for the candidate whose convention closes the week before. But in this post-convention polling Republicans are significantly under-represented.
- Democrat — 33%
- Republican — 23%
- Independent — 37%
- Other — 4%
- Don't Know — 3%
Rasmussen regularly polls to see how voters identify themselves by party, and the results of that polling are quite different from both CNN/ORC and Washington Post/ABC.
- Democrat — 33.3%
- Republican — 37.6%
- Other — 29.2%
When you consider these polls showing Obama pulling ahead, also consider headlines we are not seeing night after night on the evening news broadcasts — the plight of the homeless, the high price of gasoline, the number of people on food stamps (Oh wait, getting people onto food stamps is a good thing), or the growing number of people living in poverty. We would be endlessly reminded of these dire conditions if only the president were a Republican. They reflect poorly on the man who sits in the Oval Office, but since that man is a Democrat the media barely mentions them.
Instead we get polls. — polls that really show how the media is working overtime to get Obama re-elected. Skewing them as they do, the media reveal their own preferences, not the voters'.
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