The United States embassies in Libya and Egypt were ruthlessly stormed yesterday (9/11), and our Ambassador to Libya was viciously murdered, along with three other American diplomats, by Muslim extremists. After setting fire to our embassy buildings, these thugs dragged the lifeless body of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens though the streets of Benghazi.
The Americans were targeted in an attack on their car while trying to move to a safer venue away from the violent protests that erupted at the US Consulate. Ambassador Stevens reportedly died of suffocation, while the three other personnel were shot to death.
President Obama condemned the attacks, while also calling on embassies across the globe to increase security. As this is written, there is no indication that the president will launch any sort of retaliation on the rebels for these brutal murders or the attacks on our embassies.
The tragic events in Libya and Egypt could be bad news for President Obama; here’s an article from The Telegraph that explains why.
What follows are our comments prepared for today prior to the news from the Middle East:
The party conventions are over and President Obama enjoyed a modest bounce which is fading (as usual). The next big campaign events, the debates, begin the first week of October. Between now and then, expect to see a flood of polls – hundreds of polls.
Given that so many polls will be forthcoming, Spencer and I take a historical look today at which polls have been the most accurate in the past. We were actually somewhat surprised by the results of this research.
The latest national poll to come out was yesterday’s ABC News/Washington Post poll which puts the race at 49-48 in favor of Obama (margin of error). As of this morning, the RealClearPolitics.com national average has Obama leading by 3.4 at 48.6 to 45.2.
This figure is skewed by a new CNN/Opinion Research poll that has drawn significant criticism for over-sampling Democrats and drastically under-sampling Independents. This very skewed poll showed Obama leading Romney by 52-46. Unskewed, the poll reveals a 53-45 result in favor of Romney. You should read this story here.
This is a good example of how polls can be very misleading. But let’s take a look at which polls were the most accurate from the 2008 general election. Leading the pack with a spot-on call in 2008 were Rasmussen and Pew. Polmetrix, Harris and GWU round out the top five.
Most of the other polls on the list over-estimated the size of the Obama margin in 2008, while a couple under-estimated it. Spencer and I were surprised to see big names like Gallup, FOX, Reuters and the alphabet TV networks near the bottom of the list.
This points out a couple of things. First, no matter how long you have been at it, polling is not an exact science, and it is extremely difficult to make a perfect call or even a near-perfect call. Second, as consumers of this information, we need to be careful not to take the results of any one poll as fact. These are all just blurry snapshots in time. That is why it is a good idea to look at a poll aggregator like RealClearPolitics.com.
Also keep in mind that many of the polls you see are using baseline data tied to the 2008 voter turnout. The turnout in 2008 was absolutely epic, lightning in a bottle, that is likely impossible to reproduce. This is not good news for the president as college students, African-Americans and Latinos turned out for him in record numbers last time. That may not happen again.
Moving to the state races, only a handful of polls have come out since the conventions, many of them for states that the candidates already have in the bag. Other than those, the most notable for Romney is a NC poll that has him at +10. That is a massive lead but it’s just one poll. However, Romney has been ahead in nearly all of the recent NC polls.
Obama is leading by +5 in the most recent OH poll, obviously not good for Romney. FL remains very close with Romney leading by a thin one point margin in the most recent poll. The latest VA poll shows Romney ahead at +5 (again, just one poll).
Barring any surprises (which as we learned today cannot be ruled out), we expect the race to tighten to about even in the national polls until the debates. It remains to be seen if the debates will produce a clear winner.
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