Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Fox News Battleground States Poll: Obama Up in Florida, Ohio and Virginia

It's Fox News, so will cocooning conservatives beset by epistemic closure blow this poll off as a desperately biased survey of the Obama-enabling MSM?  I wouldn't be surprised. And me? I'm tired of trying to parse the bright spots in all these recent polls showing Romney getting hammered.

From Dana Blanton, "Obama has edge over Romney in three battleground states" (via Memeorandum):
President Barack Obama has the edge over Republican Mitt Romney in three potentially decisive states in the presidential election.

Obama tops Romney by seven percentage points among likely voters in both Ohio (49-42 percent) and Virginia (50-43 percent). In Florida, the president holds a five-point edge (49-44 percent).

Obama’s lead is just outside the poll’s margin of sampling error in Ohio and Virginia, and within the margin of sampling error in Florida.

The good news for Romney is that among voters who are “extremely” interested in this year’s election, the races are much tighter. Obama is up by just two points with this group in Virginia (49-47 percent), Florida is tied (48-48 percent), and Romney is up by one point in Ohio (48-47 percent).

Independents are nearly evenly divided in each of the states, as well.

Majorities of voters are unhappy with how things are going in the country, yet in all three states more say they trust Obama than Romney to improve the economy. Likewise, in each state more voters believe the Obama administration’s policies have helped rather than hurt the economy -- albeit by slim margins: By two points in Florida, three points in Ohio and five points in Virginia.
Continue reading.

Okay, sounds like there's some bright spots in there, right? Well as I'm posting this entry CBS News is reporting the results from its new poll also showing Obama up in Virginia. See, "Wisconsin Offers Window on Hurdles Ahead for Romney":
RACINE, Wis. — To Mitt Romney, the 10 electoral votes in Wisconsin may be more essential than extra, a critical backup plan if a first-tier battleground state falls out of reach.

Seven weeks until the election, with Mr. Romney facing new questions about his ability to gain trust among voters experiencing economic hardships, his campaign is increasingly pointing to Wisconsin as a place where a statewide Republican resurgence could rub off on Mr. Romney.

But President Obama has overtaken Mr. Romney on who would do a better job handling the economy, according to a new Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News poll of likely Wisconsin voters. The poll also found that Mr. Obama has a 17-point edge over Mr. Romney when voters are asked if a candidate cares about their needs and problems.

As the president makes his first campaign visit of the year to Wisconsin on Saturday, the poll found that Mr. Obama was the choice of 51 percent to 45 percent for Mr. Romney among likely voters. The six-point lead, which includes those who said they were leaning in one direction or another, marks a slight shift in Mr. Obama’s direction since Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin joined the Republican ticket last month.

The findings of the poll, along with the fallout from newly exposed remarks Mr. Romney made at a fund-raiser in which he bluntly suggested that 47 percent of Americans saw themselves as victims who are dependent on the government, offer a window into the challenges confronting his campaign here and other important swing states during the final 48 days of the race.

Rob Jankowski, an independent voter who supported Mr. Obama four years ago but has been disappointed by his economic leadership and disapproves of his health care plan, is among the 3 percent of voters in the survey who say they are still undecided. He said he did not feel loyalty to Mr. Obama simply because he supported him last time, but he said Mr. Romney had not made his case.

“Obama is putting out his plans and his details and being more public on that, but with Romney it’s kind of gray,” said Mr. Jankowski, 39, speaking in a follow-up interview Tuesday afternoon here in Jefferson Park, as a cool breeze rustled the tree leaves. “I’d like to know more — educate me.”

The New York Times, in collaboration with Quinnipiac and CBS News, is tracking the presidential race with recurring polls in six states. The latest collection of surveys also included Colorado, where Mr. Romney is running nearly even with Mr. Obama, and Virginia, where Mr. Obama has a narrow advantage of four percentage points, both of which are inside the survey’s margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for each candidate.

But for Mr. Romney, Wisconsin offers one of the best chances to fight on Mr. Obama’s terrain in the Midwest and expand the battleground map. The Romney campaign has redirected some of its money and manpower once intended for Michigan and Pennsylvania to Wisconsin, hoping to create as many paths as possible to reaching the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
I've highlighted that part on Virginia.

We'll see, but time's running short.

If it's any consolation, Rasmussen has Romney up 47/46 in its nationwide tracking poll today. So, who knows? Maybe even Fox News polls are in the tank for Obama?

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