Keep Your Chin Up!

Just wanted to comment that my posting has been rather light over the past few weeks of this election season, and part of the reason is that I have been working feverishly on a comprehensive post (complete with supporting links) entitled "100 Reasons to Vote Against Obama."  I hope to have it completed in about a week or so.

I want to encourage any readers who might be feeling discouraged about this election to keep their chin up.  There have been a lot of national and state polls lately that have looked bad for Romney, and the media has been spinning that Obama is the heavy favorite.  And of course the media and the Democrats have had a field day with those unfortunate Romney comments about the 47%.  (By the way, Romney was correct that nearly half of Americans pay no income taxes.  And he is correct that a solid 45% of Americans will vote for Obama no matter.  He is also correct that a substantial and growing percentage of Americans are dependent on government now, although I don't think it is anywhere near 50% yet.  The problem was that Romney falsely assumed that all three of these groups are equal and fully overlapping.  They are most certainly not.)

Keep in mind a few things.  First, most of these polls that show sizable Obama leads are badly oversampling Democrats.  In some cases, they are assuming an electorate significantly more Democratic than 2008, which was one of the most favorable Democratic elections in the modern era!  Second, in many of these polls Obama's job approval and head-to-head numbers are below 50%.  There are exceptions, but generally undecided voters break toward the challenger and it is rare for an incumbent president to get a share of the vote that is higher than his job approval number.  Obama's job approval is very low with undecided voters.  Third, there are still four key presidential and vice-presidential debates which could have a big impact on this race.  The first of those is tonight.  Fourth, most pollsters have found that GOP enthusiasm to vote is higher this year than Democratic enthusiasm, despite a Democratic convention that threw a lot of red meat to the base.  No matter what excuses Democrats may make for Obama's performance with regard to the economy, it's hard for the more honest ones to feel too much excitement about voting for another four years of the same when unemployment stubbornly remains above 8%.

I still believe the fundamentals of this race favor Romney, despite increasingly blatant attempts by the media to swing the election toward Obama.  For now, I give Romney about a 50/50 chance to win, but he needs to perform strongly in the upcoming debates to close the sale with undecided voters.