Romney Rising

Mitt Romney greets audience members at a campaign rally in St.Petersburg, Florida on Friday. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)

When Scott Pelley of CBS asked him how he would turn this campaign around, Mitt Romney confidently told him, "Well, it doesn't need a turnaround."

Whether the Republican nominee for president needed one or not, things certainly have turned around in the last few days. Romney went from trailing Obama by two points, 47% to 49%, in the Rasmussen tracking poll to leading him by the same margin. He's cut the president's lead to two points in the latest Politico/GWU/Battleground survey, and the two are tied at 47% in National Journal's Congressional Connection poll. Last month, Obama led Romney by seven points in their survey.

One of the most interesting findings to note is that, for the first time that I've noticed, in both the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls, Obama's poll position is lower than his approval rating. That can either be good news for the president (because it shows he has room to grow) or for Romney (because it shows that even voters who approve of the president's job performance aren't supporting him). 

Of course, the national popular vote won't decide the election, but state polls show the Romney-Ryan campaign surging in crucial territory.

In Florida, President Obama's lead over Mitt Romney is down to just one point in the NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist survey; last month, they had the president up five points, 49%-44%. Other pollsters have the Republican ticket opening up a lead in the Sunshine State. Romney leads Obama by two points, 49%-47%, according to a survey conducted on Thursday by Rasmussen Reports. Last month, Rasmussen had Obama ahead in the state, 48%-46%. WeAskAmerica finds an even larger shift toward the Republican ticket: their latest poll of Florida voters shows Romney leading Obama by three points, 49%-46%; that mirrors the results of their Florida poll last month, which found the president on top by the same margin. 

In Virginia, the shift is even more stark. A Marist poll conducted for NBC and the Wall Street Journal finds Romney trailing the president by two points, 46%-48%, but that's narrower than the five-point lead Obama enjoyed in their last survey of Virginia voters, conducted less than a month ago. Romney leads Obama in the commonwealth, 49%-48%, according to Rasmussen Reports; that result mirrors the state of the race in their last poll of Virginians, which had Obama up by the same margin. We Ask America shows a six-point swing toward Romney in Old Dominion; he leads the president by three in their latest poll; last month, they had Obama up three points on Romney in Virginia.

Out west, the poll numbers are more muddled. Romney leads the president by three points in Colorado, 49%-46%, according to a Gravis Marketing survey; last month, they had Obama ahead in the state, 50%-46%. A poll conducted by the University of Denver, however, gives the president a four-point lead among Colorado voters, though we don't have an earlier survey they've conducted to compare those results to. In Nevada, where the president has enjoyed a small but consistent lead all year, Gravis Marketing has him ahead by just one point, 49%-48%. The RealClearPolitics average of the latest Nevada polls pegs Obama's lead in the state at 4.6 percentage points. 

Finally, in the all-important swing state of Ohio, it's a one-point race, according to American Research Group, Rasmussen Reports and WeAskAmerica. ARG and WeAskAmerica both have Romney up one point in the Buckeye State, while Rasmussen reported that Romney was down one point there. Last month, Obama led Romney by one point in an ARG survey of Ohio voters, and other surveys gave him as much as a ten-point lead in the state.

It would be easy to credit this marked surge in the Republican ticket's poll numbers to Mitt Romney's rout of Obama in the first presidential debate, but nearly all of the aforementioned polls were conducted, in whole or in part, before Wednesday night's debate. The conclusion is inescapable: the Romney surge began before he cleaned the president's clock last Wednesday in Denver.

What could explain this sudden shift in momentum in a race that, let's be honest, appeared to be slipping away from Romney as recently as last weekend? Perhaps the Libya fiasco is finally taking its toll on the president, but then why hasn't his approval rating dropped along with his poll numbers? Maybe the fundamentals of a race that should have been Romney's to lose all along are finally catching up with Obama, but if that's the case, then what took so long? Maybe those TV ads that feature Romney just sitting down and talking into the camera are resonating with voters in a way that those earlier, business-presentationy commercials with the fancy graphics didn't. Whatever the cause, it now appears to be the Obama campaign that's in desperate need of a turnaround.

Why the Daley Resignation Is Significant

Three years ago, when President-Elect Obama was appointing his new administration, I noticed a curious absence from the list of people he was nominating to his cabinet and other high-ranking officials: William Daley.

The son and brother of former Chicago mayors had a résumé that made him as suited for a powerful position in a Democratic administration as anybody. He was Secretary of Commerce from 1997 to 2000, when he resigned to chair Al Gore’s presidential campaign. (He had previously chaired Bill Clinton' 1992 presidential campaign in Illinois.) He even co-chaired the president-elect’s transition team!

Of course, he also ran a couple of Fortune 500 companies, namely SBC Communications and JPMorgan Chase & Co. You would think this would be another asset for a prospective cabinet-level appointment, especially in an administration tasked with getting a flailing economy back on track, but having just won an election lambasting ... well, a lot of things. He was kind of all over the map. Let’s just say capitalism in general, Obama may have been weary about someone who seemed to exemplify the Wall St.-Washington liaison that he had disingenuously but convincingly decried in 2008.

Then, last year, Daley resurfaced when Obama tapped him to serve as White House Chief of Staff. His appointment was regarded by those on the Right and the Left as a smart choice. People who fancied themselves astute political analysts (not me) viewed it as a business-friendly entreaty by a president whose big-spending, job-killing, anti-free-enterprise agenda had been dealt a crushing blow at the ballot box a couple months earlier.

In October, Daley told the press that he planned “to put the president through his re-election” and then return to Chicago, so it came as a surprise to many (including me) when the administration announced that Daley was stepping down as Chief of Staff this month. Suprising, that is, if you didn’t know about what happened last November (which I didn’t).

About two months ago, Daley is handed off “some of the day-to-day management” duties at the White House to Peter Rouse, a longtime Democratic hand in Washington who had served as interim Chief of Staff between the time Rahm Emanuel left in October 2010 to run for mayor of Chicago and Daley taking office the following January. According to Will Rahn at the Daily Caller:

Congressional Democrats had criticized Daley, a former commerce secretary under President Clinton, for what some described as his imperfect understanding of the legislative branch, and his tense relationship with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. This stood in marked contrast to his predecessor, Rahm Emanuel, a former Democratic congressman who is now Mayor of Chicago.
“Rahm Emanuel was not only a creature of the House, he knew many of the senators,” Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin told The Huffington Post in September. “Bill Daley does not have that depth of relationship coming in.”
One senior Democratic aide was more blunt, saying that the party’s congressional leadership had “basically come to the conclusion that he’s not up to the job and doesn’t really get how Congress works. At all.”

Apparently, Daley’s pragmatic mindset had no place in an administration that has made a firm policy of deferring to congressional Democrats, who as we all know are led by a cadre of rabid ideologues.

The most important thing to recognize when processing the news of Daley’s departure is this: the last time an incumbent president replaced his chief of staff in an election year was in 1992, when Pres. George Bush swapped Samuel K. Skinner for Jim Baker. For all the presidents Obama has compared himself to, we don’t think the fate of George Bush’s '92 reelection is one he wishes to emulate.

Last month, I blogged about the premature excitement over Obama’s approval numbers. A new rash of polls out this week show him sinking yet again, and the gap between his approval and disapproval ratings has widened. Gallup pegs his job approval at 43%, while Rasmussen Reports has it at 46%. A Reuters/Ipsos survey gives the president a 47% approval rating, and CBS News says he’s at 45%. In all four polls, more respondents disapproved of the president’s performance than approved.

Obama’s in trouble. Swapping out his Chief of Staff won’t save him. If the Republicans get their act together, then we can swap out our president for one who will know what he’s doing and who actually cares about middle-class Americans.

Anything Can Happen

Let's start by acknowledging the inevitable: Mitt Romney will win the New Hampshire primary. I'll be stunned if he doesn't win by double digits. Having already placed first in the Iowa caucuses, Romney should have the nomination sewn up after a decisive win in New Hampshire, yet Pundits, pollsters and political junkies are buzzing about "the battle for second place" (as well as 3rd and 4th, if it's close). What I find especially interesting is that the air of mystery surrounding the first-in-the-nation primary this year is just as strong, if not more so, than it's been in previous years, despite Romney's incredibly strong poll position going into tonight and the paucity of doubt that he'll win by a sizeable margin. It's anyone's guess what order the runners-up will finish when all the N.H. votes are tallied. Ron Paul has consistently been polling in 2nd place since Newt Gingrich's collapse, but just like in Iowa, he seems to have plateaued. It's also worth noting that, while Santorum and Romney both outperformed their poll numbers in Iowa, Ron Paul's 21% of the vote was much closer to his position in the polls leading up to the caucuses. (A similar phenomenon occurred in 2008, where Romney and McCain both finished well ahead of their positions in the RCP average, while Paul underperformed.) For you empiricists out there, this portends and underwhelming finish for Paul in the Granite state, but he'll no doubt plod along.

The most exciting thing may be a last-minute surge by Jon Huntsman, who's arguably got the most to lose tonight (except for Mitt Romney). I pondered this possibility in a post last week, but by this weekend I was convinced that that ship had sailed. I may have spoken too soon; a spate of polls out of New Hampshire show real momentum for the even-tempered Mormon Sinophile. Rasmussen Reports has him at 15%, up from 12% in their previous New Hampshire survey. Public Policy Polling, which also had Huntsman polling at 12% the last week of December, released the results of a poll that pegged him at 16%. Perhaps most telling is the candidate's surge in the Suffolk University/7News tracking poll, in which Huntsman has doubled his share of the vote in the last week.

All of these polls have Huntsman in 3rd place, behind Romney and Paul, but a poll released over the weekend from American Research Group has him in 2nd place at 17%, followed by Ron Paul at 16%. Today the two are separated by three percentage points in the RCP average of N.H. polls, which for some reason does not include the ARG survey results; just five days ago, that gap was twelve points.

Huntsman won't win the New Hampshire primary, but there's a very real possibility that he could come in a strong 2nd. That would effectively quash Rick Santorum's momentum coming out of Iowa, and with a 10-day interim between today and the South Carolina primary, just about anything can happen.

Rasmussen: Republicans Widen Lead Over Democrats on Generic Ballot

Check out this latest story from Rasmussen Reports:

Generic Congressional Ballot

Posted using ShareThis
Continuing a trend that began in late April, Republicans have widened their lead over Democrats in the Generic Ballot poll to seven points. This is a stunning turnaround from less than 8 months ago, when congressional Democrats had the same 7-point advantage over the GOP. One can only guess what the polls will show in April.