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John Hinderaker at Power Line has some good advice for Romney partisans; keep calm and carry on.
As Paul noted last night, the Gallup Poll currently has Barack Obama leading Mitt Romney by six points, 50-44. Paul expressed skepticism about that finding, with which I agree. Why would Obama be enjoying a spike in support over the last week? Are voters happy to see an American ambassador murdered and the Middle East in flames, while our economy continues to stagnate? I don’t think so.
Certainly the Rasmussen survey, which tracks likely voters, hasn’t seen any similar bump for Obama. As of today, Rasmussen’s three-day rolling numbers have the race tied 46-46. It couldn’t be closer: with “leaners” included, Rasmussen has it 48-48, and in the swing states it’s 46-46.
Obama’s resurgence in the Gallup Poll looks suspiciously like the one that Gallup gave Jimmy Carter in 1980. As we noted a couple of weeks ago, Gallup tried to convince its readers in October 1980 that Carter had surged to an eight-point lead over Ronald Reagan:
So, were voters suddenly happy about American hostages being held in Iran for a year, or about high unemployment and skyrocketing prices? Of course not. The Carter bounce was entirely fictional, caused either by lousy polling technique or an effort by Democrats at Gallup to drum up support for their candidate. I suspect that this year’s Obama bounce is cut from the same cloth.
Still, there is no denying that Republicans are nervous. This election shouldn’t be close, given Obama’s record, yet it looks as though it will be. So everyone has advice for the Romney campaign. …
WSJ Editors listened to the Obama excuses and responded.
… “When I came into office, I inherited the biggest deficit in our history.1 And over the last four years, the deficit has gone up, but 90% of that is as a consequence of two wars that weren’t paid for,2 as a consequence of tax cuts that weren’t paid for,3 a prescription drug plan that was not paid for,4 and then the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.5
“Now we took some emergency actions, but that accounts for about 10% of this increase in the deficit,6 and we have actually seen the federal government grow at a slower pace than at any time since Dwight Eisenhower, in fact, substantially lower than the federal government grew under either Ronald Reagan or George Bush.7″
Footnote No. 1: Either Mr. Obama inherited the largest deficit in American history or he won the 1944 election, but both can’t be true. The biggest annual deficit the modern government has ever run was in 1943, equal to 30.3% of the economy, to mobilize for World War II. The next biggest years were the following two, at 22.7% and 21.5%, to win it.
The deficit in fiscal 2008 was a mere 3.2% of GDP. The deficit in fiscal 2009, which began on October 1, 2008 and ran through September 2009, soared to 10.1%, the highest since 1945.
Mr. Obama wants to blame all of that on his predecessor, and no doubt the recession that began in December 2007 reduced revenues and increased automatic spending “stabilizers” like jobless insurance. But Mr. Obama conveniently forgets a little event in February 2009 known as the “stimulus” that increased spending by a mere $830 billion above the normal baseline.
The recession ended in June 2009, but spending has still kept rising. The President has presided over four years in a row of deficits in excess of $1 trillion, and the spending baseline going forward into his second term is nearly $1.1 trillion more than in fiscal 2007.
Federal spending as a share of GDP will average 24.1% over his first term including 2013. Even if you throw out fiscal 2009 and blame that entirely on Mr. Bush, the Obama spending average will be 23.8% of GDP. That compares to a post-WWII average of a little under 20%. Spending under Mr. Bush averaged 20.1% including 2009, and 19.6% if that year is left out. …
… Footnote No. 5: Mr. Obama keeps dining out on the excuse of the recession, but that ended halfway through his first year. The main deficit problems since 2009 are a permanently higher spending base (see Footnote No. 1) and the slowest economic recovery in modern history. Revenues have remained below 16% of the economy, compared to 18% to 19% in a normal expansion.
The 2008 crisis is long over. The crisis now is Mr. Obama’s non-recovery.
Footnote No. 6: Even at face value, Mr. Obama’s suggestion that he is “only” responsible for 10% of what the government does is ludicrous. Note that in addition to his stimulus, what he calls “emergency actions” include his new health-care entitlement that will cost taxpayers $200 billion per year when fully implemented and grow annually at 8%, even using low-ball assumptions.
But the larger point concerns executive leadership. Every President “inherits” a government that was built over generations, which he chooses to change, or not to change, to suit his priorities. Mr. Obama chose to see the government he inherited and grow it faster than any President since LBJ. …
More on this from Veronique de Rugy at The Corner.
Who remembers President Obama’s first budget? I do. It was called “A New Era of Responsibility.” Back then, the president promised that he would cut the deficit to $912 billion in 2011 and to $581 billion by 2012. But that’s another of the president’s promises that never come to pass. As Fiscal Year 2012 nears to an end, the data shows that the deficit for 2012 will surpass a trillion dollars for the fourth straight year in a row.
But according to the president, he has almost no responsibility in this sad state of affairs. In fact, he claims that “90 percent” of the deficit is due to President Bush’s policy:
Over the last four years, the deficit has gone up, but 90 percent of that is as a consequence of two wars that weren’t paid for, as a consequence of tax cuts that weren’t paid for, a prescription drug plan that was not paid for, and then the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
That’s a remarkably bold statement considering that President Obama has been in office for four years, and that he has engaged in seriously expansive policies of his own. I am always happy to remind conservatives about the incredible fiscal irresponsibility that reigned during the Bush years, but for Obama to claim that he shares almost no responsibility (10 percent, to be precise) in this fourth trillion-dollar deficit is ridiculous.
In fact, Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler looked at the claim this morning and concludes that the president deserves four Pinocchios for it. …
September 24th Pickings had poll analysis from Charlie Martin at Pajamas Media. Martin added more which we have today.
It isn’t unusual for the state of the polls to be a big issue this close to an election, but this week has been different from any previous campaign I remember — it’s not who’s ahead in the polls, it’s the polls themselves that are the big topic of discussion. My article “Skewed and Unskewed Polls” got picked up by both Drudge Report and Rush Limbaugh’s Stack O’ Stuff and — along with plenty of other contributions — made the topic of how polls are being performed into a national one.
The problem is that the discussion (as happens only too often) is now being led by people who don’t understand the whole topic very well. So let’s just talk about this a bit. I promise to almost completely eliminate the math; believe it or not, people can learn to reason about statistics without learning the central limit theorem.
Imagine a future day when, through technology and psychic powers, we can at any moment take an instant poll, checking what people mean in their heart of hearts to do when they vote in November. (And let’s not think what else could be done with that technology — this is a thought experiment.)
Secretary Dumbledore, Minister of Polling, goes into the office and pushes the appropriate button, and the poll is taken, click. It’s 51,267,303 for Romney and 49,109,941 for Obama, with 2,007,007 undecided. Does this tell us how the election is going to really come out? No, because it’s still 40 days (and nights) into the future. People may change their minds. Some people will die unexpectedly. And those two million-odd undecideds will have to either decide how to vote or decide not to vote at all.
And that’s the way it would work if we had this Perfect Magical Polling Wizardry. That would be a perfect poll.
Of course, we don’t. So this is what real polling companies do: …
Joel Gehrke in Beltway Confidential reports 55 percent of small businesses would not be started under this regulatory regime.
Fifty-five percent of small business owners and manufacturers would not have started their businesses in today’s economy, according to a new poll that also reports 69 percent say President Obama’s regulatory policies have hurt their businesses.
“There is far too much uncertainty, too many burdensome regulations and too few policymakers willing to put aside their egos and fulfill their responsibilities to the American people,” said Jay Timmons, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, which commissioned the poll along with the National Federation of Independent Businesses. “To fix this problem, we need immediate action on pro-growth tax and regulatory policies that put manufacturers in the United States in a position to compete and succeed in an ever-more competitive global economy.”
The poll reports another ominous statistic for job creation: “67 percent say there is too much uncertainty in the market today to expand, grow or hire new workers.” Why? Because “President Obama’s Executive Branch and regulatory policies have hurt American small businesses and manufacturers,” according to 69 percent of the business owners surveyed. …