Here are the latest tracking polls of the presidential race:
Gallup: Romney 50%, Obama 47%
IBD/TIPP: Obama 47%, Romney 44%
RAND: Obama 49%, Romney 45%
Rasmussen: Romney 50%, Obama 46%
Reuters/Ipsos: Romney 47%, Obama 46%
Public Policy Polling: Obama 48%, Romney 48%
UPI/CVoter: Obama 49%, Romney 47%
Washington Post/ABC News: Romney 49%, Obama 48%
Indiana U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock (R) “refused to apologize this morning for his comments about whether pregnancies from rape were God’s will, apologizing only for what he said were people’s misinterpretation of them,” the Indianapolis Star reports.
Said Mourdock: “I said life is precious. I believe life is precious. I believe rape is a brutal act. It is something that I abhor. That anyone could come away with any meaning other than what I just said is regrettable, and for that I apologize.. The apology — as I said before, roll this tape back — is if anybody misterpreted what I said.”
Mark Halperin: “Chicago remains sufficiently funded and emboldened by its own polling to compete for the final two weeks in all nine of the battlegrounds: Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia in the South; New Hampshire in the North; Iowa, Ohio, and Wisconsin in the Midwest; and Nevada and Colorado in the West. As they have in the past, Obama campaign officials say they expect to win a high percentage of those states and conceivably could sweep all nine.”
“When pressed, the Obama officials with whom I met said that five of the nine stand out: Nevada, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, and New Hampshire. In that quintet, Democrats believe the combination of their current leads in polling, early voting (where applicable), and ground game makes their chances of winning even greater there than in the other four. And given the Electoral College math, unless Romney picks off one or more of those five states, Obama would win a minimum of 281 electoral votes and re-election.”
As Greg Sargent notes, the polling averages show Obama leading in each of those states as well.
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“A knowledgeable source tells BuzzFeed the answer is in a bit of cosmetic technology used commonly by celebrities: spray tanning. The Republican nominee has made a habit of spray tanning before major speeches, debates, interviews, and other events that have a chance of getting wide TV coverage, the source said. He pays for the process out of pocket — sparing his campaign the expense, and the task of masking it on public campaign finance reports — and steers clear of public salons where he could be recognized. Instead, he gets misted down in the comfort of his own home or hotel suite.”
Reuters reports on the uptick in efforts to mislead, intimidate or pressure voters as we head towards Election Day.
In addition to billboards warning against voter fraud and employers pushing workers to vote a certain way, in Florida, Virginia and Indiana, voters have received phone calls that wrongly told them there was no need to cast a ballot in person on Election Day because they could vote by phone.
Meanwhile, a probe of similar phone calls in Indiana has focused on a firm called Vote USA, but it is unclear who was behind the group because its phone number is no longer active.
“Two-to-one, people who say they have already voted are Barack Obama supporters. The majority of people who plan to vote early are Barack Obama supporters. The majority of people who plan to vote on election day, Romney supporters. I think that’s what’s gets tricky — you have to have a huge margin on election day to offset the Democrats.”
— Pollster Ann Selzer, in an interview with TPM on the impact of early voting.
The Romney campaign is not committing to granting any network interviews in the final two weeks of the campaign, Politico reports.
Rick Klein: “The truth is both sides are worried — Team Obama is nowhere near as confident about its map as public statements suggest, and the Romney surge isn’t as real (or relevant, given battleground-state polling) as Republicans are spinning. Yet it’s that map that governs still — national polls aside, the Romney surge hasn’t spilled into the battlegrounds (particularly Ohio) enough to upend the race in Romney’s favor, at least not yet.”
First Read: “Obama could still lose Ohio and get to 270 electoral votes, and the path is not a nutty path. He does it by winning Wisconsin (a state that hasn’t gone GOP since 84), Iowa (a state Gore carried), New Hampshire (a state Kerry carried), and Colorado. That gets him to 272. Sorta stunning that with all of our focus on FL-OH-VA that they all three could get rendered meaningless by the Rodney Dangerfield of the battleground: Colorado. And this is why, despite some national polls showing Romney either tied or slightly ahead, the narrative has never held that Obama is behind – due to all of his different paths to 270.”
James Fallows notes the diverging outlook between political “experts” who say Mitt Romney’s momentum may carry him to victory and quantitative analysts who insist President Obama is still the solid favorite for re-election.
“We have an exceptionally clear instance of people judging from their experience, their ‘bones,’ their personal instinct, etc that things are going one way… while data… point in the opposite direction.”
“I don’t know who’s right, but I note this as a moment of unusual clarity about two approaches to politics. Among the many things we’ll learn two weeks from now (and in the assessment afterwards) is which of these approaches to political analysis has revealed a profound flaw.”
President Obama spoke to the Des Moines Register yesterday on a phone call which was described as “an incredibly informative exchange of questions, answers and an insightful glimpse into the president’s vision for a second term. He made a genuine and passionate case for our endorsement and for reelection.”
But for some reason the White House declared the conversation “off-the-record.”
The newspaper makes its endorsement on Saturday night.
Update: The Des Moines Register was now allowed to publish the transcript of the Obama interview.
Mitt Romney distanced himself from Indiana U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock’s (R) suggestion that pregnancy resulting from rape is “something God intended,” according to the Huffington Post.
A new DNC video points out that just yesterday Romney appeared in a new advertisement supporting Mourdock.
First Read: “Even though the Romney camp quickly distanced itself from Mourdock’s
remarks, the story could matter to Romney. Why? Because just as Romney
is trying to move to the middle — on domestic policy, foreign policy,
and social issues — the Mourdock story is a reminder how the
conservative bent of this Republican Party has been a drag on Romney.”
Ryan Teague Beckwith has an exhaustive history of the memes of the Obama presidency, including the hope poster, Superman, the teleprompter, Spock, the Joker, the Jedi knight and “not bad.”
“Though they’re usually playful, memes can tell us a lot about what people really think about the president. They’ve tracked the hopes projected on him, the difficulties he’s faced in office and the fears of his opponents. And though they are generated and sustained by grassroots Internet users, Obama has played a key role in popularizing many of them.”
Emails show that White House and State Department officials “were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack,” Reuters reports.
Ginger White tells Daily Download that she plans to prove that she had a 13-year affair with Herman Cain in a new book which could prompt the former presidential candidate “to be a little more honest with his wife, because the details that I share, only she would know.”
While acknowledging that she was “getting all this help from Herman Cain” — as much as $6,000 a month — White was emphatic in declaring: “I am not a hooker. I am not a prostitute.”
She added: “My thing was, okay, I’ll take advantage of you before you take advantage of me. Let’s flip the script. I’m not gonna be your nice little hottie…You want to take my time away from my kids, my family, I’m going to make you sort of pay for it just a little bit.”
A new Quinnipiac poll in Connecticut finds Rep. Chris Murphy (D)with a 6-point lead over Linda McMahon (R) in the U.S. Senate race,49% to 43%.
National Journal notes the poll closely mirrors the results of an internal poll the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee released Wednesday shows Murphy up by five points, 46% to 40%.
A WBUR poll in Massachusetts finds challenger Elizabeth Warren (D) leading Sen Scott Brown (R) in the U.S. Senate race by five points, 48% to 43%.
“Life is that gift from God. I think that even when life begins in that
horrible situation of rape, that it is something God intended to happen.”
— Indiana U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock (R), at a debate tonight with Rep. Joe Donnelly (D).
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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