Mitt over Barack in latest polls

Gallup has Romney up, particularly in swing states as partisans wage methodology wars

Published October 16, 2012 5:43PM (EDT)

Today's Gallup Daily poll shows that 50 percent of likely voters will select Gov. Romney on Nov. 6, compared to 46 percent favoring President Obama. Rasmussen Reports’ daily Presidential Tracking Poll indicates that 49 percent of voters nationwide support Romney while 47 percent prefer the president, and the Real Clear Politics National Average has Romney up by 0.3 points.

This follows Monday’s USA Today/ Gallup Swing State Survey that showed Romney up by 4 percentage points among likely voters in 12 battleground states, largely because women in those states are now split nearly evenly between the candidates.

The president’s camp challenged Gallup’s findings, critiquing the methodology for its definition of a “likely voter.” Obama’s chief pollster Joel Benenson argued that youth, renters, minorities and urbanites were screened from the category, and called the poll “an extreme outlier,” citing 13 other polls of swing states conducted since Oct. 4 that showed the president as more popular with women in battleground states.

Last month, when the polls showed a post-convention Obama bump, Republicans were the ones contesting their accuracy, backed up by a conservative online community at unskewedpolls.com that “corrected” polls to display Romney’s impending victory.

Still, Rasmussen Reports shows that Romney has been tied with or slightly ahead of Obama in 10 of the last 11 days. Scott Rasmussen points to the 2 percent of voters who changed their mind following the first presidential debate to explain the trend. He also notes that the candidates have been within 3 points of each other in 89 of the past 100 days. “In other words,” he writes, “nothing has really changed for 10 months.”


By Zachary Bell

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Barack Obama Elections 2012 Gallup Mitt Romney Presidential Race Rasmussen Swing State Polls Truthiness