Not that they say that, of course.
Two weeks of Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll interviews find 84 percent of likely voters who supported Obama in 2008 support him this year, while 13 percent say they are switching to Romney and 3 percent are backing others or haven’t made up their mind yet.
Now, let’s just assume for the moment that we have 100% turnout from 2008 and that every voter then is a likely voter now (God knows that happens a lot, particularly with the state polls these days). 69.46 million people voted for Obama; 59.93 for McCain. Assuming that Obama gets 84% of that total then he’ll be effectively handing over 9.03 million votes to Romney, 2.08 million to third-party votes, and be at 58.34 million votes… or less than McCain’s totals.
(pause)
Well all right, then.
Don’t read too much into this; we don’t know how much support Romney’s lost from McCain voters (although if it was anything like this, the Washington Post would tell us); it’s not actually sane to assume that every 2008 voter is a likely 2012 one; I’m not so sure I buy some of the reported drop-offs in support; and I’ll be the first to tell you that I am utterly ignoring EVERYTHING since Election Day 2008 that could have changed the voting totals . My point here, though, is to note that the President losing nearly one-in-six of his 2008 support from the start is much more newsworthy than its appearance in an online WaPo daily blog/journal might suggest. Especially since it happens to contradict the strange core assumption that the electorate is going to be as Democratic this year as it was in 2008, if not more…
Moe Lane
Via Instapundit.
He will supposedly lose only 19% of the white Catholic vote…
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA (cough) (cough) (hack) (wheeze)
.
Seriously, do they just make this stuff up?
But Nate Silver says. . . . oh never mind.
Am looking forward to the election coverage, the potential meltdown at msnbc alone will be epic. I hope somebody sane in those newsrooms has stocked up on xanax to hand out as the totals come in
Add to the Romney totals the fools who are voting this year but stayed home in 2008 rather than vote for McCain… Obama would have still won but without the company of Senator Stuart Smalley, et al.
Oh, it’s even better than that: he’s losing 13 percent of people who are willing to admit they voted for him in 2008 but are switching to Romney. How many people told the WaPo “Err… I don’t really remember…” and hung up the phone in a rush?
I can’t wait until it’s over and we can all stop reading tea leaves and divining chicken bones for a while.
Agree Aruges. Time to get busy recruiting good candidates for 2014.
Mew
Now….I have to wonder how many of those 9 mil were actually dead? But it just goes to prove that if you voted for him in the first place you WERE dead….from the neck up anyway
Romney will surely do better that McCain everywhere so I’d give him all of McCain’s 2008 votes. If that works he only needs a little over 7% of Obama’s 2008 votes to win the popular vote. If he get 8% he is sure to have the electoral votes. If he gets that 13% it will be a landslide.