Mike Scruggs
The latest Rasmussen tracking poll has Mitt Romney leading Barack Obama by 49 to 47 percent. That is close enough to mean that the race will come down to which side can get its voters to the polls. The Rasmussen and Pew polls show Romney supporters to be only slightly more energized than Obama supporters. The most recent Pew Poll taken just after the debate showed that Romney has strong support by 67 percent of his supporters, not quite matching Obama’s strong support by 68 percent of his supporters. However, another similar question indicated that Romney’s supporters were more interested in the race by 82 percent compared to 67 percent for Obama. Rasmussen’s latest poll indicated that 43 percent of Romney’s supporters are certain they will vote for him, while slightly less, 41 percent are certain to vote for Obama. The Rasmussen poll indicated that 78 percent of likely voters had a high interest in the election. This was higher among conservatives and Republicans at 83 percent. Thus the energy level is close. It appears that Romney supporters feel they have more interest in both the economic and social issues, while Obama supporters are more oriented toward group identity. Ninety percent of blacks indicated a high interest in the election.
The differences in interest can be illustrated by some of Rasmussen’s statistics. Conservatives favor Romney over Obama 84 to 14. Liberals favor Obama over Romney 89 to 7. Blacks favor Obama 93 to 5 over Romney. From 57 to 58 percent Republicans and conservatives respectively follow the presidential election daily, but 74 percent of blacks follow it daily. The most highly motivated segment of the voting population is black.
I was hoping that Obama’s position on gay marriage, which is unpopular among black churchgoers, would reduce his black group identity vote by a significant margin or weaken the energy of their support for him. A slight majority of blacks oppose gay marriage, but Obama’s recently admitted gay marriage approval has not caused a corresponding impact. Among Americans who attend church services at least weekly, Romney leads Obama 59 to 35. However, in the past 12 months Obama’s support among black Protestants has dropped from 97 to 87 percent, indicating that the vast majority of blacks still place racial identity above everything else. Blacks tend to oppose illegal immigration and amnesty, but they have not been well served by Obama on immigration issues.
The recent drop of the unemployment rate from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent resulted from 873,000 new people reporting having jobs on the September BLS Household Survey. This may have improved Obama’s political position a bit even though it largely a fortuitous appearance of already employed illegal immigrant workers on the BLS September Household Survey, who now feel comfortable and encouraged to fill out the survey. These unlawful amnesties are the result of Obama’s recent usurpation of Congressional and Constitutional authority on immigration amnesties. Initially expected to be about one million, the Pew Research Center believes it may run 1o 1.7 million. Do not be surprised if more such amnesties result in another phony improvement of the employment situation. This is essentially a fortuitous difference showing up in the Household Survey—the equivalent of a mere accounting transfer. No new jobs have been created, and the newly amnestied workers, now with legal status, have become a more formidable threat to black employment. The September survey indicated black unemployment was 13.4 percent versus 7.0 for whites. Obama is not only failing to help black workers; his amnesties are directly hurting them. The unemployment rate for black teenagers aged 16 to 19 is a whopping 36.7 percent. Yet they are undeterred and highly energized in their support for him.
Pew Research and several other polls show Obama having over 70 percent of the Hispanic vote, and this does not appear to be much in play. Except for Cubans, who vote majority Republican, Hispanics favor Obama because of Obamacare and other social welfare programs. An NBC News poll indicated that 81 percent of whites but only 26 percent of Latinos want to repeal Obamacare.
Rasmussen believes that Romney must win at least three of four swing states to win the electoral votes to make him president. North Carolina is back on that list, with Romney currently leading Obama 51 to 48. Obama’s quiet but extensive grass roots campaign in North Carolina’s high-minority urban areas, however has reduced his deficit from 5 to 3 percentage points. Romney is now ahead in Florida 51 to 47 and in Virginia 49 to 47. Obama leads Romney 48 to 47 in Ohio, where Romney supposedly has only 52 percent of the white vote. However, internal details of the Ohio poll seem questionable.
Getting out the vote will win the election one way or another. Television and radio ads and debates will have an impact, and I am hoping that the more people know about Obama’s economic failures, disastrous foreign policy decisions, debilitating military strength policies, and shocking opposition to Judeo-Christian worldviews and moral culture, the more his poll numbers will cave. That is my hope; the reality is that nothing seems to dent the Obama-mania of his major support constituencies. Moreover, the Democrats are extremely formidable in their ability to get out their vote. They have Big Labor and the numerous front organizations of the former Acorn organization.
Republicans and conservatives often have strong feelings about the election, but actually getting them to do the grunt work of phone banks, neighborhood canvases, serving as poll watchers, and polling place greeters, and talking to their friends about the importance of the election will be necessary to win this election.
We cannot depend upon somebody else to save our country. It has to be us.
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