October 19, 2012
Daily tracking poll reveals Romney widens to a 52%-45% advantage nationally among likely voters
October 19, 2012
Daily tracking poll reveals Romney widens to a 52%-45% advantage nationally among likely voters
Mitt Romney's seven-point lead in latest Gallup poll suggests he's convinced wavering voters to support him.
A new Gallup poll jolted the presidential campaign Thursday, showing Mitt Romney opening a stunning seven-point lead — even as other new polls showed a much closer race.
The polls were released as Obama acknowledged mistakes in how the government handled last month’s attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.
“We’re going to fix it,” he added.
Gallup’s daily tracking poll found Romney building a stunning 52%-45% advantage nationally among likely voters, by far his biggest lead in the campaign. The seven-point spread suggested Romney finally had convinced wavering voters to support him.
But it raised the eyebrows of other pollsters, who noted that nearly every other national survey found the candidates in a statistical dead heat.
“That’s the widest margin anyone has gotten,” said Marist College pollster Lee Miringoff.
He cautioned that Gallup uses a complex formula to determine likely voters that could skew the results. The Gallup poll was taken over seven days, through Wednesday, and thus only included one day of data since the second presidential debate, at Hostra University on Long Island.
Two polls released Thursday night found Obama holding onto his leads in two of the battleground states his campaign is counting on to hold off any Romney surge.
Rocker Bruce Springsteen and former President Bill Clinton stump for President Obama on Thursday in Parma, Ohio.
The polls, a joint venture of NBC News, the Wall Street Journal and Marist College, found Obama leading Romney 51%-43% in Iowa and 51%-45% in Wisconsin. Both leads were virtually unchanged from Marist polls taken a month ago, before the first presidential debate.
Obama made his comments about his administration’s handling of the terror attack in Libya during an appearance on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”
“I would say and even you would admit it was not the optimal response — at least to the American people as far as all of us being on the same page,” Stewart said.
Obama replied, “Here is what I will say: If four Americans get killed it is not optimal,” the President responded. “And we are going to fix it, all of it. And what happens during the course of a presidency, you know the government is a big operation at any given time, something screws up and you make sure you find out what’s broken and you fix it.”
Asked why the State Department and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations appeared to give conflicting accounts of what happened in Benghazi, Obama added, “Every piece of information that we get, as we got it, we laid it out to the American people.”
Meanwhile, Obama’s campaign held a high-wattage rally in a Cleveland suburb with former President Bill Clinton and rock legend Bruce Springsteen.
“This is the first time in my life I ever got to be the warmup act for Bruce Springsteen,” Clinton told the crowd of more than 3,000 at the Cuyahoga Community College. “I am qualified, because I was born in the USA — and unlike one of the candidates for President, I keep all my money here,” Clinton said, taking an obvious swipe at Romney’s foreign investments.
On another front, Romney’s eldest son, Tagg Romney, told a North Carolina radio station he was ready to “take a swing” at President Obama during Tuesday’s debate at Hofstra.
When asked his reaction to hearing his dad called a liar, Tagg Romney said his instinct was to jump out of his seat and “rush down to the debate stage.” The 42-year-old Tagg stressed he never came close to actually rushing the stage.
“You know you can’t do that because, well, first because there’s a lot of Secret Service between you and him,” he said.
“But also because this is the nature of the process,” he said. “They’re going to do everything they can do to try to make my dad into someone he’s not. We signed up for it. We’ve got to, kind of sit there and take our punches and then send them right back the other way.”
In Nevada, Vice President Biden told a rally that Romney’s running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, “has written a book called the ‘Young Guns’ with two other members of the House. Unfortunately, the bullets are aimed at you.”
Romney spokesman Brendan Buck responded that Biden’s “over-the-top rhetoric” was disappointing but not surprising.
Courtesy: NYD
