Biased Poll for Obama Shows His Weakness, Not Strength

Despite the headline, once you dig deeper a more disturbing trend for Obama emerges!

You might have heard about the Quinnipiac poll of Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania that was released this week. It showed Obama gaining ground over Romney in these key states. Richard Baehr at American Thinker points out that the result shows Obama getting a higher percentage of support than he did in the actual 2008 election in these states. It's simply inconceivable that after all the economic turmoil of the past three and a half years that Obama would receive greater support, especially in a hard hit state like Florida than he did at the peak of his popularity in 2008.

The poll of likely voters has Obama beating Romney by 6 points in both Florida and Ohio and by 11 in Pennsylvania. These results are well outside the average of other polls and margins are significantly greater than that which Obama received in 2008.

Like others reporting on this poll, Baehr found that it generously oversampled Democrats who voted for Obama in 2008. Here's the breakdown of 2008 voters from this new poll:

Florida: Obama 53%, McCain 40%
Ohio: Obama 53%, McCain 38%
Pennsylvania: Obama 54%, McCain 40%.

But note that in this poll even with a 13 point edge of Obama 2008 voters in Florida, Obama only gets a 6% margin today. That's a drop of 7%. Obama won Florida in 2008 with less than 3%. If that's the trend for Florida then Obama would certainly lose the state this time around.

In Ohio, the 2008 margin for this poll was 15% in favor of Obama but only 6% today. A drop of 9%. Obama won Ohio with less than 5% so a drop of that magnitude would have him losing the state in 2012.

For Pennsylvania, those responding to this poll who voted for Obama in 2008 give him a 14% margin in that earlier contest. But today, they only give him an 11% margin. Obama won the state in 2008 by 10% so he might still be safe according to this poll.

In my earlier post on the 99 day countdown to Election Day I postulated that with all the headwinds facing Obama in the election and the enthusiasm among Republicans and Tea Party members to vote in this election, Obama will certainly lose support, not gain it, in key states which I listed.

The pendulum which swung so strongly in Obama's favor in 2008 swung back just as strongly to the GOP side in the 2010 midterm elections. The question is how much force remains of the Tea Party tidal wave that struck in 2010. The big Tea Party win in the Texas Senate runoff suggests the movement remains strong.  Looking at a biased poll like the above, I would say the swing against Obama remains significant!