[ Posted Wednesday, October 10th, 2012 – 17:16 UTC ]
Before tomorrow night, we'll be hearing a whole lot of "vice-presidential debates haven't ever mattered," mostly uttered by the same people who told us, a week ago, that "presidential debates rarely change anything." Since these nattering nabobs of negativism (to use a famous vice-presidential phrase) were wrong before, one has to at least consider that they may be wrong again. Tomorrow's debate may matter a great deal to the voters. The first presidential debate was watched by a jaw-dropping record number of viewers (upwards of 70 million), and it's all anyone's been talking about since in the political world (even the Big Bird stories were tied in to the debate). So perhaps quite a few folks will tune in tomorrow night as well, and perhaps Joe Biden and Paul Ryan may prove to move public opinion this time around.
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[ Posted Monday, October 8th, 2012 – 16:47 UTC ]
Among Barack Obama supporters, panic seems to be setting in after his first debate performance was roundly panned. National polls have pulled back into a neck-and-neck contest. This is all fun for the pundits, who (pre-debate) were on the verge of declaring the race all but over (and, hence, boring), but we hasten to remind everyone that this is not how we elect presidents. The national popular vote is meaningless -- just ask Al Gore. Presidential elections are won and lost state by state, which is how this column series examines things.
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[ Posted Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012 – 20:59 UTC ]
There is a whole lot wrong with the way the media reports debates, on that we can all agree, I think. The overemphasis on who "won" and "lost," for starters. The inevitable boiling-down of ninety minutes into a nine-second soundbite from both candidates (which we'll see everyone agree on by tomorrow morning).
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[ Posted Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012 – 16:54 UTC ]
Shockingly, after a half a year of virtually no news whatsoever, last month was actually newsworthy in the world of presidential job approval polling. Barack Obama had a good month, and hit a noteworthy milestone in the percent of Americans who approve of the job he's doing.
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[ Posted Friday, September 28th, 2012 – 17:28 UTC ]
Unsolicited advice to the Romney campaign: this is not the way to convince voters that your candidate isn't Thurston Howell III. I'm just sayin'....
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[ Posted Wednesday, September 26th, 2012 – 17:21 UTC ]
While the overall split between the candidates hasn't changed a whole lot since last time, the dynamics of the race underlying the overall numbers has indeed shifted for both candidates. The news was slightly better for each candidate in some regards, and slightly worse in others. All around, Barack Obama is holding onto and improving on his post-convention bounce, and Mitt Romney continues to struggle to make any ground, while slightly strengthening his base.
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[ Posted Tuesday, September 25th, 2012 – 17:11 UTC ]
Are Colorado voters going to pass Amendment 64 in November, which would legalize recreational (not just medicinal) marijuana use for all adults in the state? The bigger question, should this come to pass, is what is the federal government going to do about it?
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[ Posted Monday, September 24th, 2012 – 16:40 UTC ]
The American public, over the past few weeks, seems to have gotten more optimistic about the future. These recent gains have been somewhat modest and still far below a majority of the public being optimistic, but if this trend continues for the next month or so it will likely help President Obama's chances of being re-elected.
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[ Posted Friday, September 21st, 2012 – 15:25 UTC ]
Wouldn't it be amusingly ironic if Mitt Romney only managed to get 47 percent of the national popular vote for president? It would renew my faith that the universe has a sense of humor, that's for sure.
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[ Posted Monday, September 17th, 2012 – 15:05 UTC ]
The last time we took a look at the electoral math was just before convention season was about to get underway. Since it's now been over a week since the end of the Democratic National Convention, the effects of both parties' conventions are beginning to show up in the state-level polling. The news for the Obama team is good, almost across the board, as Romney showed little or no "bounce" from his convention, while Obama gained a significant bump after the Democrats' big party.
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