Polls

“We feel that we are in a very, very good place, that this race is exactly where we hoped it would be a week out,” said Russ Schriefer, a senior advisor to Mitt Romney, on a Wednesday conference call with reporters. Schriefer says the Romney campaign remains convinced that the fundamentals of the race favor the Republican, even as polls show the race remains tight in important swing states like Virginia, Ohio, and Iowa.

There is a peculiar divergence between various public opinion polls at the moment. On the one hand, Mitt Romney has built a narrow but durable lead in the national polls, averaging around a 1 percent advantage over the last three weeks. This has cheered the hearts of conservatives everywhere.

The latest state-by-state polling from Rasmussen Reports shows Mitt Romney leading President Obama by a tally of 279 to 243 in projected electoral votes.

On Fox News Sunday, Brit Hume highlighted Mitt Romney’s clear advantage in Gallup, Rasmussen, and other national polling, and said, “Now…if those polls are generally correct, it is difficult to imagine that Ohio would be all that different.  Ohio has pretty closely tracked the national outcome…since about 1960.”

The bipartisan Battleground Poll, in its “vote election model,” is projecting that Mitt Romney will defeat President Obama 52 percent to 47 percent.  The poll also found that Romney has an even greater advantage among middle class voters, 52 percent to 45 percent.

With a week to go until the 2012 presidential election, Mitt Romney has a decided leg up on President Barack Obama.

With a week to go until the 2012 presidential election, Mitt Romney has a decided leg up on President Barack Obama.

Newly released figures from Gallup show that the demographics of the American electorate (age, race, sex, etc.) have changed very little since 2008 except in one way:  Party affiliation has swung dramatically toward the Republican party, and away from the Democratic party, during President Obama’s term.

Democratic senator Bob Casey Jr. of Pennsylvania only leads his Republican opponent, Tom Smith, by one point, according to a new poll from Rasmussen.

The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll projects a 5-point turnout advantage for Democrats over Republicans (34 to 29 percent) yet still shows Mitt Romney leading President Obama by 1 percentage point — 49 to 48 percent.  This is Romney’s first lead since the summer in Washington Post/ABC News polling.  Jon Cohen, director of polling for the Post, writes, “Political independents break for Romney by a 12-percentage-point margin on the subject [of the economy], a high for the campaign.”

Independent voters trust Mitt Romney over Barack Obama by 10 points on the question of which candidate they would trust to "set and manage" their wallet. A new poll by the Tarrance Group for Public Notice, a conservative non-profit, shows 46 percent of independents prefer Romney, while 36 percent prefer Obama, on this question.

Mitt Romney leads Barack Obama by four points in Pennsylvania, while Republican Senate candidate Tom Smith leads incumbent Democrat Bob Casey by two points, according to a state GOP poll conducted by Susquehanna Polling and Research. Of the 1,376 likely Pennsylvania voters surveyed, 49 percent support Romney for president, while 45 percent support Obama.