Are the signs that the most recent political narrative may be getting ready to shift?
One of the big polling stories in recent days has been the decline of President Barack Obama in some polls, particularly the highly respected Gallup Poll. For a while now it had Obama with a negative daily poll tracking number and in recent daily tracking poll matchups with presumptive Republican nominee former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney Romney was ahead.
But as of this morning this changed. In both cases.
Obama’s daily tracking has 47% approval, 45% disapproval — still not a stellar number for a President who hopes to be re-elected and still a number that shouts out “Obama in trouble…”
Perhaps the most notable shift is the daily tracking shift that matches up Obama with Romney. Romney had been ahead of Obama by four points at one point last week. And now? Obama 47%, Romney 44%. That’s a significant shift in a week when by most accounts Team Obama was scrambling and on the defensive.
This points out:
These two numbers can — and will — shift back again between and election day and probably back again…again.
But it shows how quickly a conventional wisdom narrative can become inoperative. (And then an inoperative narrative can become operative again).
Here’s the Pollster chart of the results of 261 polls on the Presidential race:
Keep an eye on the results of polling trends — reflected in averages such as this. The Gallup Daily tracking will be like a see saw. Last week the news was the “see” and this morning we see a “saw.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.