According to an ABC News-Washington Post poll, among registered voters President Obama holds a significant edge, but among those considered likely to vote, it’s a close toss-up. This sets the stage for what Democrats need to do more than anything: work hard on energizing their voters and on Get Out The Vote efforts. Of course, this is also true for Republicans.
In challenging economic times, conventional wisdom (which is, more often than not, correct) is that the economy trumps all for voters. I personally have for many many years said that the economy is generally the wrong reason to vote for a President as the economy is one of the things a President, any President, has the least control over. That said, most voters don’t listen to me.
I guess it’s a matter of opinion what this looks like: either Romney is a lousy candidate and if he weren’t he should be smashing Obama because the economy is still so bad, or, voters have more belief in Obama than he’s being given credit for. My gut says most voters are ambivalent only because they aren’t convinced Romney has the right answers on the economy. If I were in the Romney camp, I would be advising a strong lurch to the center/left with tax credit and other incentive offers to middle class voters. I am not, however, in the Romney camp and I have no idea what they’re actually going to do. At the moment, though, it appears that what they’ll probably do is work as hard as they can to get their voters to the polls and to make people as unenthusiastic about Obama as they can.
Time is closing fast on election day.
Dean Esmay is the author of Methuselah’s Daughter. He has contributed to Dean’s World, Huffington Post, A Voice for Men, Pajamas Media. Neither left nor right wing, neither libertarian nor socialist.