Yet another poll is registering the impact of Republican Presidential nominee’s triumph in last week’s debate against an almost universally panned performance by President Barack Obama, and it’s a biggie: Pew Research Center finds a big shift in its polling which now puts Romney ahead of Obama by four points:
In the first national poll to be conducted entirely after the opening presidential debate, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney now leads President Barack Obama by 4 points.
The poll, conducted by Pew Research Center from Thursday through Sunday and released on Monday, shows Romney leading Obama among likely voters nationwide, 49 percent to 45 percent. That’s a stark contrast from Pew’s mid-September poll after both parties’ conventions, which showed Obama up 8 points among likely voters.
The dramatic 12-point swing in Pew’s poll from Obama to Romney is perhaps the strongest piece of evidence to date that the president has paid a political price for his listless performance in the Denver debate. But the complete suite of post-debate surveys from national pollsters is only beginning to emerge, and the early indications are of a less dramatic shift than Pew is showing.
But it’s still a significant shift, which is important for various reasons:
*A big shift changes momentum in the race, which had recently with Obama.
*A big shift can impact partisan’s enthusiasm, and if Democrats have learned one thing over the years its that Democrats who are discouraged can stay home on election day (then bitterly complain about the consequences once they lose power).
*a big shift feeds into a media campaign narrative. Reporters will now be more sensitive to spot — and report — signs showing Barack Obama on the descent and Romney on the ascent, since that is the story line (not due to any conspiracy but just the way news flows work).
*A shift can fuel the articulation of a new conventional wisdom, which will be presented as the way this is now and the way it’s likely to be — unless, of course, it falls apart then it’s quietly swept under the rug.
But Big Mo is now with Romney.
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.