Obama Apparently Has Pact With Devil in Swing States

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The latest results from the Washington Post/ABC News poll are pretty interesting. Not because they tell us anything especially new — Obama is doing well in swing states — but because the magnitude of his lead is so astonishing. I did a bit of quick back-of-the-envelope arithmetic and concluded that Obama and Romney are probably dead tied in all the non-swing states put together. But Obama leads 52-41% in swing states. That’s a difference of 11 points between swing states and non-swing states.

Are Obama’s ads really that much better than Romney’s? Is his early start in the ground game paying off this big? Or what? This sure seems like a surprisingly massive difference.

The madcap pollsters at the Post also continued this year’s big new fad of asking a whole bunch of bizarro questions about the candidates: Who would you rather have as ship’s captain during a storm, who would you rather invite home to dinner, who would you go on an overnight camping trip with, who would you rather have babysit your kids, whose music playlist would you rather listen to, who would you rather see as a contestant on Dancing with the Stars? Poor Mitt did badly on all of them except for the babysitting question.

However, in yet another indication of liberal bias in polling this year, they didn’t ask who you’d rather have do your taxes, or who you’d rather have as a 401(k) investment advisor, or who you’d rather hire to manage your hedge fund. I bet Romney would have done pretty well in those categories.

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