The Race Was Tightening Up Before The Debates

Yesterday on the podcast I gave my theory on why the polls have closed up so tightly, and not all of the race tightening action is because of the debates.  Smartypants points this out over at her place too.

For months now I've been saying that I don't pay attention to national polls. But I want to talk about them right now to make a point.

Everyone is assuming that the swing in the polls towards Romney is because of the first debate. But no matter how many times people say that - its just not true.

She points out that the polls started getting closer at the end of September, several days before the debate.  She also points out that Kevin Drum too has noticed this.

What's going on with the polls? I wrote something about this a few days ago, but I think it might have gotten buried, so I want to repeat it. According to both Pollster and Real Clear Politics, Mitt Romney began his big surge well before last week's debate. In the ten days before the debate, Pollster shows Romney gaining 2.4 points and RCP shows Romney gaining 1.8 points.

Romney has continued gaining since then, and Obama has continued falling, but this isn't solely a reaction to Obama's lousy debate performance. It started in late September. But why? Nothing special happened during that week to benefit Romney. Their ad buys remained about the same as always. The only thing I can think of is that it was just the inevitable rebound from the hit Romney took over the 47% video.

That might be it, but my theory I think is more plausible:  This was right about time that A) Mitt Romney was about to be written off for good, and B) right about when polling outfits changed from registered voters to likely voters.

Registered voters are hard statistics, you ask if the person is a registered voter or not.  If not, they don't get into the poll.  If you go just by registered voters, the Democrats have an advantage.

But each polling outfit has their own criteria for what a likely voter is.  And inevitably, likely voter models favor Republicans.

Usually polling outfits don't make the switch from registered voters to likely voters until about the first of October.  That's what I think happened here: combined with the debate, it turned into a serious boost for Romney in the polls.

Yes, some polling outfits have been using likely voter models now for months, but the criteria isn't always clear.  There's always a subjective component.  I think that subjective component has magnified Romney's momentum.

Notice that the Senate polls still favor the Democrats, in a big way.  That makes me all the more wary.

I think it's overblown.