A longtime reader asks a good question. A similar discussion is going on over at Instapundit. Feel free to explain why he’s wrong — or right — in the comments:
Dear Jonah,
I don’t know how much to trust the polls either. But take a look at this graphic in today’s Washington Post:
It says 13% of likely voters who voted for Obama in 2008 plan to vote for Romney this time. Obama got a little over 69 million votes in 2008. Thirteen percent of that is over nine million votes. If you just take those votes and add them to the 59 million votes McCain got, Romney wins easily. Now it is not that simple. The turnout is likely to be different this time. Chances not all 69 million Obama voters are going to turn out this time. So the number is something less than 9 million. But I still don’t see how that helps Obama very much since to make the 13% smaller means losing votes because people stay home. The bottom line is, if that graphic is to be believed, Obama is losing a big chunk of his vote from 2008. The only way to over come that is to get the McCain voters to either vote Obama/Johnson or not show up, which is highly unlikely. Or Obama could somehow find several million votes that were not there in 2008. Given the historic turnout in 2008, I don’t see how that is possible.
Am I missing something here? I can’t see how the math adds up for Obama. Maybe he pulls out some kind of a electoral college win. But I can’t see how he can possibly win the popular vote if this graphic is true. And it also makes me very suspicious of the national polls that show this race being within a point or two. How is that possible? Your are the political pundit. You tell me because I can’t figure it out.