With the exception of the peculiar IBD/TIPP poll — which shows Barack Obama leading by 5.7 points — all of the tracking polls released today showed movement towards Mitt Romney. They are: Gallup, Rasmussen, PPP, RAND, and Ipsos.
In recent days, we’ve heard a lot of pettiness from the Obama campaign. Some have interpreted this as an indication of panic, including Mitt Romney, who has spoken of what he’s termed Obama’s “incredible shrinking campaign.” Undoubtedly, Obama is hoping that talk of “binders” and so forth will help him to regain a much-narrowed gap with women, but one thing we haven’t heard much of is discussion of Medicare. Peter Hart, an NBC/WSJ pollster, suggested today:
NBC/WSJ pollster Peter Hart, citing Romney lead among seniors, calls Ryan budget/Medicare issue “dog that didn’t bark” so far
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) October 21, 2012
It was mooted a while back that Obamacare’s raid on Medicare might hurt the Democratic party’s traditional advantage on the issue. If Peter Hart is right and seniors are strongly backing Romney-Ryan, the dynamic may well have changed — and supposedly “toxic” Paul Ryan’s addition to the Romney ticket will have done little to affect its credibility on the matter.