Liberals will dismiss it as an outlier, but a recent poll in Florida has former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney opening up a 15 lead in the crucial swing state of Florida.
If this information is correct, President Barack Obama has no shot at winning the election, because Florida is such a bellwether state on so many issues. The survey was conducted by Foster McCollum White Baydoun.
You never know what to believe with these election polls, because they fluctuate on a nearly daily basis. And, there is scant information available about this latest one showing Obama behind by about 55 to 40 percent in Florida. Who commissioned the study?
Unfortunately, it's so difficult to measure public sentiment, especially considering the ubiquity of mobile phones. There are so many younger people who don't even use land lines, anymore. And, with so many retirees living in Florida, this could give Romney an unfair edge in the polling data.
If the new FMWB survey proves reliable, it demonstrates that Obama's Medicare demagoguery isn't working with seniors, who make up near a quarter of the Florida voters.
In May, a Quinnipiac Poll gave Romney a six-point edge with Sunshine Staters, whose 29 electoral votes are highly coveted by both parties.
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Comments: 10
Foster McCollum White Baydoun are a political consulting and lobbying firm who supplies polls exclusively to Fox News. Now quite the same as a Pew or Zogby poll.
And what about this, from the poll:
Question #8:
In Which Age Range Do You Fit?
1- Between 18 to 30 years old, 2- between 31 to 50 years old, 3- between 51 to 65 yearsold, 4- ages 66 and older
(Between 18 to 30 years old): 1.33%
(Between 31 to 50 years old): 7.65%
(Between 51 to 65 years old): 27.48%
(Ages 66 and older): 63.54%
63%+ as 66 and over? Is that representative of Florida or the nation?
Presumably that leaves out anybody who's so desperate for a Romney win that they'll latch on to any polling data they can find.
It looks like you're right about those numbers not even being close to representative of Florida. US Census data shows the 65+ crowd accounting for about 25% of the Florida population. And as Nate Silver pointed out in the article Jim linked to, they accounted for 22% of voters in 2008. Exit polls from the Florida Republican primary put them at 36%. Of Republican voters. Who were politically-engaged enough to vote in the primary.
The notion that senior citizens are going to nearly double their voter turnout at the polls in 2012 is, I believe, ridiculous. Silver agrees, describing the numbers as "the result from a from a badly-designed statistical model that never got a sanity check." Given his track record predicting the results in 2008 and 2010, I think he knows what he's talking about.
And I think it's cool that, even though it's clear that this poll's numbers are WAY out there, Silver has incorporated it into his data set anyway. And his prediction model still shows an Obama victory (69.4% chance, +57.6 electoral votes).
"Is Florida a Republican State?
It's Republican due to social issues--specifically, abortion. There are a lot of evangelicals in Florida, enough to tilt the scale to the GOP."
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_Florida_a_republican_or_democratic_state#ixzz24CCPswfb