Public-opinion polls are lagging indicators in politics. By the
time a shift in the trend becomes clear from poll data, the causes
of the shift are days or weeks in the past. It is therefore unwise
to extrapolate the current trend forward or to begin thinking of
polls as supernatural prophecies that predict future events.
With all those caveats in mind, however, Mitt Romney enters the
final two weeks of the presidential campaign looking very much like
the next president of the United States, and it is not merely poll
data that creates this impression. President Obama’s own campaign
has begun to emit clear signals that the incumbent’s re-election
prospects are dwindling, and anecdotal evidence of strong
Republican momentum is not hard to find these days. We cannot
predict what will happen in tonight’s third and final presidential
debate (9 p.m. ET at Lynn
University in Boca Raton, Florida), but it is a fairly safe
guess it won’t have the game-changing impact of the first debate on
Oct. 3, one of two apparent pivot points that triggered Obama’s
downward slide. While the impact of Romney’s one-sided victory over
a listless Obama in Denver has been universally acknowledged, it
would be wrong to overlook the political effect of the other pivot
point, the Sept. 11 terrorist attack in Benghazi that killed the
U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans.
The Benghazi attack appears to have started slowly sapping
Obama’s support in late September. On the day of the attack, Obama
was leading the
Real Clear Politics national poll average by 3.6 points (49.0
to 45.4) and in the immediate aftermath of the attack Obama
actually expanded his lead. By Sept. 29, Obama led the RCP average
by 4.6 points (48.9-44.3), nearly equal to his 4.7-point lead on
Aug. 12, which was the largest advantage Obama had held since
Romney effectively locked up the GOP nomination in April. From
Sept. 29 to Oct. 3, however, Romney closed the gap by 1.6 points, a
fairly significant shift in a four-day span. This shift happened
after the Obama administration’s original explanation of what
happened in Libya — as a “spontaneous” reaction to an obscure
YouTube video about Islam — began unraveling.
On Sept. 17, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice made the rounds of the
Sunday news shows to claim the deadly assault on the Benghazi
consulate “was a spontaneous — not a premeditated — response to
what had transpired in Cairo… in reaction to this very offensive
video that was disseminated,” as
she told Jake Tapper on ABC’s This Week. Within a few
days, however, stories began to emerge about Ambassador Christopher
Stevens’ concerns
that he was on an “al-Qaeda hit list,” and a
series of attacks and threats against U.S. diplomats in Libya.
Yet in his Sept. 25 speech at the United Nations, Obama had
mentioned the YouTube video six times, as if the original
explanation of the Benghazi attack were still credible.
Thus, the president was already faced with a widening
“credibility gap” before the Oct. 3 debate, where Romney finally
achieved the key goal of his campaign: Establishing himself as a
plausible and acceptable alternative to Obama. It was during that
90 minutes that Team Obama’s entire strategy of the 2012 campaign
was shattered. By hammering Romney early with attack ads in May and
June, when the president’s campaign still enjoyed a one-sided cash
advantage, Obama’s strategists had hoped to present voters with a
choice — demonizing Romney as unacceptable — and prevent
the election being seen as a referendum on Obama’s
performance. This “choice vs. referendum” battle had been
recognized by both sides as the crucial dynamic of the race, and
the first debate meeting shattered the Obama campaign’s message.
The national TV audience of millions had a chance to see Romney as
a reasonable and well-informed leader, rather than as the
out-of-touch extremist portrayed to them by both the national media
and the Obama campaign.
Suddenly, everything was different, and nothing that has
happened since — including the more aggressive performances by Joe
Biden in the vice-presidential debate and Obama in his second
debate meeting with Romney — has changed the impact of that
breakthrough moment for the Republican challenger. The latest polls
(including the
Gallup tracking poll released Sunday that showed Romney with a
52-45 lead) clearly indicate that the tide has turned against Obama
and, with barely two weeks remaining until Election Day, it may
already be too late to reverse it.
There is a term for what has apparently happened, a phrase
coined 15 years ago by economist Timur Kuran and recently
popularized by Professor Glenn Reynolds: “Preference
cascade.” We do not yet know whether this term accurately
reflects the sudden shift of opinion against Obama and in favor of
Romney; polls can zigzag erratically back and forth, whereas a
genuine “preference cascade” is one-sided and irreversible.
Democrats are abuzz with talk of an “October surprise,” hoping that
Obama can miraculously recover from his three-week slide, and
unexpected events could still turn the polls around.
However, Republicans are increasingly confident and Democrats
are increasingly discouraged, and not just because of the polls.
Veteran political analyst Michael
Barone observes that the Obama campaign’s Electoral College
“firewall” appears to be collapsing. While the Democrats seem to
have given up on North Carolina and perhaps even Florida, the
Republicans are now expanding their own ambitions to include
Pennsylvania. And over the weekend, it was reported that the
RNC has an 18-to-1 campaign cash advantage over the DNC.
If Romney were indeed riding the momentum produced by a decisive
“preference cascade,” such signs are exactly what we might expect
to see. However, Professor Reynolds has also popularized another
phrase Republicans should also keep in mind: “Don’t get
cocky.”
