Fox News released a new poll Thursday
showing that President Barack Obama leads Mitt Romney in three battleground states, topping off a week of bad-news polling for the Republican presidential nominee in toss-up states.
The poll, which covered Ohio, Virginia and Florida, shows Obama leading Romney by seven points in both Ohio (49 to 42 percent) and Virginia (50 to 43 percent). In Florida, Obama leads by five points (49 to 44 percent), which is within the poll's margin of error. Obama won all three states in 2008, marking the first time Virginia voted for a Democratic president since 1964.
In Michigan and Wisconsin, Obama has also opened up a lead against his rival: A CNN poll puts him
up eight points in Michigan (52 to 44 percent), and one from Marquette Law School has
Obama leading Romney by 14 points in Wisconsin (54 to 40 percent). In August, Obama led Romney in Wisconsin by only three points.
New York Times pollster Nate Silver
notes that Obama tends to do better against Romney in polls that include cell phones and use live interviewers instead of automated questions. Silver writes that Obama has shown a clear lead in the
16 cell phone-inclusive polls of seven top battleground states taken since the convention. (The Fox, CNN and Marquette Law School polls all included cell phone respondents.) On average, Obama has a 5.8 percentage point lead in surveys that include properly weighted cell phone (only) respondents.
The latest
national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted September 12-16, 2012 among 3,019 adults, including properly weighted cell phone only respondents, finds that Obama has an eight-point lead over Mitt Romney among likely voters on which candidate gets their vote. Not only does Obama enjoy a substantial lead on Pew's ballot preference question, he tops Romney in a number of other key categories, too. Obama continues to be the more likable candidate by a substantial margin; his favorability rating has risen to 55% from 50% in late July, with only 42% now expressing an unfavorable view of him.
Pew Research Center leads other public polling organizations for polling expertise in our increasingly cell phone only society.
The number of Americans who have no landline phone service, who rely solely or mostly on cell phone service, has been growing for several years. The cell phone only trend poses an increasing likelihood that public opinion polls conducted only or mostly to landline phone respondents have a conservative bias.
Analysis by Pew Research Center in 2010 shows support for Republican candidates is significantly higher in polls calling only or mostly landline respondents, than in dual frame surveys that combined properly weighted landline and cell phone respondent polling.
Pew Research found in 2010 up to a 10 point conservative bias gap between those who could be reached by landline and those who could be reached only by cell phone. Those who have gone cell phone only hold significantly more progressive / liberal political views than those who can still be polled by landline live or automated robo calls. This gap has likely widened over the last two years.
