Whether or not a hurricane disrupts the Republican National Convention, we should expect Romney to get a bump out of it in the polls. He has enjoyed some narrow improvement in his standing since he announced Paul Ryan as his running mate, despite an almost uninterrupted amount of bad news on the campaign trail. I expect us all to grow quite nervous as we see the post-convention poll numbers. But try not to freak out. The Democratic convention will follow immediately after the Republican one, and we will have a star-studded list of speakers who will vastly outshine the grifters and lunatics that will be on display in Tampa. The polls should return to the status quo ante.
Meanwhile, the real erosion we’re seeing is in the congressional numbers. Here’s a summary of the latest results from the Carville-Greenberg survey:
Even before Mitt Romney named Paul Ryan to the ticket, our Battleground polling results indicated an erosion of support for Republicans, largely based on Paul Ryan’s plans for Medicare and entitlements. The advantage Republicans held among seniors in 2010 has been completely decimated. Across these Republican districts, incumbents now hold just a two-point lead with voters over age 64—a group Republicans won by 18 points in 2010.
Not surprisingly, the leading factor in this shift away from the GOP is Paul Ryan’s war on Medicare. By a decisive six-point margin, voters in these districts now say they trust Democrats more than Republicans when it comes to Medicare. Among voters in the 27 most competitive Republican battleground seats, Democrats now hold an 11-point advantage on Medicare.
This only underscores the recklessness of choosing Paul Ryan for a running mate. In the country’s most competitive districts, which overlap with the presidential battleground quite substantially, the Republican advantage with seniors has been almost entirely erased. If that result trickles up to the campaign between Obama and Romney, it will result in a blowout election.
I expect the polls to get worse before they get better, but I also am confident that we are in a strong position, poised to win the presidency, hold the Senate, and win back the House. I also believe that both the Republican and the Democratic conventions will do more to excite the Democratic base than the Republican base. And the polls will pick that up in their likely voter models.
