Looking for Obama’s “Mr. Good Numbers”

Pity the poor members of the lap dog media who must have been up most of the night trying desperately to find something good to say about Obama based on the latest national polls released this morning. It wasn’t an easy task and, try as they might, their best came up way short.

Looking at both an ABC News & Washington Post poll and a Politico & George Washington University poll out today there is little in the way of good news for Obama and his media supporters.

Without adjusting the polls in any way, Obama has less than a 2% margin in the national popular vote, cannot break the 50% barrier in job approval and direction of the country remains at abysmal levels.

By comparing the findings in these polls against the average numbers from the last 8 national polls, Obama at 49% of the PV has seen no increase while Romney at 47% has seen a 3% increase in less than ten days. The numbers suggest Conservatives are moving back to Romney and undecideds are choosing Romney over Obama. Neither helps the mainstream media with their narrative in support of Obama.

Yesterday I penned, Romney Regaining Support of Conservatives, which may explain a portion of those gains and looking at Today’s Momentum Index (TMI) for the last week, it’s clear Governor Romney has regained the momentum, both nationally and in the swing states, headed into Wednesday’s debate.

With today’s two national polls putting Obama’s lead well within the margin of error, and an average lead of only 1.2%, which is a third of the MoE, in the eight swing states I track (see Author’s Note below) Governor Romney has pulled even with President Obama for all intents and purposes.

Give the Washington Post credit though for trying to find a lead that dispels reality, with the following as the opening paragraphs in the accompanying press release with their poll:

Registered voters by 2-1 think Barack Obama will win the upcoming presidential debates and go on to prevail in the November election. But expectations aside, the race remains close, with strengths and vulnerabilities for both candidates in the campaign ahead.

After a challenging period for Romney, registered voters by 63-31 percent expect Obama to win re-election, his widest advantage in expectations in ABC News/Washington Post polls to date. A year ago, in sharp contrast, Americans by an 18-point margin thought he’d lose.

It seems in looking for “Mr. Good Numbers” that’s the best the WaPo staff could find and it doesn’t matter because in truth the good numbers are slipping away from Obama and moving to Romney.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: See Momentum 2012 for information about my daily TMI scores.