2012 U.S. Presidential Election

[Roy Karrde]

all along it has been provided that the election will decide the validity of the claim, rather than a trial. you repeatedly confound the SEC and FEC documents - factcheck does not provide evidence fully accounting for the problems found in the latter. this runs parallel to romney's recent remarks defending himself explicitly using claims of non-management, but as with the factcheck analysis, this does not address the concerns about non-involvement.

Factcheck acknowledges the FEC problem as noted in the quote, they also seem to believe that the SEC documents do not rise to the level given. As again noted in the quote, and I would think they would include non involvement as they make quite clear the evidence is not enough, mind you, you are suggesting that the lawyers and skilled members of FactCheck did not consider this. Furthermore they do not need to post indepth run down on every conspiracy theory spawned from this, the article is meant as a run down. Unless you want to become a mindreader or provide proof stating otherwise, you have no where left to go.

some mistaken conceptions about the 2008 have arisen, though - you will probably find that obama did release birth certificate evidence in the middle of the summer as a result of media pressure.

Not enough to settle questions, something you surely should know.

but there is a fundamental logical problem developing here: a dismissive approach to the voter decision as an ongoing process, shaped by discursive evidence as it unfolds, is incompatible with a citation of recent polling (or polling in general). it is nonsensical to suggest that polling could provide valid evidence of opinion transitions while downplaying the idea that people pay attention to ongoing events and that this has an effect on their choices.

It is a known political fact that people tune out the elections during the summer, I am surprised you do not know this. It is typical for people to focus on vacations or relaxing than paying heavy attention to the daily ins and outs of political races. So far you have provided no proof to the contray, infact your proof seems to back me up as even though there has been millions upon millions of dollars of negative material launched at Romney from the Obama Campaign, it has not even made a dent.

to argue otherwise would set the entire field of marketing as actually invalid. the fact that romney holds a lead in spite of a mass of advertising does not indicate that it is meaningless, but that it has only had an effect on the rate of change. this is surely a troubling notion for the obama campaign, but only one which warrants additional efforts.

If we look at the polling from the same organization, we will find that their last in April the two were tied, now Romney is ahead by one, you will find poll after poll reflecting the same thing. Advertising during Summer Months just does not move the needle or people are tuning Obama out, take your pick.

regardless, an interesting conclusion can readily be drawn from the 'honesty' polling. further investigation would reveal that does provide indication of a shift in perceptions consequent to one such effort:

Do you think Barack Obama is honest and trustworthy, or not?
		Yes	No	(Don't know)
15-17 Jul 12	51	46	4

Do you think “Honest” describes Obama, or not? 
		Yes, it does	No, it doesn’t	(Don’t know) 
5-7 Dec 11	57%		40	3

we can easily observe a parallel in the presence of a fall, and yet through this subject we find a control for "a brutal primary battle" by its absence. the perception of honesty in romney has fallen a greater degree in the latest polling. it is unfortunate that the contrast is not directly with recent weeks (but we can not do anything about non-existent data); the important part is that the polling examines the temperature of the moment. recent events are tied to recent polls through virtue of the linear nature of time.

Again you ignore that the Primary Battle focused less on Obama and more on the candidates tearing each other down, with a split Republican party you are likely to have those that favor one candidate see another in a negative light ( same goes with independents who are tuning in ), furthermore since Obama is already a known commodity, unlike say Romney, one would say his trustworthiness was already baked in. Here is some free advice, fine some polling from the last few weeks, do not rely on polling from such large parts between eachother, as I am only making you look even more foolish.

we conclude with "a look at what really matters" through some polling data; yet is this not "[trying] to tie it to recent events with out providing polling proof from the previous weeks"? you are making a claim about favorables without such information. obama's unfavorables have been hovering between 40 and 50% for the last three years. what is the causal factor and its timeframe?

Unfavorables Yes, Favorables No. Obama's Unfavorables have dropped rapidly through out the last few months. For example in April Obama's Favorables were at 42, with 45 Unfavorable, a -3 percent difference. Between then and now, that number has dropped to a -12 percent difference. And unlike your poll, the only two things that have largely changed between then and now, is a drop in the economy, and a increase in Obama going negative. And while as I have stated people tend to tune out ads and attacks during the summer, Obama's negativity in and of itself is pretty well known by now, something that could potentially hit his ratings.

additionally, it is probably not a useful argument that 60% of people do not care about an issue when 40% of them evidently do. constant discussion of an issue necessarily grants it importance - it becomes worth caring about. a campaign wants this transition to happen in favor of their interests rather than against them.

Except of those that care of the issue, not all are uniformly see it as a unfavorable thing. Note that 14% see Romney's experience at Bain as a plus, only 23% see it as a negative, thus the attacks right now have only effected a total of 23% of the populous, one has to wonder how many of those are part of the Democratic Party already.