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.

[kurai]

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.

one can not presume that factcheck meant to cover things which were not explicitly stated. the entire point is that they do not provide an in-depth analysis, focusing instead solely on the management aspect. they do not cover that which they can not disprove outside a trial setting - they could not make any truth claims about involvement beyond their management parameters, because they have no evidence of how other involvement would be received.

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.

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.

how do you know that obama would not be doing much worse in the polling without the advertising campaign, given worsening/failing to improve economic conditions (or whatever other metric we can point to)?

you are taking it as a given that people are not paying attention and not responsive, but it is evident that preferences on the whole are not stable (as indicated by polling), and that both current events and current campaigning are ongoing (by necessity). looking at aggregate polling, preferences are not remaining stable, but at best are operating cyclically - only the distance between the choices is narrowing as a trend over the last weeks. consider:



the fact that people find the post-primary/pre-nomination season to be more boring than the more direct antagonism found on either side of it does not indicate that marketing efforts in the meantime have no effect. people often remark that the summer is slow, but this is reflective of the pre-PAC advertising, pre-24 hour news cycle. quite to the contrary - this is the season for brand definition and the shaping and trial of long-term strategy.

consider also, the summer of 2008, in which 1-7 point flux runs throughout:



or even the summer of 2004, wherein we find vast swings during the season with trend at all until the fall:



thus, contrary to the common adage that no one cares for politics during summer: people do not merely "focus on vacations", but actually are influenced substantially by ongoing campaigning and events.

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.

you provide for a problematic development in the transition from a -3 to a -12 differential, attributing causality to recent conditions. but as stated, this has been an extremely variable measure for years:

FOX News			7/15 - 7/17	901 RV	52	46	+6
CBS News/NY Times		7/11 - 7/16	942 RV	36	48	-12
McClatchy/Marist		7/9 - 7/11	849 RV	49	46	+3
Quinnipiac			7/1 - 7/8	2722 RV	45	48	-3
CNN/Opinion Research		6/28 - 7/1	1390 RV	54	45	+9
Newsweek/Daily Beast		6/28 - 6/28	600 LV	51	47	+4
Bloomberg			6/15 - 6/18	1002 A	55	42	+13
Pew Research			6/7 - 6/17	1563 RV	50	48	+2
Monmouth/SurveyUSA/Braun	6/4 - 6/6	1152 LV	45	43	+2
FOX News			6/3 - 6/5	907 RV	54	42	+12
Gallup				6/1 - 6/4	2069 A	52	43	+9
CNN/Opinion Research		5/29 - 5/31	1009 A	56	42	+14
ABC News/Wash Post		5/23 - 5/27	RV	49	48	+1
FOX News			5/13 - 5/15	913 RV	52	44	+8
USA Today/Gallup		5/10 - 5/13	1012 A	52	46	+6
Associated Press/GfK		5/3 - 5/7	1004 A	58	38	+20
Resurgent Republic (R)		4/30 - 5/3	1000 RV	50	45	+5
FOX News			4/22 - 4/24	915 RV	50	48	+2
CBS News/NY Times		4/13 - 4/17	957 A	42	45	-3
CNN/Opinion Research		4/13 - 4/15	1015 A	56	42	+14
Quinnipiac			4/11 - 4/17	2577 RV	45	49	-4
ABC News/Wash Post		4/11 - 4/15	1009 A	56	40	+16
CNN/Opinion Research		3/24 - 3/25	1014 A	56	42	+14
ABC News/Wash Post		3/21 - 3/25	1016 A	53	43	+10
McClatchy/Marist		3/20 - 3/22	846 RV	50	46	+4
FOX News			3/10 - 3/12	912 RV	50	47	+3
Bloomberg			3/8 - 3/11	1002 A	52	45	+7
CBS News/NY Times		3/7 - 3/11	878 RV	41	41	Tie
Pew Research			3/7 - 3/11	1503 A	56	41	+15
ABC News/Wash Post		2/22 - 2/26	1011 A	51	45	+6
Politico/GWU/Battleground	2/19 - 2/22	1000 LV	54	42	+12
Associated Press/GfK		2/16 - 2/20	1000 A	57	42	+15
USA Today/Gallup		2/16 - 2/19	1014 A	50	48	+2
Quinnipiac			2/14 - 2/20	2605 RV	47	48	-1
CNN/Opinion Research		2/10 - 2/13	1026 A	53	45	+8
CBS News/NY Times		2/8 - 2/13	1604 RV	45	41	+4
Pew Research			2/8 - 2/12	1501 A	54	42	+12
ABC News/Wash Post		1/18 - 1/22	1009 A	53	43	+10
CBS News/NY Times		1/12 - 1/17	1021 RV	38	45	-7
Pew Research			1/11 - 1/16	1502 A	51	45	+6
FOX News			1/12 - 1/14	906 RV	51	46	+5
CNN/Opinion Research		1/11 - 1/12	1021 A	49	49	Tie
Associated Press/GfK		12/8 - 12/12	1000 A	53	46	+7
ABC News/Wash Post		12/7 - 12/11	1012 A	48	49	-1
Pew Research			11/9 - 11/14	2001 A	52	45	+7
McClatchy/Marist		11/8 - 11/10	872 RV	47	49	-2
Resurgent Republic (R)		10/30 - 11/2	1000 RV	51	45	+6
Quinnipiac			10/25 - 10/31	2294 RV	49	46	+3
FOX News			10/23 - 10/25	904 RV	48	48	Tie
Associated Press/GfK		10/13 - 10/17	1000 A	54	44	+10
CNN/Opinion Research		9/23 - 9/25	1010 A	53	45	+8
ABC News/Wash Post		9/14 - 9/18	1013 A	47	46	+1
CBS News/NY Times		9/10 - 9/15	1452 A	39	42	-3
McClatchy/Marist		9/13 - 9/14	825 RV	46	48	-2
Bloomberg			9/9 - 9/12	997 A	50	47	+3
Politico/GWU/Battleground	8/28 - 9/1	1000 LV	49	46	+3
Resurgent Republic (R)		8/28 - 8/31	1000 RV	50	47	+3
Quinnipiac			8/16 - 8/27	2730 RV	47	47	Tie
Associated Press/GfK		8/18 - 8/22	1000 A	54	45	+9
FOX News			8/7 - 8/9	904 RV	48	47	+1
McClatchy/Marist		8/2 - 8/4	807 RV	52	41	+11
McClatchy/Marist		6/15 - 6/23	801 RV	50	44	+6
Associated Press/GfK		6/16 - 6/20	1001 A	56	43	+13
Associated Press/GfK		5/5 - 5/9	1001 A	63	36	+27
FOX News			4/25 - 4/27	911 RV	53	44	+9
ABC News/Wash Post		4/14 - 4/17	1001 A	52	45	+7
McClatchy/Marist		4/10 - 4/14	1084 A	48	48	Tie
Associated Press/GfK		3/24 - 3/28	1001 A	59	39	+20
Bloomberg			3/4 - 3/7	1001 A	55	41	+14
Resurgent Republic (R)		3/1 - 3/3	1000 RV	49	47	+2
FOX News			1/18 - 1/19	900 RV	56	40	+16
CBS News/NY Times		1/15 - 1/19	1036 A	40	34	+6
McClatchy/Marist		1/6 - 1/10	827 RV	53	40	+13
Associated Press/GfK		1/5 - 1/10	1001 A	59	40	+19
Bloomberg			12/4 - 12/7	1000 A	52	44	+8
Reuters/Ipsos			12/2 - 12/5	1028 A	55	43	+12
Pew Research			12/1 - 12/5	1500 A	54	43	+11
McClatchy/Marist		11/15 - 11/18	810 RV	47	49	-2
Associated Press/GfK		11/3 - 11/8	1000 A	55	44	+11
CNN/Opinion Research		10/27 - 10/30	1006 A	48	48	Tie
FOX News			10/26 - 10/28	1200 RV	47	48	-1
CBS News/NY Times		10/21 - 10/26	1173 A	40	36	+4
Associated Press/GfK		10/13 - 10/18	1000 A	57	43	+14
CBS News/NY Times		10/1 - 10/5	1000 A	42	39	+3
McClatchy/Marist		9/30 - 10/5	829 RV	50	47	+3
Democracy Corps (D)		10/2 - 10/4	816 LV	45	44	+1
McClatchy/Marist		9/14 - 9/16	815 RV	49	48	+1
Associated Press/GfK		9/8 - 9/13	1000 A	57	42	+15
Politico/GWU/Battleground	9/7 - 9/9	1000 LV	53	44	+9
Quinnipiac			8/31 - 9/7	1907 RV	47	45	+2
Pew Research			8/25 - 9/6	3509 A	53	43	+10
FOX News			9/1 - 9/2	900 RV	50	46	+4
Democracy Corps (D)		8/30 - 9/2	1002 LV	44	43	+1
Associated Press/GfK		8/11 - 8/16	1007 A	56	43	+13
Democracy Corps (D)		7/26 - 7/29	1000 LV	46	43	+3
Quinnipiac			7/13 - 7/19	2181 RV	49	45	+4
Bloomberg			7/9 - 7/12	1004 A	55	40	+15
Gallup				7/8 - 7/11	1020 A	52	44	+8
FOX News			6/29 - 6/30	900 RV	52	44	+8
Marist				6/17 - 6/24	813 RV	50	43	+7
Resurgent Republic (R)		6/20 - 6/23	1000 RV	49	45	+4
Democracy Corps (D)		6/19 - 6/22	1016 LV	49	40	+9
Associated Press/GfK		6/9 - 6/14	1000 A	59	40	+19

we can observe sweeping changes on a very frequent basis without a sole appeal to 'the economy/Obama going negative' - they can not be presented as isolated factors. regardless, "obama's negativity in and of itself" is not available as a causal argument. a thing-of-itself is not empirical and not subject to observation - either the negativity is influential through a direct manner found in reality (ie. ongoing campaigning), or you must alternately make a claim based on the Platonic ideal of Negative-Obama.

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.

continued emphasis on bain experience leads to increased importance of this issue. if voter preferences are splitting 23-14 against romney presently, his campaign absolutely does not want the other 60% to split in the same fashion while focus remains on the issue moving forwards. thus, they either have to hope that the issue drops, or counter it in a persuasive manner.

but anyway, since "one has to wonder how many of those are part of the Democratic Party already", we can look to the exact same poll and find out:

q55. Does Mitt Romney's experience as head of the private equity firm, Bain Capital, make you more likely to vote for him, less likely to vote for him, or doesn't it affect howyou will vote one way or another?

** REGISTERED VOTERS ***** 

Party ID	Total	Rep	Dem	Ind
		% 	%	% 	%
More likely 	14 	29 	2 	13
Less likely 	23 	5 	39 	22
No effect 	60 	63 	55 	62

it appears that independents split almost exactly in accordance with the overall breakdown. it is notable that the 'Rep less likely' preference is double the 'Dem more likely'... it does not seem to be a particularly good issue on which romney can hope to capture swing-inclined or independent voters.

[Roy Karrde]

one can not presume that factcheck meant to cover things which were not explicitly stated. the entire point is that they do not provide an in-depth analysis, focusing instead solely on the management aspect. they do not cover that which they can not disprove outside a trial setting - they could not make any truth claims about involvement beyond their management parameters, because they have no evidence of how other involvement would be received.

FactCheck explicitly stated they covered both the SEC and the FEC documents, are you honestly telling me that they did not put two and two together? Are you honestly going that low? Furthermore since we do not have a trial setting, and since we can only work with the documents we have with us, we can only go by the analysis of seasoned pros like FactCheck. Now are you honestly going to say that in all of their due diligence looking over the FEC and SEC documents for a crime, that they did not ONCE consider that Mitt Romney signing the SEC documents, was a violation of the FEC documents?

Furthermore when talking about the possibility of a FEC Felony, they say this.

"Much of the Obama campaign’s letter is devoted to quoting portions of documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In summary, the letter states there are “at least 63 filings with that agency after March 1, 1999 that list various Bain entities and describe them as ‘wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney.’” That’s true, but not relevant.

We have never disputed that Romney remained the owner of Bain while he was running the Olympics committee. The issue always has been, who was running Bain? Nothing in the SEC documents contradicts what Romney has certified as true."

That would include the SEC documents in question. End of Story.

how do you know that obama would not be doing much worse in the polling without the advertising campaign, given worsening/failing to improve economic conditions (or whatever other metric we can point to)?

Because as noted, people do not care about the Bain attacks, only a tiny 20+% minority see it as a issue not to vote against Romney. As such we can largely extrapolate the belief that the ads have done very little to nothing to change the minds of the public at large.

you are taking it as a given that people are not paying attention and not responsive, but it is evident that preferences on the whole are not stable (as indicated by polling), and that both current events and current campaigning are ongoing (by necessity). looking at aggregate polling, preferences are not remaining stable, but at best are operating cyclically - only the distance between the choices is narrowing as a trend over the last weeks. consider:



the fact that people find the post-primary/pre-nomination season to be more boring than the more direct antagonism found on either side of it does not indicate that marketing efforts in the meantime have no effect. people often remark that the summer is slow, but this is reflective of the pre-PAC advertising, pre-24 hour news cycle. quite to the contrary - this is the season for brand definition and the shaping and trial of long-term strategy.

You will notice that those polls all fall into the MOE of 3 points or more from May onward, one could surmise that much of the change could just be normal fluctuation of polling back and forth through the MOE.

consider also, the summer of 2008, in which 1-7 point flux runs throughout:



or even the summer of 2004, wherein we find vast swings during the season with trend at all until the fall:

And again you will notice that the polling remained largely within the MOE until the fall in 2004 and outside a short discreprency in June in 2008 the same remains the same.

thus, contrary to the common adage that no one cares for politics during summer: people do not merely "focus on vacations", but actually are influenced substantially by ongoing campaigning and events.

That would show a rather ignorant view of your own polls, look at the largest jump in 2004, right after the convention in which Bush took momentum which except for a dip in October largely carried him to the convention. The same could be said for Obama, in which people did not largely make up their minds until the beginning of the economic crisis.

you provide for a problematic development in the transition from a -3 to a -12 differential, attributing causality to recent conditions. but as stated, this has been an extremely variable measure for years:

we can observe sweeping changes on a very frequent basis without a sole appeal to 'the economy/Obama going negative' - they can not be presented as isolated factors. regardless, "obama's negativity in and of itself" is not available as a causal argument. a thing-of-itself is not empirical and not subject to observation - either the negativity is influential through a direct manner found in reality (ie. ongoing campaigning), or you must alternately make a claim based on the Platonic ideal of Negative-Obama.

Well first your poll is a utter mess as it is a missmash of various organizations. So to put it in more context I painstakingly broke it apart, now if we are going to assume a sweeping change is anything of a 10 point jump in any direction from one poll to the next of the same organization, lets look at how many of these "frequent changes" appear shall we?

FOX News 1/18 - 1/19 900 RV 56 40 +16
FOX News 10/26 - 10/28 1200 RV 47 48 -1

CBS News/NY Times 7/11 - 7/16 942 RV 36 48 -12
CBS News/NY Times 4/13 - 4/17 957 A 42 45 -3

McClatchy/Marist 11/8 - 11/10 872 RV 47 49 -2
McClatchy/Marist 8/2 - 8/4 807 RV 52 41 +11

CNN/Opinion Research 3/24 - 3/25 1014 A 56 42 +14
CNN/Opinion Research 1/11 - 1/12 1021 A 49 49 Tie

Pew Research 6/7 - 6/17 1563 RV 50 48 +2
Pew Research 3/7 - 3/11 1503 A 56 41 +15

Associated Press/GfK 6/16 - 6/20 1001 A 56 43 +13
Associated Press/GfK 5/5 - 5/9 1001 A 63 36 +27

That is what? Five wild swings? Two of which are correlated together ( Pew and CBS ) meaning outside of the events between Late March/Early April and now, there has been a total of three "sweeping changes" swings, discount the Bin Laden bump from the Associated Press/GFK, and you are down to two. Suddenly I do not see so many mega swings as we have observed in the Pew and CBS poll from the last few months.

continued emphasis on bain experience leads to increased importance of this issue. if voter preferences are splitting 23-14 against romney presently, his campaign absolutely does not want the other 60% to split in the same fashion while focus remains on the issue moving forwards. thus, they either have to hope that the issue drops, or counter it in a persuasive manner.

That is under the false assumption that the public even gives a damn. As I quote from the Boston Globe and Andy Smith of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.

"“I think the big reason it isn’t is the only people who are paying attention are either hard-core Democrats or hard-core Republicans and others who haven’t decided aren’t paying attention right now,” said Andy Smith of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.

“I don’t think the effort was designed to sway voters so much as it was a way to get the Democratic base motivated again,” Smith added. “To give them something to be angry about again.”"

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/col...tions_dwindle/

That 23-14 split ( Running dangerously close to the +6 dem advantage of the poll ). Is largely that of the hard-cores. After a month of attack, if it is not moving the needle away from that 60%, there is very little anything else were, especially since most of the largest charges against Romney from Bain have already been leveled.

Mind you focusing on the issue =/= importance, that is beyond idiotic

If the public has made up their mind that they do not care about Bain then no matter how much Obama focuses on it, those numbers wont change. Furthermore it may de-emphesize the importance of the issue as the public begins to say "Fine, we heard that, now talk to us about the issue that is effecting our lives."

You also neglect one big thing, Romney right now leads Obama on who will do better with the economy. While Obama is pandering to the hard left, Romney has been focusing on the economy. Seeing how the public largely cares more about the economy than Bain, it only further reinforces the image that Obama has nothing to run on, and Obama does not care about the economy.

but anyway, since "one has to wonder how many of those are part of the Democratic Party already", we can look to the exact same poll and find out:

q55. Does Mitt Romney's experience as head of the private equity firm, Bain Capital, make you more likely to vote for him, less likely to vote for him, or doesn't it affect howyou will vote one way or another?

** REGISTERED VOTERS ***** 

Party ID	Total	Rep	Dem	Ind
		% 	%	% 	%
More likely 	14 	29 	2 	13
Less likely 	23 	5 	39 	22
No effect 	60 	63 	55 	62

it appears that independents split almost exactly in accordance with the overall breakdown. it is notable that the 'Rep less likely' preference is double the 'Dem more likely'... it does not seem to be a particularly good issue on which romney can hope to capture swing-inclined or independent voters.

You will also notice that nearly three times as many independents do not care on the issue, as are likely to vote against Romney on it. Furthermore the Dems seem far more likely to care about it than Independents.

Also note that Romney is not focusing on Bain, Obama's team is, so by your own logic: "it does not seem to be a particularly good issue on which Obama can hope to capture swing-inclined or independent voters"

[Heald]

Romney visits the UK, gets intelligence briefing from MI6

So Romney visited the UK and met with both the opposition leader of the socialist party, Ed Miliband (who Romney hilariously forgot the name of) and our Prime Minister David Cameron. Romney and Cameron appeared to have a detailed and thorough conversation and Romney was also given a briefing on the situation in Syria by the head of British Intelligence. It is unheard of for someone who is not a head of state to receive such a briefing.

This would indicate Romney is looking to thaw relations between the UK and the US, should be win in November, considering the current frosty relationship the countries share due to the actions of Obama and Hillary Clinton. The actions taken by David Cameron, to give him attention usually reserved for a prominent head of state, would seem to indicate that he sees Romney's victory as a high enough possibility to warrant taken pre-emptive measures to ensure their relationship begins on solid ground.

[Dark Sage]

Yeah, Heald, I'm sure that everyone in Great Britain loves Mr. Romney NOW.

Same for a lot of people in Israel. He's making a lot of friends there too.

[Sarcasm].