Swing State Polls Obama vs Romney: President Still Has Edge In Close 2012 Race
With the presidential campaign entering its final weekend before the Nov. 6 election, the polls have continued to remain extremely close. In most of the national surveys, President Barack Obama and former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney are in the midst of a dead heat race. However, polls from within the battleground states are still revealing Obama as the candidate with the slight advantage, as his electoral votes are currently in excess of the 270 needed to win the presidency.
The margin separating the two political candidates has clearly minimized since the very first presidential debate on Oct. 3, but over the last week, the national estimate has only wavered by roughly a half a percentage point toward Romney. Either way, the Republican presidential hopeful's edge still remains at the low end of the polls.
Almost all of the recent surveys have indicated either a tie or a small lead by Obama. Only two of the surveys, which are the Rasmussen tracking poll and the latest Gallup Daily tracking poll released prior to Hurricane Sandy making landfall are giving the advantage to Romney.
Given the closeness of the presidential race and the possibility of sampling errors in regards to each of the surveys, none of the polls can point out the actual leader in the national popular vote with the utmost of statistical confidence.
The national popular vote, which was composed by the Huffington Post Pollster tracking model takes pollster "house effects" into its account, aiming to put individual voters' results into line with the averages of the industry.
Over the last 24 hours, there have been in excess of two dozen surveys with most of the votes taken from the key battleground states. However, the estimates of the poll results still appear consistently similar to their results from three weeks earlier.
