Romney has been boasting about larger and larger crowds over the past week or so. It seems to be an odd claim. Not that it doesn't have some truth in it. But it seems to me that many of us, when a presidential candidate is in the neighborhood, turn out because we're curious -- because if the guy (whom we may or may not like or support) gets to be president, we've seen him with our own eyes!
This analysis from Nate Silver tends to confirm the above: Romney's surge is an isolated surge and not a Republican surge.
Mitt Romney has had a pronounced change of fortunes since the first presidential debate in Denver. After trailing President Obama by 4 or 5 points in the polls on Oct. 1 — a position that very few candidates have come back from — he now holds ties or small leads in many national polls and has cut the advantage Mr. Obama had in swing states to a razor-thin margin.
There is little sign, however, that Mr. Romney’s rebound has translated into races for the Senate. Although Republicans have made modest gains in a few Senate races, the polls have been poor for them on the whole. Some races have already gotten away from them, while others are on the verge of being lost.
The FiveThirtyEight forecast model now gives Republicans just about a 16 percent chance of winning control of the Senate. This is a precipitous drop from just two months ago. On Aug. 19, the forecast put their odds at close to 62 percent. ...538, NYT
Down the righthand side of Silver's page you can find infinitely updated stats on aspects of presidential race, the Senate stats, the Electoral College votes, and what the latest numbers are in just about everything turned into an election day forecast based on the extremely weedy research done by the Silver gang.
Here are some of the numbers, looking ahead to November 6:
Electoral vote: O:285.4 R:252.6
Chance of winning: O:62.9% R:37.1%
Popular vote: O:49.9% R:49.0%
Senate: D:52.4% R:47.6%
I think it would be fair to say that a "surge" in America doesn't usually turn out to last very long, turning into "fizzle" pretty quickly. That goes about double or triple during a presidential election. The first time I noticed any kind of challenge to the fizzle ending came when most of us realized how bloody good Obama's 2008 campaign organization was during and after the battle with candidate Hillary Clinton. The Obama people don't seem to accept fizzles very easily.
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