In the recent weeks leading up to the election, it is suprising to me how much the left is lying to itself. I'm going to break this down into two big points: polls and the economy.
Polls
Let's start with the least serious, as in it doesn't necessarily affect anyone's life greatly. Now, there have been many lately on the right criticizing the polls as being "skewed," while people on the left believe the right are just unhappy with the results of the poll. Many of the criticisms stem from the belief that pollsters are using a model that benefits Obama unfairly. After looking into the details of some of the polls, the truth is, they are.
For this point, I'm going to use a recent poll from CNN. It's from a few days before the debate, so there won't be any bump for Romney shown in it, yet. In the poll, they found that Obama was ahead of Romney by 3%. The break down of those polled was 37% Democrat, 34% Independent/Other, and 29% Republican. So a 8% lead for Democrats over Republicans and a 3% lead for Democrats over Independents. They only problem with those percentages is that the election turnout WILL NOT reflect these numbers. Even if we go with a best case scenerio, or a repeat of 2008, the turnout would be more like 40% Independent/Other, 31% Democrat, and 29% Republican. This poll has a 7 point increase for Democrats over 2008, yet only a 3 point lead for Obama. Now, if we change the the poll to resemble 2008's turnout, and if Romney is ahead with Independents by 8% (as this poll shows), then Romney would be up ~7%.
The Economy
This one is pretty sad, as it affects people's lives greatly. I'm pretty sure we've all heard the accusations that the numbers have been fudged to get an unemployment of 7.8%, something I'm not really here to advance. Do I think the numbers were massaged a little to give a slightly positive view of the economy? Sure. But I realize it's not only Obama's administration who has done this and is more a problem with how we calculate the number given in the first place. Still, if you dig a little deeper, things still aren't good.
The left seem to be ignoring a few important facts. For one, a lot of the jobs created in September are only part-time. The ones that are seasonal are obviously going to be gone at the end of December. And the ones that are from people being forced from full-time to part-time, well, I can't even imagine how horrible it must feel to get that talk/memo from your boss. Even with this increase of jobs, whether part-time or full, we are still on pace to create fewer jobs this year than last. Another important fact is that one of the reasons the unemployment has actually started to fall is because people are no longer being counted just because they have given up the job search. Of course, if you look at the U-6, which does include them, it is unchanged from the previous month (14.7%), and is actually 0.6% higher than it was when Obama took office (14.1%). And this all ignores the labor participation, which if it was the same when Obama took office, unemployment would be 10.7%. Even using the numbers given, and plotting them on a slightly altered Team Obama projection chart, it says a lot:
Going by this chart, even Team Obama projected we'd be in a better position if we had had no stimulus. So here we are, nearly 4 years later and nearly 6 TRILLION more in debt (1 trillion more than Bush did in 8 years), and we aren't even in the same position as we were when Obama took office.
I think the left is in for a surprise this election day. I know, personally, right after the debate I registered to vote online. This is the first time in my life I have felt that I NEED to vote. And I've been eligible to vote for over a decade now. I would wager there are many more like me on the right this time around then there is on the left.
