One seemingly odd characteristic of this year’s election is the stubborn consistency of the polls. Consider: Since the Republican primary officially ended in early May, 10 of the 13 polls of likely voters have pegged the president’s vote share between 43 and 47 percent, while 11 of 13 have shown Mitt Romney in the same band. If we remove the June 15 Bloomberg poll as an outlier, the standard deviation for the president’s numbers is two points. For Romney, it is 1.3 points.
Registered voter polls have shown similar results, though they are slightly better for President Obama. Twenty of 25 show the president between 44 and 49 percent, while Romney has been between 42 and 46 percent in a similar number of polls. Overall, the standard deviation for each set is around two points.
All of this is a long way of pointing out that the various events in the campaign that journalists have focused on — Romney finally wrapping up the Republican nomination, Obama’s “doing fine” comments about the economy, two horrible job reports, the health care decision in the Supreme Court, and the Obama campaign’s spending dump on Romney’s work at Bain Capital — have done almost nothing to move this race. The president is ahead by a few points among registered voters, and roughly tied with Romney among likely voters.
This shouldn’t be that surprising. The high court ruling upholding Obamacare gave Democrats a temporary boost, but the law is still not particularly popular, at least among voters not already inclined to support the incumbent.
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