Obama’s Problems Didn’t Start With the Debate

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What’s going on with the polls? I wrote something about this a few days ago, but I think it might have gotten buried, so I want to repeat it. According to both Pollster and Real Clear Politics, Mitt Romney began his big surge well before last week’s debate. In the ten days before the debate, Pollster shows Romney gaining 2.4 points and RCP shows Romney gaining 1.8 points

Romney has continued gaining since then, and Obama has continued falling, but this isn’t solely a reaction to Obama’s lousy debate performance. It started in late September. But why? Nothing special happened during that week to benefit Romney. Their ad buys remained about the same as always. The only thing I can think of is that it was just the inevitable rebound from the hit Romney took over the 47% video.

In any case, there’s more going on here than just the debate that everyone’s been obsessing about. Anyone have any good guesses about what happened during that last week of September?

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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