MI: Marist College: Obama destroys all Republicans

[Tender Branson]

New Poll: Michigan President by Marist College on 2012-02-20

Summary: D: 51%, R: 33%, U: 16%

Poll Source URL: Full Poll Details

Obama Approval:



51-38



51-33 Obama/Romney

55-29 Obama/Santorum

53-31 Obama/Paul

56-28 Obama/Gingrich

[Tender Branson]

Mega-LOL, if true.

But it's probably not true.

...

There are really strange polls out lately. Republicans ahead in Iowa ? Obama ahead by 20 or so in Wisconsin and Michigan ? Hmmmmm.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Most likely the pollsters are using different models and coming out with vastly divgent results, and the truth is somewhere in between.

[ajb]

And (as Nate Silver said this morning), it's February! General Election polling is all to be taken with a grain of salt, whether good or bad for your own favorite candidate.

[colincb]

I've seen more strange polls the last 2 weeks than in the last 6 months.  However, it's possible that the constant re-churning of the auto bailout issue has raised awareness of the issue in a favorable way for Obama.

There would have been no private sector bailout if the automakers had gone straight to  bankruptcy as Romney had suggested simply because there was a world-wide credit freeze. I think people may be becoming more aware of this.

No one in the private sector was going to put up new funds for massive "bridge" loans while the automakers restructured operations and unfavorable contracts.  It was not only a matter of risk entering into lending decisions, but lenders dealing with critical problems of their own due to a falling stock market, cratering values on mortgage-backed securities and derivatives, problems with commercial and residential loan portfolios, and capital levels that threatened them with failure.  The US government was the only potential lender capable of  keeping the automakers from shrinking dramatically in size and throwing massive numbers of workers onto unemployment lines at a time when our economy was already facing a severe threat of deflation and a much worse recession than what we are now enduring. 

The margin may make this poll an outlier, but I think MI is firmly in Obama's column at this point after being a toss-up/lean Dem earlier.  I don't think Obama's out of the woods in the Midwest and PA, but the auto bailout is a huge plus in MI and I would think northern OH.

[Likely Voter]

18 points is a bit high but MI hasn't gone GOP since 1988 and relative to the rest of the country it has seen the good improvement in unemployment since Obama took office and the auto bailout is popular. I think it is likely a heavy lean if not a safe Dem. And Romney's 2008 "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" trumps his ties to the state which he left in the 60s