Are you better off now?
| Poll Call | Change | Who’s Up |
| Real Clear Politics Average | Obama +.1 | Obama +3.5% |
| Talking Points MemoPollTracker | Obama +.5 | Romney +.1% |
| HuffingtonPost Pollster | Obama +.6 | Obama +.2 |
| New York Times FiveThirtyEight | Romney +.1 | Obama +2.5 |
| Memo Average | Obama +.2 | Obama +.1.5 |
Could the jobs market be healing?
U.S. businesses posted more job openings in June than they have in four years. Hiring generally lags three months, so it’s difficult to say whether this will improve the three jobs reports we’ll see before the election. But it’s a reminder that we’re getting to the point in the calendar when every economic indicator from the autumn crisis of 2008 will be easy to best. Of course, Democrats will trumpet these numbers, along with the fact that more private sector jobs have been created during Democratic administrations.
Models
Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight has a nice post about using models to predict this election that concludes:”If you take the average between the FiveThirtyEight model and the consensus betting lines, you’d get about a two-in-three chance of Mr. Obama winning another term.”
More Good Polls for the President
The President is still up by one in the right-leaning Rasmussen Report Daily Tracking poll (WARNING: Loud video ad on that page.). PPP Polls is showing the President slightly up in North Carolina, a state many had started to see as safe for Romney. The tiny Obama lead is entirely the result of a gender gap, which may well become the story of this election.
Picking Mitt’s Running Mate
All we know for sure is that Mitt has to pick someone. I still like our Henry Decker’s out-of-the-box suggestion of New Hampshire senator Kelly Ayotte, which he first started to mention months ago. The consensus says that Rob Portman has had the slot for weeks. But conservatives still pine for Paul Ryan, whom they promote as the “bold” pick. I guess from a line up of white guys in suits that most Americans can’t identify, the one who wants to turn Medicare into a voucher program is bold enough. Newshounds have discovered that Biden and Palin’s Wikipedia pages were edited dramatically in the 24-hours before they were picked. So now everyone is playing that game, which Portman appears to be winning.
Verdict: Mitt is sorely in need of a game-changing running mate. That’s never a good place for an Obama opponent to be.
