Romney Advisor on Poll Numbers: ‘It’s the Summer’
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Jeff Swensen/Getty Images(BOSTON) — A senior Mitt Romney advisor brushed off recent poll numbers that show the GOP candidate dragging behind President Obama, reminding reporters in Boston today that “it’s the middle of the summer.”
“There have been three polls over the last 36 hours showing us down from anywhere from 6 to 9 points or so,” said the staffer, who declined to go on the record, during a briefing at campaign headquarters.
“Guys, it’s the middle of summer. It’s the doldrums. It’s the middle of the Olympics,” the advisor said. “There’s not been any national news, anything that would push these numbers from minus three to minus nine points. That’s a huge shift. You have to have some kind of precipitating event to move numbers like that.”
The advisor was referring to several polls in the past few days that have shown Obama up between 7 and 9 percentage points over Romney nationally, including ones by Reuters/Ipsos, CNN/ORC and Fox News.
The latest Gallup tracking poll, however, continued to show Obama and Romney statistically tied, which the advisor said we would see change in “if there was movement.”
“We’re not seeing it there,” said the advisor, of the Rasmussen and Gallup polls.
The advisor attributed the slumping poll numbers to the fact that he believes people are “not paying as much attention to this process as we all think they are, as we’d like them to.”
“I think the impact of the European trip is just negligible,” the advisor said, when asked whether the polls could have been due to a series of bad press Romney received during his 6-day trip overseas. “I mean it just, it just disappears within a couple of days.”
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