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The following is an editorial piece from Gambling911.com Special Contributor and former 2008 Libertarian Vice Presidential nominee Wayne Allyn Root.
Up until one week ago and Hurricane Sandy...the only two polls that have proven credible for decades...Gallop and Rasmussen...had Romney up 4 and 5 points several days in a row with only 10 days to go...and as high as SEVEN points with Gallop after 3rd debate...higher than my prediction of a 5 point popular win...
With momentum growing. Romney had all the momentum.
And at that moment Benghazi, Libya was threatening to explode into biggest scandal in Presidential history.
Then Sandy hit...took Libya out of headlines...took Romney out of the evening news...and showed Obama as a friendly CEO instead of a bitter political hatchet man demigoguing and denigrating Romney...calling him a liar and S.O.B.
Suddenly everything changed from the day Sandy hit.
Polls starting slipping back towards Obama.
I never thought this rebound would stick. Afterall what did Obama actually do but land on a tarmac, wave, take photos, and promise checks from FEMA?
Soon Sandy turned into a p.r. nightmare for Obama...FEMA failed badly- just like Bush with Hurricane Katrina.
Again...with common sense...I assumed voters might notice this.
I assumed Obama would lose his "bump" and even more by Tuesday, as the extent of the government's poor response became more evident.
But the media treated this disaster completely different than Katrina under a Republican President. Bush was to blame for FEMA's disastrous response, but Obama was never once blamed for FEMA's terribly incompetent response this time.
All Romney's momentum changed...and the polls changed.
I'd argue I had my pick exactly right about 10 days out with Gallop showing 7 point lead for Romney and Rasmussen showing Romney leading in 10 of 11 battleground states.
A few point change one way versus another tipped every one of those states by Tuesday.
Shocking and surprising that a Hurricane...a natural disaster...handled badly...changed an election so dramatically. First time in modern political history. Nothing else accounts for the change. Nothing else happened in those last 10 days but Hurricane Sandy.
- Wayne Allyn Root, Gambling911.com Special Contributor
