By Sophie Clements.
There seems to be a contrast in statistics from different poll sites regarding 2012 election exit polls. The Gallup Poll suggests that President Barack Obama is losing by one percentage point to Candidate Mitt Romney. However the Pew Research Centre suggests that Obama is in the lead.
Gallup states that President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney are within one percentage point of each other in Gallup’s final pre-election survey. Romney holds 49% of the vote and Obama 48%. After removing the 3% of undecided voters and allocating their support proportionally to the two major candidates, Gallup’s final estimate is 50% for Romney and 49% for Obama.
The Pew Research Centre have given their final estimate that sees Obama take 50% and Romney 47%. Although a week ago, the race was deadlocked with each likely to receive 47%. Pew have made the assumption that Obama’s handling of Hurricane Sandy may have have had a significant effect on his vote. 63% of ‘swing’ voters appeared to agree with his actions and 46% of Romney’s supporters thought Obama’s handling of the situation was appropriate. Women favour Obama by a 13-point margin (53% to 40%) reflecting shift to Obama since early October. Pew also revealed that voters aged 65 and older favour Romney by a 9point margin (51% to 42%).
Much of this year’s campaigning has focused on women and swing voters. Each candidate holds equally strong advantages with one gender. Both polls show similar statistics regarding gender. Romney holds a 10-percentage point lead among men; 53% to 43%, while Obama is ahead by nearly the same margin; 52% to 44% among women. Each candidate also has the strong support of his own party, with 96% of Republicans backing Romney and 93% of Democrats supporting Obama.
As the polls indicate, voting will be extremely close. America will have to await the final election result to discover which poll was correct.
Florida voter Alexandra Velasco explains what the next fours years would be like under Obama and Romney:
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