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Focus group disappointed with Obama, “cautiously ambivalent” about Romney

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Maybe a focus group reaction to this ad helps explains why Obama is not acting like a winning candidate:

“Almost everyone in the group said they voted for Obama in 2008,” reports Scott Conroy of CBS NEWS, “but they were about evenly split between Obama and Mitt Romney in the 2012 race, with several still undecided.”

The group watched “more than a dozen negative TV ads funded by both presidential campaigns and outside groups”; a majority singled out the above spot “as the most effective ad of the current cycle.”  Via Mary Katharine Ham who notes that “only four of the 23 swing voters found ads from Obama and his allies more convincing than those from Romney and his allies.”

The National Review’s Daniel Foster, who watched (what I believe was) this focus group in action, reported their reactions to the two major-party presidential candidates:

When asked to describe Romney in one word, they said things like “stiff,” “experienced,” “educated,” “accomplished,” “articulate,” “untrustworthy,” “a leader,” “successful,” “privileged,” “question-mark,” and “ethical.” A mixed bag, right? Sure, but look at what they call Obama: “narcissist,” “polarizing,” “trying,” “having hope,” “incapable,” “lost,” “polarizing,” “socialist” (!), and most damning of all, “disappointing.”

Starker still: Almost all of them voted for Obama in 2008. Almost none of them are committed to doing it again.

The Weekly Standaard’s Michael Warren, however, found that sentiment toward Romney was “cautiously ambivalent“:

They want to know if they can trust him. They want to see if he can prove he understands their lives. They want to see records of his tax returns—not, they insist, because they believe he has done anything illegal. “The IRS would have already caught him by now,” says a man in the back.

That does seem to raise the stakes for Romney’s speech Thursday night; it also suggests that they are open to his appeal.

Comments

  2. And a little tough to believe that anyone who is still taken in by Him today, is necessarily that good of a person.

    I mean, they’d have to be taken in, willingly. I’m not really surprised, when I find on this blog that one of His supporters is the type of person who would… say… misrepresent others’ quotes, make every discussion about their alleged victimhood, act boorishly at a memorial, use something they were told privately to try to intimidate or hurt another, etc.

  3. I am amazed that some people just now picked up on the narcissism. That was one of the things that put me off in 2008. Obama makes everything, even the death of Neil Armstrong, about him.

    I think there are a lot of people out there who are disappointed in Obama, and Romney needs to find a way to reach those voters and get them to cast a vote for the GOP ticket. There are voters to be convinced, but Romney is going to have to overcome an Obama complicit media to get them to listen to his message.

  4. Good ad but if the Romney Campaign gets away with their rule change today we will lose the POTUS and have to hope for a filibuster proof Senate to save us from a second Obama term. Romney is showing his anti conservatism in spades here.

  5. A little off topic… but has insight to liberals.

    My local newspaper (owned by the massively wealthy husband of US Rep. Pingree – D) ran the AP story on the study of the IQ drop noticed in adults 35+ who smoked a lot of pot as teenagers. Well, of course, I had to post a comment about Obama/pot/IQ which led to several other negative comments about Obama including a list of gaffs. As of 2:10 PM today, the newspaper pulled the story from the “news” section. It is still in the archives but all the comments have been removed.