Presidential Polls 2012: 5 Million Jobs Added Will Earn Obama a Second Term

Impact

Presidential polls for the 2012 election have been posted on Real Clear Politics for polls released Friday and Saturday. The snap shot of competitive states looks good for President Obama a few hours ahead of the election.  

Four election polls were released about the crucial battleground state of Ohio. Friday's Rasmussen poll shows President Obama tied. CNN/Opinion Research shows Barack Obama up by three.  We Ask America shows the President up by four. Saturday's Ohio polls are even better for Obama.  

Saturday's NBC/WSJ/Marist poll shows the president up by six in Ohio. Ohio is seen as a must win state for Mitt Romney. Saturday's NBC poll, page 12, shows that among likely voters 48% believe Barack Obama will do a better job handling the economy vs. 46% for Romney. So, in the key state of Ohio, on the key issue of the economy, President Obama is winning. 

Other notable Friday polls show President Obama ahead by two in Colorado, ahead by one in Virginia, ahead by six in New Hampshire, ahead by four in Iowa, ahead by seven in Wisconsin, and ahead by five in Michigan. Without Ohio, Romney would need to nearly sweep all of these states to win.     

Saturday polls show a mixed bag in Florida. Tampa Bay Times has Romney up by six, while NBC/WSJ/Marist has Obama up by two. Your guess is as good as mine on Florida, but with Obama ahead in so many of the other toss-up states it should not matter.    

Election 2012 polls seem to favor President Obama in the days leading up to the election. The overall improving job number trend is a likely factor why Americans will want to stick with President Obama rather than changing course. The total jobs added, downward trend of unemployment, and comparisons to Bush and Clinton jobs numbers show the president's overall results are headed in the right direction. Colin Powell endorses President Obama citing improving employment.    

In total, President Obama's economy has added 5.4 million new private sector jobs since he took office. Take a look: 

This chart shows the months at the end of the Bush presidency. December 2008, the last full month of Bush's second term America was hemorrhaging jobs. We lost 839,000 jobs in that month alone. In late January, President Obama took office. By early February he his economic recovery package and look how we went from job losses to recovery. We've been adding jobs ever since.  

The result is that the unemployment rate has been coming down steadily. Take a look at the president's results as reported by Gallup from January 2010 until now: 

As you can see, from the time the president's policies were really impacting the economy until now, we've had a steady trend line downward in the unemployment rate. We are headed in the right direction.

Many people make the mistake of comparing the jobs added to a standard business cycle recession, vs. a financial crisis. Every seven years or so, we have a recession where the business economy corrects itself. The economy rebounds quickly from those. Once every few generations we seem to have a financial crisis, which is far worse. We had a financial crisis far deeper than nearly any advanced economy. Banking crashed, lending dried up, housing crashed, the stock market crashed, that auto industry collapsed, and then another drag was added when employment crashed.  

On Bush's course we were headed for depression 2.0. In Obama's economy all trends are headed in the right direction ahead of the pace of recovery for any other advanced economy in a financial crisis. Take a look:

An updated chart, from this month, would show that we just crossed that 0% line into positive territory. The jobs recovery under President Obama began faster than after any other financial crisis in an advanced economy. Within four years under Obama's economic leadership put us in positive territory, where it took 11 years during the depression and 16 years on average in all other advanced economies. Though we wish things would have grown even faster, we started way ahead of schedule and jobs recovered 3-4 times faster than any other advanced economy in a financial crisis that we can compare to. President Obama's leadership turned us around fast and brought us to a jobs expansion.

Compare the jobs trend line to that of our most recent presidents:

Republican Bush Sr. resided over collapsing job growth. His son George W's policies failed to accelerate job growth in his first term. Government hiring was high during George W's presidency. Those are the two most recent Republican presidents. After eight years of Republican results, look at how the job losses spill over into President Obama's term.

You can see the job growth rate turning upwards as President Obama's policies take hold.  The longer he is in office, the more job growth is accelerating. Look at the blue trend line from President Clinton's term where we added 22 million jobs. President Obama's job growth trajectory is parallel to Clinton's. 

Obama's results are more impressive because Clinton began on an upward trajectory.  President Obama turned around the entire country from the deepest collapse we've seen in generations, and then accelerated job growth upwards parallel to Clinton's trend. 

Compare the results from the last two Republican presidents and the last two Democrats.  This is why I now vote Democrat. The job growth trendline upwards is why I strongly support Obama. His policies are working, so I want to stay the course.

You can see that Bush's policy was slow going and didn't yield great results. It took a long time to see any positive progress. At the time, the conservative Heritage Foundation released this chart touting 148,000 jobs added as a "surge of employment."

Well, I don't want that "surge of employment." This month, with President Obama's leadership there were 183,000 private sector jobs added. If you research further, a huge amount of Bush's improvement came from government hiring. This month, the government let 13,000 workers go continuing a trend of government layoffs that began when President Obama took office.  

Is this month's 183,000 jobs added a SURGE OF EMPLOYMENT with capital letters according to Republican politicians? No. Though this is a better result than Bush achieved, Republicans would have you believe that this is a failure.

Under current policy the Bureau of Labor Statistics believes we'll add about 12.5 million more jobs during the next presidential term. Roughly 250,000 per month. Knowing this, Romney promises his policy would help add about 12 million. He made a promise to add fewer jobs than is already predicted to be added under current policy.

Romney endorsed President Obama's main economic Recovery Act. He endorsed the president's bipartisan approach and the composition of the law, which was a majority tax cuts.  

And watch what happened when Mitt Romney was running against President Obama. All the sudden a giant flip-flop and the president's plan was dubbed a failure. Watch Romney make the flip-flop.

Romney had a leadership position from that stage and he chose to mislead his supporters. Not to mention that by putting two videos next to each other you can see that Romney outright lied to millions of people on TV, in person, and repeatedly. While I call it lying, President Obama more delicately has diagnosed this as Romnesia. This kind of inconsistency would destroy the stability we now enjoy in the American economy.

Colin Powell endorsed President Obama because of the results you see in this jobs turnaround.  Everything is trending in the right direction. General Colin Powell is a Republican and has a tremendous amount of hands on experience at the federal level. Watch his remarks as he notes Romney's inconsistency and praises Obama's successes:

You can see that all the trend lines are moving in the right direction and faster than when compared to any other financial crisis in an advanced economy. Unemployment is coming down.  The stock market has more than doubled since Obama took office. Things are heading forwards.  This is why President Obama has my vote. Romney's dishonesty on the issue is why he loses me.  

Now, I want you to take a step back with me to 2008 as the economy collapsed. And after you watch this video I ask you to turn on your TV. Yes, you'll find some news today of Hurricane Sandy recovery, where Republicans and Democrats have been praising Obama's leadership, but watch all the news channels and compare with the kind of news we were seeing as President Obama was taking office. This is where we were four years ago before Barack Obama's leadership as president. Take a look:

You don't see anything like that video on the news today because President Obama's leadership worked and everything is heading in the right direction.

You can view President Obama's the full economic efforts already underway and future plans for the economy here.

Barack Obama has my vote.  Please, cast your vote for Barack Obama and the Democrats in this election.