Romney Sees A 23 Point Gain Among California Independents

By Susan Duclos

Mitt Romney’s strong debate performance against Barack Obama’s weak one in the first presidential debate last week, hasn’t just helped in national polls, but have helped in local state polling as well.

CBS5 San Francisco reports on the Romney surge being seen even in the bluest of states, with an eight point all around improvement in numbers which brought Obama down from a 22 point lead in California just four weeks ago, to a 14 point lead in their latest poll.

Romney’s gain among Independents is almost triple what he gained among the general electorate in California:

The poll data released Wednesday showed Obama 53%, Romney 39%, in
California. Obama carried the Golden State by 24 points in 2008, so the
poll found Obama is now running 10 points weaker than he ran 4 years
ago. Among Independents, Obama led by 14 in September, but now trails by
9 in October, a 23-point right turn among the most coveted voters. One
explanation, based on the poll data: The number of Romney supporters who
said they were voting “for Mitt Romney” as opposed to “against Barack
Obama” is way up, month over month.

 Polls across the country are showing the same pattern of movement in Romney’s favor.

In Wisconsin, according to CBS News,  Romney has cut Obama’s 6 point lead down to three. In Colorado, Obama led by one point before the debate and now Romney leads by one.

Romney has also made gains in Virginia, Ohio and Florida in the latest NBC/WSJ/Marist poll.

Most notable is the 2 point uptick for Romney in Ohio, despite MSNBC reporting that the poll “included an 11-point advantage for self-described Democrats — 40
percent to 29 percent for Republicans. Last week’s poll had a narrower
5-point advantage for Democrats.”

Romney gained two points even when 11 percent more Democrats were used in the poll sample, 6 percent more than last week’s poll.

 Romney now holds a 1.1 percent lead over Obama in the RCP polling averages, which uses a variety of general election polls from multiple organizations. (Obama was up 3.1 percent the day of the debate).