Ras Trax 3/10: Romney leads big for some reason

Apparently, the nation's "likely voters" have been waiting to decide if Romney is really the GOP's nominee before choosing him a match-up. This bit of delusion is supposed to explain why Rasmussen's crazy daily tracker suddenly , over a mere six days, switched from Obama six points ahead to Obama five points behind. Hand in hand with Rasmussen's latest results showing that 80% of Republican primary voters think Romney will be the nominee, 'naturally' Romney takes the lead. But if that's the case, how does Scotty explain Santorum also leading the President? He doesn't.

With the perception growing that he will be the GOP nominee, Romney leads President Obama by five points in a hypothetical 2012 matchup. Today's numbers show Romney at 48%, Obama at 43%. That’s Romney’s largest lead since December.  

If Santorum is the Republican nominee, he is up by one point over the president, 46% to 45%. This is the second time since polling began in 2011 that Santorum has had a slight lead over Obama. Romney is the only other candidate to lead the president more than one time in the polls.

 Isn't this the virtual proof that Rasmussen's "likely voters" are mostly Republicans? Why else should anyone outside of the GOP care if Romney is the nominee? Even if they did, for some reason, why would that have prevented them from siding with one of the Republican candidates before? 

Also mysteriously, "Strong Disapproval" of Obama has gone up to 44%. Were "likely voters" waiting to decide who the Republican nominee would be before they decided to dislike Obama even more? 

I expect that this poll will become one of the key points that analysts will point to after the 2012 elections. Unfortunately for Rasmussen, it will be one of the examples used to illustrate exactly where Rasmussen went off the deep end and became the joke of the polling world. 

I leave it to the reader to guess how, exactly, Romney can lead the President by five points, yet be four behind in the "core States". 

Rasmussen has now firmly thrown in with the Republican delusional narrative. Nobody else is showing leads like this for any Republican candidate. Nobody else has shown a lead at all since mid-February, and only by two points, at that. He is past the point where he can redeem himself with last-minute "things changed" moments. No one will believe that now. The Right would never forgive him for doing that, and nobody else takes him seriously after this result. He will have to go down with the narrative in November. 

Perhaps Rasmussen thinks that he can intimidate other pollsters into showing more Republican-friendly numbers by doing this. If so, he vastly over-estimates his stature in the polling world after his 2010 debacle. Nobody is afraid to dispute Scotty's results anymore, and his reputation has declined even among Right-leaning pollsters. He would also be under-estimating the influence of pollsters such as PPP, whose results run counter to Rasmussen's. And, when PPP begins polling likely voters, Rasmussen will be deprived of his familiar crutch that he frequently employs against other pollsters.