Battleground Poll - October 22, 2012

Likely Voter, 1000 sample size, Romney leads 49-47, 4% undecided.

Last night I was wondering whether the polls would continue with their Democrat over samples, or start to move toward a rational baseline.  Battleground has chosen the later, and looks to be the first to start adjusting their results to better reflect the likely turnout in 2012.  The last time this poll was run, it used a D+4 sample of 44/40/18.  This poll moves to a D+2 of 43/41/18, which is much closer to a likely partisan split.  As usual with this poll, they undersample Independents by pushing respondents to indicate party preference, even if they aren't registered with that party.  They are also reporting a very small preference for Obama of 1 point by the miniscule number of Independents they have left.

Putting these results through the models, we get the following:

R+2 - Current result
R+0.7 - 2008 turnout
R+2.9 - D+3 turnout
R+4.8 - 2010 turnout
R+4.8 - 2004 turnout
R+6.2 - Rasmussen Party ID

Solid results for Romney, very much in line with what Rasmussen and Gallup are showing.  Again, note that with an R+1 sample like Gallup is using, the Battleground results would be Romney at 53%.