One poll showing Mitt Romney leading President Obama could be a fluke. Two polls? A bit less likely to be a fluke. But three polls in a row, especially when one of them is a Gallup survey of 2,265 registered voters, probably deserves some attention. Yes, even as InTrade shows Obama with a 61 percent chance of winning in November, and even as conservative pundits like George Will talk about a second Obama term as if it’s a foregone conclusion, the reality is that Mitt Romney has beaten Obama in the three national polls taken since Rick Santorum dropped out, and is therefore, at least for the moment, winning the (extremely nascent) general election. Not that it matters this far out — Obama doesn’t quite need to “start packing” yet, as Romney suggested with a laugh today in an interview with Diane Sawyer — but it does seem that the conventional wisdom might be overdue for a shift in Romney’s direction.
Update: CNN just came out with a new poll showing Obama up by 9 points over Romney among registered voters. So there goes the “last three polls” thing. Still, it’s clear neither candidate should be considered the undisputed frontrunner at this point in the race.
