President's Approval Rating: Looking at the wrong numbers.

Of course "we" all do it, try to get others to see the rose when there really is nothing but thorns. And in the case of Obama and his decreasing "major media," that is exactly what all the recent polling is about -- trying to convince the populace of his "rather remarkable popularity."

Not true. One recent poll had Obama "up" by 12 points !! Turns out the polling demographic was split 17 percentage points in favor of Democrats. . . . . of course, Obama came out the winning in that poll.

In terms of shifts in 2008 demographics, I give you just one of several pertinent examples: the approval rating of the Independent voting population. Understand that it was with this class of voter that Obama won the 2008 election. There are not enough of the youth vote, the Jewish vote and the Black vote to have made much of a difference in the 2008 results. To be sure, more votes were counted in each of those category than in years gone by but not in "record numbers" as was reported.

An important difference in the election was the Independent vote, where Obama garnered well over 50% of the Independent vote. Obama received a total vote count of approximately 70 million votes against 61 million for McCain . . . a difference of 9 million votes. Nearly 52% (8.3 million) of Independents voted for Obama in that election. Today, that number has fallen to 5.9 million (37%) and nearly all of the "dearly departed" (2.4 million) represent a swing vote total of nearly 5 million votes (4.8 million to be exact).

Confused? Look, a "swing vote" is recorded when a voter switches his vote from one to the other. In this case, if 2.4 million Obama 2008 voters switch to the GOP, that is a "swing vote total" of 4.8.

Add in the fact that nearly 5 million conservatives were so disappointed with McCain they did not vote, and you have a winner for the GOP as we consider just these two categories. There is more, much more, that favors a GOP victory.

A passing thought: the GOP should not allow national surveys to determine the size of the Independent vote or the outcome of the 2012 election in general. Any polling firm associated with the Left will "stack the deck" to get their particular poll to say what they want it to say. USA Today, NBC, ABC, CBS, the New York Times, most university polls and the Washington Post will all go out of their way to weight their poll in the favor of the Left. I, also, ignore Fox News, as well, but for a different reason. Their poll does not screen for likely voters. It is a general population poll and their results can lean Left or Right - trust, in this case, is not the issue, just poor polling strategies.