The polls don’t look that great for Romney at this time. A couple of polls have Obama up five points. I don’t understand how President Obama’s approval rating is around 42 percent and yet 49 percent of voters say they’re going to vote for him again.

I suspect that there are people who disapprove of Obama and Romney and won’t vote for anybody in November. Some are disenchanted Democrats and Republicans. Of course, there are the Libertarians, followers of Ron Paul, and Constitution Party supporters who most likely did not vote in 2008 so their non-votes don’t mean much since they’ve already been factored in. Or is it out?

I got an email today from someone who’s going to vote for the Constitution Party candidate. Here’s what he wrote:

“I say no to the ‘lesser of two evils.’ I am voting for the Constitution Party and only the Constitution Party. Calling me an idiot does not intimidate me. Romney/Obama [are] all the same to me. Remember the Republican Party was a third party when they put a man in the White House. Let Obama win. Let Romney win. Either way America loses.”

What has the Constitution Party done since it was established in 1991? No seats in the Senate or House of Representatives. No governorships. No state upper houses. No state lower houses. If a third party is going ot be successful, it would help if it had some successes.

Polls can be used to dampen voter enthusiasm. People see a poll showing Obama ahead when the economy is in the toilet and wonder how it’s possible. Why bother voting since the election is over . . . in September!

I wouldn’t be surprised that the poll numbers are being screwed with. There’s just no way to prove it.

A little history might help showing how polls at this point in an election are not necessarily indicators of who’s going to win in November.

Gallup shows that Obama is leading Mitt Romney by 4 points after the DNC Convention. Consider that in the 1980 election Gallup showed that Jimmy Carter was leading Ronald Reagan by 4 points in mid September. In October Carter was up 8 by points. Going into the last two weeks before the election, Gallup published a poll showing Carter up six among likely voters.

Ronald Reagan ended up winning by 9 points and taking 44 states in the electoral count — 489 to 49. Third party candidate John Anderson got 6.6% of the vote and made no impact on the final results.

The most lopsided polling spread after the Democratic National Convention has to be the 1988 election between George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis. A Gallup Poll had Dukakis up by 17 percent — 55 to 38 percent. A four-point difference is nearly a tie in statistical analysis of polls. It’s within the margin of error. Breitbart reports that The New York Times stated the following from July 26, 1988:

“This was among the findings of a national public opinion poll of 948 registered voters conducted late last week for Newsweek magazine by the Gallup Organization. The telephone interviews took place on July 21, which was the last night of the convention, and on the night after that.

Fifty-five percent of the 948 registered voters interviewed in the poll said they preferred to see Mr. Dukakis win the 1988 Presidential election, while 38 percent said they preferred to see Mr. Bush win.

In the end, the enthusiasm factor will determine who wins. Which party will crawl over broken glass to vote? Let’s hope it’s the Republicans.