Favor is fickle, and hope and change was easier to promise than deliver on.
A new Gallup poll shows that nearly 10 percent of voters who supported Barack Obama during his 2008 run have decamped and will be supporting Republican challenger Mitt Romney in this next election. At nine percent, the rate of Obama '08 defectors is nearly double the five percent of former McCain '08 supporters who now say they'll cast a vote for Obama.
Partly loyalty is higher in the Republican camp too, with 92 percent of former McCain supporters saying they're sticking with the red ticket, while only 86 percent of Obama's 2008 base say they're staying true.
The poll surveyed more than 2,000 registered voters who punched a ballot in 2008.
Now for some number play: if we make the broad assumption that the poll data is representative of the general population and do some extrapolation, tallying nine percent of 69,456,897 (Obama's 2008 vote count) and subtracting five percent of John McCain's 59,934,814 votes, we end up with a potential 3.25 million more votes for Romney than McCain had four years ago. It's nothing concrete, but it's becoming clear that election 2012 will be a far different race than 2008 was.
