The Daily Caller
Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey predicted on a conference call Thursday that Mitt Romney would win his state in November.
“I think he’s going to carry Pennsylvania,” Toomey said of the Republican presidential nominee.
Keystone State polling hasn’t been encouraging for the GOP ticket in recent weeks. A survey of Pennsylvanians released Tuesday by We Ask America showed President Barack Obama leading Romney by 48.1 percent to 42.2 percent. Obama’s nearly six-point lead is outside the poll’s margin of error.
A Morning Call poll of likely Pennsylvania voters released earlier this month showed Obama taking 50 percent of the vote to Romney’s 41 percent. That is close to the RealClearPolitics polling average, which shows Obama up by 8.6 percentage points. Pennsylvania is rated as leaning Obama.
“Some of the polls that are publicly available are unreliable, systematically flawed,” Toomey told The Daily Caller News Foundation. He said some of the public polls were “way off” when he was running for Senate two years ago.
Toomey said he had seen private data that suggests Romney is more competitive in Pennsylvania than media pollsters say. He also cited the example of his own recent campaign.
“In 2010, I was able to run for statewide federal office in Pennsylvania against a very credible opponent,” said Toomey. He argued that the political climate hadn’t changed much since then, when he was elected with 51 percent of the vote.
“Obama’s record has only gotten worse,” Toomey remarked.
Before making his Pennsylvania prediction, Toomey assailed Obama for “unprecedented deficits,” an “unsustainable debt,” “the threat of gigantic tax increases” and an “abysmally high unemployment rate.”
“No wonder our economy is in such bad shape,” Toomey concluded. He said Obama’s economic philosophy was based on redistribution while Romney’s policies are centered on growth.
Asked about Romney’s “47 percent” comments, Toomey replied, “The best way to decrease dependency is through a booming economy.”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/20/pat-toomey-predicts-romney-win-in-pennsylvania/