Oct 16, 2012 No Comments ›› Chuck Biscuits
Excerpted from Buzz Feed: WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — Last week’s jobs report provided President Barack Obama with perhaps the only bit of good news since his disastrous debate against Mitt Romney, but there are suggestions that the figure could wind up having been too much, too soon for Obama.
The unexpected decline in the unemployment rate based off the monthly household survey from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent was a needed boost for Obama at one the worst moments of his political career. The next one is due out at 8:30 a.m. on November 2, four days before Election Day.
The results offered such a boost that they sparked suggestions from the political right that the numbers were somehow manipulated by the labor market — a complaint that overshadowed the simple fact that these numbers fluctuate, often wildly, largely because of standard statistical error, itself raising the potential of a political nightmare in the days leading up to the election.
Obama’s poll numbers have not typically been linked to fluctuations in the jobs report and the unemployment rate this year, but the anticipated jobs headline on November 2, 96 hours before polls open across the country, has the potential to be one of the only items to break through the pre-election news jam. And bad jobs news would be a big story.
“Of course we’re worried about it,” admitted an Obama campaign aide, on the prospect of an eleventh hour jobs report showing a spike in the unemployment rate. “But thankfully a large portion of the country will have voted by then.”
Indeed, a higher figure is not just possible; many on both sides see it as likely.
