Is 47% the Tipping Point for Romney?

We are just a few weeks after a less than extraordinary Republican Convention missing the military but including a scene from "Old Man and the Chair" and a somewhat more energizing Democratic Convention showing why the Twenty-Second Amendment is the only thing that prevented Bill Clinton from a 3rd and perhaps 4th term. Most probably due to this difference in Convention outcomes (and probably unrelated to the release of the new iPhone 5, I think), President Obama now enjoys a roughly 5% gap in most popular opinion polls on the 2012 Presidential Election. Removing the undecideds for a moment (do they actually ever vote or do they just stay home on Election Day?), this would give us a roughly 53%-47% split in the popular vote should the election be held today.

That 47% number for Mitt Romney has unfortunately for him been echoed in what may well be the most damning words spoken by him yet. The webosphere is overwhelmed by articles analyzing Mitt Romney's claim that:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

This video and several more sections of Romney's talk to rich donors earlier this year are now posted on the Mother Jones website:

There are many reviews of the numbers, but here is an article in the Daily Beast that points to a lot of the factual analyses: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/18/who-are-the-47-percent-7-facts-about-the-americans-mitt-romney-attacked.html

The bottom line is that although Romney paints a picture of 47% of Americans not paying taxes, most of those still incur payroll taxes. Many of the 47% are elderly living only on Social Security, military or students not making very much from summer jobs, etc. Most of the rest earn under $20,000 per year.

Beyond all that, of the ten states with the highest percentage of people not paying income taxes, eight of them are traditional Red States and Florida has been a battleground state for many years.

This video has the potential to not only incite Democrats who as a whole are called out, but also many rank and file Republicans who through no fault of their own do not pay income taxes. It is difficult to imagine a speech ticking off such a broad spectrum of people in this country.

A gaff or a damning video by itself won't necessarily cause damage. In national elections, it often takes a few cracks in the same area before enough people notice and change their minds on a candidate. As was mentioned on electoral-vote.com:

"A report that Romney had an affair with a staffer would get zero attention because nobody would believe it was true."

However, the story about Mitt Romney being an uber-rich snob who likes to fire people and doesn't care about those who aren't rich had already received some traction adter many hits. To hear and watch him say a lot to reinforce that branding could have a lot of traction. With only seven weeks left in the election, not only could this create a wedge that is tough to overcome, but there is very little about Mitt Romney that helps him overcome a public opinion that he really doesn't understand or care about people who don't make a lot of money.

The numerical cry of this election had been 99% vs 1%, but the actual Tipping Point of this election may have actually been close to the midpoint - 47%.