Tea Party tide still rolling?

Washington Times:

The tidal wave of anti-debt, anti-big-government voters that swamped Democrats in the 2010 congressional elections is readying itself again, poised to sweep Mitt Romney into the Oval Office, some political observers say.

“It’s very, very likely,” veteran Republican campaign pollster John McLaughlin said, predicting a Romney tsunami Tuesday.

“Romney has surged in all the target states,” Mr. McLaughlin said. “The undecided vote is not really undecided. They overwhelmingly disapprove of the job the president has done and will largely vote against the incumbent. It’s a hidden vote that will vote against the president.”

His prediction flies in the face of most polling, which shows a tight national race between Mr. Romney and President Obama, and state polls that show Mr. Obama leading in most battlegrounds. The only poll that shows Mr. Romney clearly winning is the respected Gallup national tracking poll of likely voters, which gives the Republican nominee a 5 percentage-point advantage.

Gallup also correctly predicted the 2010 wave that powered the GOP to capture more than five dozen seats in the House — based in large part on a swell of intensity for Republicans.

Just ahead of Election Day that year, Gallup predicted: “The 2010 elections could be historic from the standpoint of producing unusually large Republican gains in Congress. But the elections are already historic for a midterm election in the levels of enthusiasm Americans, and particularly, Republicans, have for voting this year.”

Mr. McLaughlin, the GOP pollster, said he sees that same enthusiasm for Republicans boiling beneath pollsters’ sights this year — and so do some leaders of the tea party, which harnessed voters’ resentment against spending and government expansion.

“Not only is the coming wave taking place at the federal level, but the untold story is taking place at the state and local level, which will have massive political implications for decades to come,” said National Tea Party Patriots co-founder and former national coordinator Mark Meckler, who is predicting a Romney win by 6 percentage points. “That wave is already in motion and cannot be reversed.”

Toby Marie Walker, a tea party coordinator in Waco, Texas, said she sees the same momentum, which she said will deliver more Senate seats to the GOP than pollsters suggest, and will give Mr. Romney 54 percent of the national vote.
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I think this election is a lot closer to the 2010 model than the 2008 model that many of the pollsters have been using.  Gallup and Rasmussen have the party ID pretty close to where it was then and their polls seem to be showing Romney winning.  Even teh pollsters going with the old model are not able to cook the books enough to give Obama 50 percent or more of the votes.