Romney Leads Obama in Nevada, Based on Recent Dane & Associates Poll

LAS VEGAS, Oct. 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- With the election less than one month away, Mitt Romney leads by 3 points over President Obama in the key battleground state of Nevada.  Just prior to the debate in Colorado both candidates increased their presence in Nevada.  Mitt Romney opened offices in Hispanic areas of Las Vegas while President Obama personally delivered pizza to his volunteers. 

Obama is now suffering the fallout of last week's debate, which is demonstrated in a recent poll conducted by Dane & Associates.  Just a week ago, this race was a dead heat, but now after the debate, Romney has moved to 49% to Obama's 46%.  "It looks like the voters are making up their minds here in Nevada," says Tony Dane president of Dane & Associates.  "Only 3 percent are undecided and 2% are voting for 3^rd party candidates."

In the race for Nevada Senator, incumbent Dean Heller is pulling away from challenger Shelly Berkley.  Dean Heller was appointed to this position after the resignation of Senator John Ensign, and is facing voters for the first time in this position.  Heller, a former congressman from Nevada's 2^nd congressional district, has in the past run statewide as Nevada's long time Secretary of State.  Shelly Berkley is the current congresswoman for Nevada's 1^st congressional district.  Berkley's district which has voter registration of 60% democrat has never run statewide. In a new Dane & Associates opinion survey Dean Heller leads Shelly Berkley by 6 points, garnishing 47% of the vote, while Berkley is trailing with 41%.  Independent American Candidate David VanderBeek musters 5% with 7% of the voters still undecided.

** This poll has a 3%+- margin of error

Dane & Associates Methodology

Dane & Associates uses automated polling methodology, similar to that of Rasmussen Reports.  Since 1997 Dane & Associates have been conducting internal polls for candidates of all levels with a very high accuracy rate.         

The benefits of using automated technology for polling over the traditional live caller method are several.  With automated technology you have a single voice trained to show no bias toward a candidate, while live call centers use people that do all types of calls and may have a political bias in their voice that can affect results.  Our technology is easy to use and non-intrusive so the person taking the survey can answer all questions without influence.

We start out with data that is a random selection of voters who represent the district based on party, age, geographic area, gender and other demographic information that is known to us.  Once the survey is completed the data is downloaded to our proprietary software that tabulates and weighs the information insuring that the end result represents the registered voter universe.

SOURCE Dane & Associates