Dawn breaks

A year late, of course:

For Mitt Romney, the 2012 election was held about a year too early.

Romney would hold a slight lead on President Obama if the 2012 election were replayed today, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The poll of registered voters shows Romney at 49 percent and Obama at 45 percent in the rematch, a mirror image of Romney’s four-point (51-47) popular-vote loss in 2012.

And it's across the board, apparently:

* Obama won women in 2012 by 11 points, according to exit polls; today he leads by one point.
* He has seen his lead among young voters (18-39 years old) drop from 18 percent to 2 percent.
* His four-point lead among those with less than a college degree has flipped to a nine-point deficit.
* Among those making less than $50,000, Obama’s 22-point lead is now three points.
* The biggest drop is among those professing to have no religion. While this group backed Obama by 44 points, it now supports him by a 22-point margin.
* Among liberals, Obama won by 75 points but now leads by 59 percent. One in five self-described liberals (20 percent) say they would vote for Romney.

You can chalk some of these changes up to the growing realization that maybe, just maybe, some of the free gubmint healthcare cheese isn't going to be free after all. The interesting one is the group professing to have no religion. It's by definition anecdotal, but it's always seemed to me that people who have "no religion" aren't people without faith; rather, they put their faith in something else and that often the something else is a charismatic politician promising free gubmint healthcare cheese.

The next three years are going to be some kind of ugly.