Posted on 10/20/2012 1:34:49 PM PDT by Red Steel
Anxious to find the right combination of states to win the Electoral College, Mitt Romney’s campaign pushed Saturday into battlegrounds it had largely avoided.
The Republicans forged into the swing states of Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, which the GOP had previously appeared resigned to ceding to President Obama.
Paul Ryan, Romney’s running mate, ripped Obama’s energy policy to a crowd at the Pittsburgh International Airport.
"Gas prices are more than double what they were four years ago - who knows what they're going to be if he got four more years," Ryan said. "Not only are these policies wrong, they...cost us jobs.”
The GOP also bought ad time on Boston television stations, which broadcast into the state directly north.
Though New Hampshire only awards four electoral votes, its importance is magnified if Romney can’t win Ohio. A loss in the Buckeye State, where Obama holds a slight lead over Romney, would mean the Republican would need to almost sweep the remaining swing states.
Obama is making his own push into those battlegrounds, announcing that he will launch a two-day, “around the clock campaign blitz” across six states starting Tuesday.
Air Force One will cover thousands of miles as the President holds events in Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, Florida, Virginia and Ohio - and makes a stop in Chicago to cast his own ballot early.
Both Obama and Romney remained holed up Saturday preparing for their last debate, to be held Monday on foreign policy.
They will square off in Florida, where Vice President Biden rallied supporters Saturday.
“With you, we can take Florida,” Biden said in St. Augustine. “If we take Florida, this election is over."
Biden also again touted his campaign’s new rallying cry - that Romney changes positions so much that he must suffer from chronic “Romnesia.”
The polls are moving in Romney’s favor in Ohio. It is not won, but he can win it. It has been steadily going in his direction. Most have it in the margin of error or tied. Very winnable.
I don't know anyone, including the usually unreliable pollsters, who think Obama is still alive in FL, NC, or even VA.
Just what Ryan was doing today. Pittsburgh Intl. Airpot is only 30 miles from the Ohio state line. Ryan flew in the Pittsburgh, did a rally at the airport then drove off into SE Ohio coal-country for more apparences.
The absentee ballot requests are good data. So is the trend of party registration in states that register by party. So are the “exit polls” (given that we have early voting, an increasing proportion of the polls we have are exit polls). But, so are polls that actually are polls of voting preference.
In 2004, Ohio had a 5 point Republican advantage and, in 2008, an 8 point Democratic advantage. This was a huge swing. Then, from 2008 to the mid-term elections of 2010, another huge swing, 9 points.
Also, looking at Gallup’s tracking of party affiliation among adults (or possibly registered voters), from 2009 to 2011, a similar 9 point swing.
So, there is the potential for a huge swing in the partisan mix from 2008 to 2012. This year, who knows, I’m thinking a 1 point Democratic advantage is conservative (from a pro-Romney view).
Another way to look at this is the demographics of voters as revealed by the post-election Current Population Survey. The big shift in 2008 was due (A) to blacks and (B) to younger adults. Possibly black turnout will remain at its elevated level of 2008, but it is not credible that young adult turnout will. This argues that the demographics of this election will be something between those of 2004 and 2008, which would support the argument that the partisan mix will also be something between.
Now, let’s look at the recent polls in Ohio. Four recent telephone polls (not including Rasmussen) and two recent internet polls involve Democratic partisan advantages ranging from 4 to 9 points. That does not look right. What I suspect is going on is that the pollsters are either imposing the partisan mix of the 2008 election, and/or the demographic mix of the 2008 election onto the responses, by weighting the responses.
Now I’ll look at Raz. He imposes a moving average partisan mix. This is fine for the country (although it temporarily stifles a shift in voter preferences that coincides with a shift in party affiliation, which, I believe, explains the current cleavage between Rasmussen’s and Gallup’s nationwide numbers).
What Raz does at the state level is adjust the state spread by the changes in the national spread. But the national spread has been changing slow relative to the changes in the spread in Ohio during the past four years. So, I think Raz’ methodology results in him being off by a couple points in Ohio.
When I adjust the polls to reflect a 1 point Democratic advantage in Ohio, I get Romney up by 2 points. This still makes the state a toss-up. But, there is reason to be optimistic.
One final point. The foray into Pennsylvania is not merely a feint. At this point, it might not be possible for the other side to gear up a GOTV effort. If Romney is within 2 points in this state, and if he is flush with cash and Obama is strapped, Romney can steal this state (and a couple others) during the week prior to the election.
“they do that when they have territory locked up and want to try for more.”
Right On! I’m gonna know the election is wrapped up when I see Romney campaigning in California.
You are really onto something here, and I saw an article BUT CAN'T FIND IT NOW, SO HELP IF YOU CAN!! :), that was something like "Obama wins OH if 400,000 white people don't vote." The gist was that all the polls are not JUST oversampling Ds, but heavily oversampling blacks and hispanics. They are likewise undersampling whites, but especially white Rs.
I've Googled, looked on FR, Big Government but can't find it. If anyone can help, I'd appreciate it.
PA Ping!
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If you see posts of interest to Pennsylvanians, please ping me.
Thanks!
Pretty amazing, huh?
I took a 200 mile trip today starting in Pittsburgh. I only saw one obama sign the whole way and not one car on the road had obama bumper stickers on it. 4 years ago, almost half of the vehicles on the road had that nasty stain on their bumpers and yard signs were as frequent as mailboxes. Looks very promising to me. Paul Ryan stopped at the airport today for a speech and there were 20 democrat protesters, 1000 RR fans.
I believe they’re doing this because they’ve done the same electoral college analysis I have. If Romney wins FL, VA and CO, but lose OH, he needs one of the below combinations of swing states to make up for OH...
1. PA or MI
2. NV, IA and NH
3. NV, IA and 1 EV from Maine
4. WI and any one of the above states
PA looks so desirable as an easy substitute for OH, but McCain/Palin tried extremely hard for it and failed miserably. I think they should focus heavily on NV, IA, NH and WI. That gives them 2 paths to victory.
I meant the Ohio Gallup poll, if there is one.
What road(s)?
Seems like Romney hasn’t been in NV much. Or NH for that matter.
Up route 79 to Greenville and back. Funny thing is the person who I had to meet was the one with the zero sign in his yard.
I had my empty chair in the back of my truck as well as several anti-obama stickers and got no ugly looks. In ‘08 there were as many zero yard signs as mailboxes in my neighborhood and now almost none. I live in the thick of liberal Pittsburgh and things have definitely changed (for the better).
Living just outside State College -- Leftwing Central -- 0bama yard signs are just about nonexistent (they were everywhere last time) and bumper stickers are quite rare.
(That'd be *you*, lasereye.)
You wrote
No they're not going for a mandate. That's delusional. They may need to carry PA because OH is iffy.
But you wrote in this thread:
There hasn’t been a Presidential election with R+1. Bush’s wins were with a small Democrat edge in party ID. I don’t see why it should be R+1 any more than it should be D+9.
The answer is that the Obaama wave election of 2008 was D+8; and in order for things to be D+9, there must be an even GREATER surge of enthusiasm for Teh One than there was in 2008.
And even at D+9, Romney leads by 1.
But a D+9 is absolutely, provably, UTTERLY false.
In Ohio, actual early results by party show a 7-point shift in *early ballots* in favor of the GOP. (McCain won the "election day" voting in Ohio, but was so far behind from early balloting that it was out of reach).
Here are the details.
Another clue can be seen by the recent activity by both campaigns: they have access to internal polls which had *better* be accurate -- if they are not, and the candidate loses because of it, the pollster goes out of business.
Obama is pulling out of Florida and North Carolina, and begins campaigning in the all-important bellwether state of ...New Hampshire?
Romney pulls resources from other states and *begins* campaigning in PA (with rumors of Michigan to come) -- both of which had been called as "safe Obaama" by all the pundits.
Romney and Ryan regularly pull crowds of 8,000-10,000 (similar to Palin) whereas according to the known Koch-brothers-puppet-organization Rolling Stone, all this year Obaama has been touring with Rock Stars -- note how when he didn't, even though it was the Democrat National Convention, attendance collapsed to the point that they had to relocate the venue.
Not to mention the "turning the crowd of 18,000 to 5,000" fiasco in Milwaukee.
And you have newspapers such as the Orlando Sentinel and The Tennessean endorsing Romney.
The Washington Post (itself nefariously funded in secret by Jerry Falwell, right?) even reports on a DNC funding shortfall.
And log into any thread you like. FReeper after FReeper reports -- eyewitness reports -- of a preponderance of Romney signs and a lack of Obaama signs, even in prior Obaama strongholds:
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
and read this.
Oh, yes, do recall a convicted felon getting 43% of the Dem primary vote against Obama in West Virginia earlier this year?
And then there's the little matter of this. Winners, *especially* incumbents, don't have to do this kind of thing.
I think I'll keep this post handy in case you decide to resume defeatist trolling.
Cheers!
Guys, ol lasereye can be as skeptical as he wants. All any of us can do is post the data and encourage others to interpret. Merely carping without going to the absentee data doesn’t accomplish much. Now, if someone can honestly look at those numbers and still conclude Romney’s losing? Don’t know what to say. But I’m not telling anyone what to read into it-—go look for yourself.
I’ve been posting articles here for a long time and anyone who sees what I’ve posted and thinks I’m a troll is stupid.
All I said is Ohio is iffy. If that makes me a troll then so be it, I’m a troll. What do you want me to say, it’s all locked up for Romney? Okay it’s all locked up for Romney. Feel better?
By all means keep this post handy.
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