Gingrich on the Benghazi email trail [Newt says Romney wins w/ 300+ EVs and Reps take Senate]

Thanks, LS.

Curiously, what do you make of this blog article by Michael McDonald (sorry for HuffPo link, it's only place I could find it). Obviously the same dude who runs the Early Voting site that spreadsheet's data is from, and he seems to disagree quite sharply with predictions of Romney running away with OH:

Ohio is where Republicans are spinning the most, and unfortunately some reporters are buying it. Take CNN, which headlines "Republicans point to early vote gains in Ohio."

The primary source for this story is the Romney campaign, which is promoting party registration statistics to back up their claims. Only at the bottom of the story, does CNN's Peter Hamby write that Ohio does not have party registration. "Party" in Ohio is a record of the last party primary an individual voted in. Worse, Peter Hamby reports this as a he-said-she-said story, noting that it is the Obama campaign who points out Ohio does not have party registration, something he could have easily discovered on his own.

…

As of Thursday's report, there are 124,967 Cuyahoga registered voters who most recently participated in a Republican primary, or 13 percent of all registered voters. There are 17,133 such persons who have voted, or 21 percent of all voters. So far the story is mostly true; perhaps it is based on an earlier Cuyahoga report.

But what about the voters who last participated in a Democratic primary? They are 343,392 of all registered voters, or 37 percent. 49,720 of these folks have voted, or 60 percent. Comparably, a larger percentage of "Democrats" have voted early in Cuyahoga than Republicans, compared to their base registration statistics.

…

Before we draw that conclusion, let's understand what is really going on here. 2.4 million Ohioans voted in the 2008 Democratic primary, compared to 0.5 million in the Republican primary. Over the course of four years, some of these people were purged from the voter rolls. In 2012, 1.1 million Ohioans voted in the Democratic primary, and 1.2 million voted in the Republican primary. I suspect that there were a good number of Democrats who crossed over and voted in the Republican primary just because it was the more interesting race from the presidential perspective. In Ohio, all of these folks are now labeled Republicans. "Party" is so hopelessly confounded in Ohio that it is next to meaningless to divine who is ahead.

The Cuyahoga numbers do reveal something about early voters. They are highly participatory people who tend to vote in primaries. There are 458,193, or 49 percent, Cuyahoga registered voters who have no record of voting in any primary. Only 15,835 have voted so far, or 19 percent. Let me put this another way, people who vote the earliest are people who just generally vote.

Based on what McDonald is saying here, I'm not so sure there's much chance of OH not going to Obama basically by default. Esp. when you've got 1.1mil Ds who voted in their meaningless 2012 primary, compared to ~1.2mil Rs (with some probable turncoats) who voted in their vitally important 2012 primary that should've had more of the base fired up. And considering OH only tabulates "Party" by "last primary voted in", this implies there's likely scores of D voters unaccounted for.

If he wins all the 2004 Bush states except NM (5) and OH (18), then it’s a 269-269 tie. That includes Romney winning NV (6) and IA (6).

To break the tie he’s got to flip one of these 2004 blue states.

PA (20)
MI (16)
WI (10)
NH (4)
ME (at least 1 EV)

I continue to think NV is the most vitally important state for Romney to win. WI seems like the next one to go for, because it can make up for losing IA and break the tie that results from losing OH.

The fact that Romney is campaigning at all in ME tells me that he thinks he might lose OH. There’s no other reason to go for that 1 EV unless it’s needed as a tiebreaker, and the tie can only happen mathematically given the current swing states if OH is lost.

Yikes… this is uncomfortably close if Romney’s up there scrambling around in ME for that +1 EV.

Glad to see Newt is welcome back on Fox:) I am on a pro Newt fb site and they are all supporting Romney now too.
Pray Newt is right! nothing scarier than 4 more years of Obommie the Commie.

I’m almost certain Obama’s camp has been anticipating a 2004-style election. All Kerry had to do was to peel off Ohio in 2004 to win. Hence Obama’s early and intense focus on that state.

Because of census shifts in electoral votes though, that wouldn’t put Obama over the top this time. He needs New Mexico, which he’ll almost certainly get, to tie it, and one other Bush state to win it. That one other state could be Iowa or Nevada.

The Gallup demographic polling posted today shows that party identification is almost the same as it was in 2004, way different from the Dem advantage in 2008, but with Repubs 3 points ahead of where they were in 2004. That’s a little cushion for Romney if true, but not enough to rely on.

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