Obama and Romney are both playing on mostly BLUE state turf. Romney is running the sort of campaign winning camps run, optimistic, hopeful, bland. Obama is running the sort of campaign losers run, nasty, desperate and shrill.
Obama is running around joined at the hip with Bill Clinton trying desperately to fire up the traditional Democrat blue collar vote. Obama is doing nothing to reach towards the middle. Romney is out there acting Presidential and reaching out to moderate and “leans Democrat” voters.
Obama is not acting like a candidate whose internal polling is showing him winning.
Obama’s has been attacking the Tea Party for two days. Trying to fire up his base instead of reaching out to independents. Tells me he knows he’s in trouble.
At this point we will just wait for the results. I think Obama is going to win a close race. I had hoped to see some momentum in polling the Governor's way to persuade me that the fundamentals of the race had changed in his direction, unfortunately I'm just not seeing it. In fact, it looks to me like the movement ended up being Obama's way. I suspect hurricane Sandy stopped Romney's momentum.
Now I do agree Republicans are pretty fired up and will turn out in significant numbers, but I also think the Democratic turnout operation is immense and that they will also turn out enough of their dependent, minority voters to match and exceed ours.
This race appears to be roughly a 51 O 49 R contest. Going out on a limb and predicting a precise result I'd say it will be Obama 50 - Romney 49 - Other 1. Obama will win Ohio narrowly and that will put him over the top.
I've seen lots of races likes this with everyone predicting the polls are wrong and, unfortunately, the consensus of the polls is rarely wrong. I also think the country has simply changed demographically so much that it is becoming more and more difficult for conservatives/Republicans to win in states like Nevada, Colorado, Virginia, etc. In another generation we might even struggle to hold Arizona and Texas. I could be wrong of course, but I think we are on a glidepath to Greece. Saying that, Romney ran a very good campaign and did about as good as any candidate could do under the circumstances.