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BOCA RATON, Fla. — The two presidential campaigns are sounding sharply different notes about how they can get to 270 electoral votes, but beneath the post-debate bravado from both sides there is a rough consensus about the shape of the race in its final two weeks. Top strategists for both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney flooded the media center following the third and final presidential debate here Monday night, and made clear they will be primarily fighting over seven states and will spend most of their time and money in them between now and Nov. 6. The main battlegrounds: Ohio,...

The press will soon stop the charade of referring to North Carolina as a Battleground as we’re seeing it already disappear from the lexicon. The Associated Press’ Kasie Hunt gets the scoop on where those resources are likely heading: [T]he GOP presidential nominee’s advisers and the Republican National Committee are looking to give Romney more routes to reaching the 270 Electoral College votes needed for victory. They are weighing whether to shift resources from North Carolina, where Republicans express confidence of winning, into states long considered safe territory for President Barack Obama, including Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Like we blogged...

Granted it is rough English to understand, as it is machine translation from the mainstream, non-Chavez "El Universal" newspaper in Caracas, Venezuela today, but it gives the street level tactics the Socialist Community Organizers used in Venezuela to eek out a victory for Communist Hugo Chavez earlier this week. It is provided below in its entirety, with the link to the original Spanish.Of specific interest will be the tactical description of the "double wave" Chavez PSUV strategy on Election Day in polling zones they identified as somewhat sympathetic to the anti-Chavez democratic forces. Pay close attention because these tactics...

Apologies for the VANITY, but wanted a thread to pass along advice. I am in a total GOP state/district...it literally does not matter if I go vote because Romney will win, and all state races will go as they go. SO for those in this situation (or the reverse for that matter..like Cali or New York), other than give money or drive and volunteer...what can we DO. Any ideas for those of us bound to jobs and way outside of a competitive state? This is a call to get creative. I'm not sure trolling message boards and blogs really does...

The presidential race is tight enough nationally that a strong performance in Wednesday’s debate by Mitt Romney could put him in the lead. A new POLITICO/George Washington University Battleground Poll of likely voters shows President Barack Obama ahead 49 percent to 47 percent, a point closer than a week ago and still within the margin of error. Romney now leads by 4 points among independents, up slightly from a week ago. The Republican must overperform with that group to make up for the near monolithic support of African-Americans for Obama, as well as the huge Democratic advantage among Latinos and...

Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition has now begun dropping their presidential voter guide into key battleground states. It has just posted to their site and you can check it out here: They are sending this out to roughly 17 million socially conservatives that they have identified in their extensive voter file. It is being delivered by mail, email, text message, to churches and door-to-door. When people receive the voting guide in the mail, they can scan the barcode into their smart phone where a video begins to play that sums up the candidates positions on the issues.

You know what they say, never send in Joe to do a president’s job. But that’s what President Obama appears to be doing in battleground Badger State, sending his vice president, Joe Biden, to campaign in his stead. Biden stumped at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire on Thursday, a week and a half after he spoke to Democratic Party faithful in Green Bay. That’s exactly two more times than his boss, who has yet to set foot in Wisconsin on the campaign trail. President Obama has been conspicuously absent from the campaign trail in battleground Wisconsin. Sure, he stopped by...

With two months to Election Day, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney faces the disconcerting reality that he isn't winning most of the states he would need to beat President Barack Obama. Mr. Obama is leading Mr. Romney by small margins in seven of the eight battleground states, all but North Carolina, according to averages of public polls compiled by RealClearPolitics. All are within the margins of error. "Our problem in our country is not that we're not paying enough taxes," Mr. Romney said. "It's that we're spending too much money and the economy is not growing as it could and...

According to the Washington Examiner, President Obama ventured to Texas in search of more campaign cash. However, while addressing a crowd of donors, Obama actually suggested that the Lone Star State would become a battleground state "soon." On the surface, this seems like a mad thing to say. Texas is about as deep red a state as there is in the union, with all statewide offices and both houses of the legislature in the hands of the Republicans. The last time a Democrat carried Texas, Jimmy Carter was running for president in 1976

GOP money floods battlegrounds, threatens Dems' hold on SenateBy Alexander Bolton - 05/01/12 05:00 AM ET Third-party groups allied with the Republican Party have vastly outspent Democratic incumbents and their backers in Senate battlegrounds. The disparity in advertising firepower threatens Democratic control of the Senate and could have an impact on the presidential race as well. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a first-term Democrat from Ohio, has been the primary target of outside groups, which have outspent his allies by a ratio of 10-1 this election cycle. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Crossroads GPS and 60Plus Association have funded the bulk of...

If requiring Catholic universities and hospitals to cover contraception for employees ends up hurting President Obama with Catholic voters, then Wisconsin is one place to keep an eye on. That’s because it’s one of the most Catholic of the presidential swing states. Among this year’s likely electoral battlegrounds, only New Hampshire (38%) and New Mexico (36%) had a higher percentage of Catholic voters than Wisconsin (33%) in 2008, according to exit polls: An Administration decision not to exempt religious employers from a mandate to cover contraception has sparked an outcry among church officials and leading Republicans. (Churches are exempt from...

After the midterm elections, Democrats argued that the Tea Party-inspired turnout was a fluke, and that grassroots voters would start turning on Republicans as soon as they had a share in responsibility for governance. According to the latest Democracy Corps survey of battleground Congressional districts, neither are true, at least not yet. Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg surveyed voters in 60 Republican-held purple districts and found that voters are even more sour on Democrats than in 2010: One of the Democratic party’s leading pollsters released a survey of 60 Republican-held battleground districts today painting an ominous picture for Congressional Democrats in...

National polls put Barack Obama in the mid-40s and slightly underwater, which could indicate trouble for him in 2012 — if the Presidency was won on a national popular vote. (Ask Al Gore how that works out.) National Journal took a look at polling in battleground states and sees a much bigger problem than national polls indicate: In every reputable battleground state poll conducted over the past month, Obama’s support is weak. In most of them, he trails Republican front-runner Mitt Romney. For all the talk of a closely fought 2012 election, if Obama can’t turn around his fortunes in...

Get ready for another huge presidential battle in Florida. Despite the drubbing Democrats took in 2010, nobody is underestimating Barack Obama's ability to take the state that Republicans need to capture the White House — or the difficulty he'll have winning it again. "Florida is always in play. Neither party can take Florida for granted, but Marco Rubio proved that our voters tend to be center-right and antideficit spending voters,'' said Republican strategist Sally Bradshaw, a top adviser to Mitt Romney in 2008 and now an adviser to expected candidate Haley Barbour. "Obama's going to have to roll up his...

Clinging to their compliments regarding former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R) healthcare law, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman’s (R) fine work as ambassador to China and the prospect that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) will somehow be nominated by the GOP, Team Obama has begun to accept that the audacity of hoping for an anemic Republican field won’t get President Obama reelected in 2012. As the Republican race begins in earnest, and Obama kicks off his own reelection campaign, it is increasingly clear that the path to an Obama victory is anything but clear. Stubborn joblessness, soaring gas prices,...

The current AP/Roper poll indicates most of us are “moderates”, but that’s not true. The sample – and how you ask the question – is very important. AP/Roper consistently shows one-third of the population describes themselves as moderate, while the George Washington University Battleground Poll consistently shows almost two-thirds of registered likely voters are somewhat or very conservative. Only 2 percent describe themselves as moderate in the Battleground Poll. How can the discrepancy be explained?

Voters, by a 9-point margin, believe Republicans will pick up both the House and the Senate, even though they are evenly divided over whom they intend to back in six weeks, according to a new POLITICO/George Washington University Battleground Poll. In a generic matchup between the two parties, those surveyed were split 43-43 when asked if they would back a Republican or a Democrat on Election Day. This is good news for Democrats and at odds with many other public polls, which have shown Republicans holding a single-digit edge. Continue Reading Text Size * - * + * reset Listen...

Good news for conservatives in the latest Battleground Poll. The political implications are profound, if the already-energized conservative base takes even more initiative. In August 2008, I wrote an article on "The Biggest Missing Story in Politics." The article explains that conservatives are an overwhelming majority of America. One year later, I wrote an update on that theme, this time based on the Gallup Poll, which showed that conservatives outnumber liberals in virtually every state of the union. I have been writing about the remarkable Battleground Poll results in many articles for many years. The Battleground Poll reveals the internals...

(11-04) 16:30 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- Republican presidential candidate John McCain grabbed early leads over Democrat Barack Obama in the battleground states of Virginia, Florida and Indiana as the first votes came in this evening. McCain had leads of 54 to 46 percent in Florida and 53 to 47 percent in Virginia, both with less than 2 percent of precincts reporting. In Indiana, McCain's lead was 50 to 49 percent, with 10 percent reporting.