Barackface: Ohio

Showing posts with label Ohio. Show all posts

Thursday, November 01, 2012

Romney Can Have North Carolina

English: Cartogram of the 2008 Electoral Vote for US President, with each square representing one electoral vote. Nebraska, being one of two states that are not winner-take-all, for the first time had its votes split, with NE-2 voting for Obama and the rest of the state for McCain. Cartogram-2008_Electoral_Vote-es.svg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But the rest of the swing states are leaning Obama.

What State Polls Suggest About the National Popular Vote

pretty much every method for evaluating the election based on state polls seems to hint at a very slight popular vote lead for Mr. Obama, along with an Electoral College one...... Obama leads nationally by 1.9 percentage points — by no means a safe advantage, but still a better result for him than what the national polls suggest. ...... Obama would lead by two percentage points in the consensus forecast weighing the states by their 2004 turnout. ...... Or we can weigh the states by their turnout in 2010, a very good Republican year. But that doesn’t help, either: instead, Mr. Obama leads by 2.1 percentage points based on this method. ..... Obama’s lead in the Electoral College is modest, but also quite consistent across the different methods. The states in which every site has Mr. Obama leading make up 271 electoral votes — one more than the president needs to clinch victory. The states in which everyone has Mr. Romney ahead represent 206 electoral votes. ..... In recent elections — since state polling data became more robust — it’s the state polls that have done a bit better. This was especially so in 1996, when national polls implied a double-digit victory for Bill Clinton over Bob Dole (and Ross Perot) but state polls were more in line with the single-digit victory that he actually achieved. In 2000, state polls provided an accurate portrayal of a too-close-to-call race, while national polls missed high on George W. Bush vs. Al Gore. ...... the historical evidence weighs in slightly more heavily on behalf of the state polls, in my view, when they seem to contradict the national ones. If the state polls are right, than Mr. Obama is not just the favorite in the Electoral College but probably also in the popular vote. ..... Obama made gains in the FiveThirtyEight forecast on Tuesday, with his chances of winning the Electoral College increasing to 77.4 percent. ...... A fair amount of this boils down to Ohio, where three polls released on Tuesday gave Mr. Obama leads by margins ranging from three to five percentage points. ..... the poll by Quinnipiac University for The New York Times and CBS News, which had Mr. Obama five points ahead in Ohio ..... Mr. Obama had a somewhat above-average day in national polls on Tuesday, which had him up in the race by about one percentage point on average. Part of this is because the Gallup poll, which has shown very poor results for Mr. Obama, did not publish results on account of Hurricane Sandy. .......... the poll from Google Consumer Surveys. (Yes, Google has begin to conduct surveys online.) That poll had Mr. Obama ahead by four percentage points ...... The Google survey could be an indication that the effects of the hurricane will play somewhat to Mr. Obama’s political advantage.

In Swing States, a Predictable Election?

the polling in most swing states now looks very similar to the way it did for much of the late spring and summer. ....... our projected leader in all 50 states is the same as it was at our launch of the forecast in June. ..... In June, Mr. Obama was projected to a 3-point lead in Nevada, a 2.3-point lead in Iowa, a 1.3-point lead in Virginia, a 1.1-point lead in Ohio and a 1-point lead in Colorado. The forecast in those states has moved just four-tenths of a point since then, on average; the largest shift has been in Ohio, where Mr. Obama’s polling has been reasonably resilient and he now has a 2.2-point edge. ...... New York is one exception; polls there have shown an especially large lead for Mr. Obama ..... Of the remaining gains that Mr. Romney has made in national polls, much of it may have come from his improved performance in deeply red states; that is where our state-by-state forecasts show his numbers improving the most. ....... this race has been fairly stable relative to most presidential elections. ...... the results we’re now seeing are quite consistent with what the economic fundamentals might dictate: a very tight race, narrowly favoring Mr. Obama. ..... our forecast in every state on Nov. 6 will be the same as it was on June 7. Colorado, Virginia and Florida, being the closest states in the forecast now ..... a mild recovery for Mr. Obama over the past week or so in the polls. ..... Obama’s predicted probability of winning the Electoral College has improved as a result (to 74.6 percent as of Sunday).

In Polls, Romney’s Momentum Seems to Have Stopped

On average, Mr. Obama gained about one point between the eight polls. ..... This is the closest that we’ve come in a week or so to one candidate clearly having “won” the day in the tracking polls — and it was Mr. Obama. ..... Our “now-cast” also finds a slightly favorable trend for Mr. Obama over the course of the past 10 days or so. Mr. Romney’s position peaked in the “now-cast” on Friday, Oct. 12, at which point it estimated a virtual tie in the popular vote (Mr. Obama was the projected “winner” by 0.3 percentage points). As of Wednesday, however, Mr. Obama was 1.4 percentage points ahead in the “now-cast,” meaning that he may have regained about 1 percentage point of the 4 points or so that he lost after Denver. ....... Since the Denver debate, Mr. Obama has held the lead in 16 Ohio polls against 6 for Mr. Romney. In Nevada, Mr. Obama has had the lead in 11 polls, to Mr. Romney’s 1. Mr. Obama has led in all polls of Wisconsin since the Denver debate, and he has had five poll leads in Iowa to one for Mr. Romney.

Obama Wave

It is not a tie after all. Looking like a Barack Obama sweep by now.

The wave for Obama

As he tours Sandy devastation with Chris Christie, swing state polls break for the president ..... With reliable polls in Ohio and Wisconsin Wednesday showing Obama with solid leads there, Romney has almost no path to victory on Tuesday. Polls today also showed him holding smaller leads in the swing states of Virginia, Florida and Nevada, and tied in North Carolina. .... White working class voters in both Ohio and Wisconsin are key to Obama’s strength there ..... Romney was going to focus on “cultural” issues – read racial issues – to court those white voters. Romney and Paul Ryan stepped away from the welfare lies after everyone from Bill Clinton to Newt Gingrich said there was no evidence for the claim. But there it is again, in ads going up in Ohio, Wisconsin, Colorado and Florida, as Romney tries to tap into traditional white taxpayer association between welfare and minorities. ...... Romney’s lies about the auto industry are arguably more brazen and baseless, and they’ve drawn unprecedented rebukes from officials at GM and Chrysler. But so far they’re not working either. Even as worried Ohio Chrysler employees sought reassurance that they’d keep their jobs, polls were showing that Ohio voters believe Obama cares more about them than Romney does. Almost half of white working class voters believe the economy is getting better, which helps account for why Obama is tied among those voters while he trails by up to 30 points with the same demographic in Florida and Virginia ...... the Obama team is sounding confident while Romney’s sounds desperate. ..... The criticism by Christie, Chrysler and GM is a welcome sign that Republicans and corporate leaders may learn to cooperate with the president so many of their colleagues disrespect and deride. It also tells me something else: those three titans think Romney is likely to lose, and they don’t need to pay him any deference or worry about working with him in January.

Ohio Is Solid Obama

Mitt Romney's entire gameplan of crossing 270 electoral votes goes through Ohio. And Ohio is solid Obama. I suggest Mitt Romney expand his litany of lies instead of "expanding" into deep blue states. Maybe maybe it will work. But then when you cry wolf just one more time ... you can't fool all the people all the time.

That first Obama debate performance? The poor guy was flummoxed by Mitt Romney's blatant lies. When it is night time Mitt Romney says it is day time. How do you react? You get flummoxed. You are in disbelief. There is a live audience of tens of millions.

Fundamental Dishonesty

Karl Rove is lying too. It is contagious.

These Numbers Are Incredibly Deflating For Mitt Romney's Chances In Ohio

Mitt Romney's need to "expand the map" is looking increasingly important this morning, as a new CBS/New York Times/Quinnipiac poll paints a picture that has the Republican nominee's chances there slipping away with less than a week until the election...... Romney trails President Barack Obama overall, 50-45, in the poll, continuing the president's stubborn advantage in the swing state. The set of CBS/NYT/Quinnipiac swing-state polls also finds Obama leading by 2 points in Virginia and by a single point in Florida. Though the numbers in the other two swing states have dropped in the past month, the state of the race in Ohio looks exactly the same........ an overwhelming majority of Ohio voters think the economy is improving....... By a 40-30 split, Ohio's voters believe the nation's economy is getting better. The state numbers show an even bigger gap — 52 percent of voters think the economy is getting better, compared with just 17 percent who say it is getting worse...... Forty-one percent of these Ohio voters who say their economy is improving believe that Obama deserves a lot of credit for it. That contributes to Obama's lead over Romney in trust on handling the economy...... Sixty percent of Ohio voters said Obama identifies with and cares about their problems. Only 44 percent said the same about Romney.

DRUDGE REPORT: 'Sex Scandal To Hit Campaign...'

Drudge, a close personal friend of Mitt Romney's campaign manager Matt Rhoades, has hyped up several exclusive news stories during the 2012 campaign cycle

Mitt Romney Has Been Telling A Huge Whopper About The Auto Industry, And His Campaign Is Finally Paying For It

Chrysler even sought to clarify this in a blog post last week: ... "Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China. It’s simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China for the world’s largest auto market. U.S. Jeep assembly lines will continue to stay in operation. A careful and unbiased reading of the Bloomberg take would have saved unnecessary fantasies and extravagant comments." ... But despite the fact that Romney's claim was demonstrably wrong, his campaign is doubling down in the new ad, which went on air this weekend in Ohio. .... "Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy, and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China," the ad says. "Mitt Romney will fight for every American job." ..... The ad appears to be a last-ditch effort to reverse Obama's key advantage in Ohio, a must-win swing state where 1 in 8 voters are employed by the auto sector. Romney, who trails by an average of 2 points in Ohio, has taken a big hit in the state for his criticism of the Obama administration's auto bailout. ...... Ken Lortz, a United Auto Workers leader in Toledo, said that Romney's ad had only upset Ohioans "who know better.” .... "We knew he wasn’t on our side when the economy and the industry was on the brink," Lortz said "But the fact that he would lie to our faces and try to deceive us is just too much."

Mitt Romney approves this message, of course he does.

Barack Obama approves this one. Take that, Mitt.

Conservatives Are Beginning To Freak Out About Chris Christie And Barack Obama

Christie really just doesn't "give a damn" about politics, as he alluded to on Tuesday.

A New Wisconsin Poll Continues A Brutal Swing State Polling Day For Mitt Romney

President Barack Obama's lead has expanded to 8 points in a new Marquette Law School poll of swing-state Wisconsin, a 7-point swing from just two weeks ago..... He trailed in three new polls of Virginia, Florida and Ohio ..... In the Marquette poll, Obama's advantage has grown to 51-43 as the campaign hits its final week. Obama's standing improved 2 points from the school's last poll, while Romney's fell a significant 5 points. The poll gives Obama a 4-point Real Clear Politics average lead in the state in polls taken over the past two weeks. ...... In another state, Obama holds a big early-voting advantage. He wins the early vote 56-36 thus far — significant, as 10 percent of the 1,243 likely voters surveyed said they had voted....... Along with the Ohio results, the Wisconsin poll presents a dim picture for Romney's path to 270 electoral votes next week. Obama's path revolves around keeping Ohio, Wisconsin and one of Iowa or Nevada in his column. And in all of those states, Obama currently holds leads in the RCP averages of the states.

Chris Christie Just Posted Dozens Of Pictures Of His Trip With Barack Obama
Obama And Chris Christie Had A Very Serious Talk While Touring Hurricane Damage [PHOTO]

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Tight (2)

English: 1860 elections in the USA results by state (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am not counting on North Carolia (sorry Lamont), but everywhere else we are competing, even in Florida we are. Obama is looking at a clear electoral college victory.

Tight
The state of play: Where we are, ten days out

Ten days before the election, the race for the presidency is essentially where the median political-science forecast issued two months ago projected it would be: a statistical dead heat in the popular vote, as measured by the latest tracking polls. ...... except for some political scientists, almost no one envisioned this state of affairs a month ago .... Obama still holding an edge in electoral-college votes, even as the national tracking polls are dead even ..... projects Mr Obama to win 332 electoral-college votes compared to 206 for Mr Romney ..... expects Mr Obama to win somewhere close to 302 electoral-college votes ...... Ohio is the main pillar in the Obama firewall. ..... Mr Romney has racked up larger polling leads in a few states. ..... “on average, 50% of the national two-party vote translates into 247 electoral-college votes” .... a great deal of uncertainty regarding the true relationship between the popular and electoral-college vote. ..... dwindling number of undecideds—now only about 5% of the electorate

Storms and elections: The politics of Hurricane Sandy

A well-handled disaster can strengthen an incumbent president .... To be brutal, a certain amount of bad weather on election day helps conservatives in every democracy. In crude terms, car-driving conservative retirees still turn out in driving rain, when bus-taking lower-income workers just back from a night shift are more likely to give rain-soaked polls a miss. ...... The very first early voters are those who cannot wait to vote: they are the partisans who could be seen queuing outside polling stations in Ohio or Florida on the first mornings of early voting, like bargain-hunters hitting the sales. ..... There are others who believe that Sandy will benefit the president, with the storm freezing the election campaign, and Mr Romney's perceived momentum, in place

G.O.P. Turns Fire on Obama Pillar, the Auto Bailout

Mr. Obama’s relatively strong standing in most polls in Ohio so far has been attributed by members of both parties to the recovery of the auto industry, which has helped the economy here outperform the national economy. ..... Romney incorrectly told a rally in Defiance, Ohio, late last week outright that Jeep was considering moving its production to China. (Jeep is discussing increasing production in China for sales within China; it is not moving jobs out of Ohio or the United States, or building cars in China for export to the United States.) ...... dispatched the investment banker who helped develop the bailout, Steven Rattner, here to discuss Jeep’s plans and the auto rescue with local news organizations. ..... The auto bailout was one of the first major moves of Mr. Obama’s presidency, and gave Mr. Romney an early chance in opposing it to prove his conservative credentials. ..... Romney wrote an Op-Ed article in the The New York Times — given the title by the newspaper “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.’’ In the piece Mr. Romney wrote that in the event of a bailout, “You can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye.” ........ Jeep began a joint manufacturing venture in China in 1984 and today makes some vehicles in Egypt and Venezuela.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Tight

8% unemployment is a lot, and that explains why the polls are so tight. But it was a Romney like figure who took that to 10%, and if it were not for Obama, that might still have been 15% or worse. And if the Republican Congress had not been so blindly obstructionist, the rate might have been down to 7% by now going on to 6. A Romney like person brought about the mess, and Romney's prescriptions over the past few years would have taken America to a Europe like mess of all austerity and no growth, no jobs. If anything, this country needs a second stimulus, this time of a trillion, with no tax cuts, all active spending, a ton of it on taking gigabit broadband to every American.

The choice 10/6

The gulf that separates the policies of the two candidates and their parties seems wider than in any election in living memory. ..... Mr Romney wants a much smaller government (except when it comes to throwing America’s weight around overseas, where he wants to boost defence spending from 3.4% of GDP to a target of 4%). To that end, he proposes to lower taxes, dramatically cut spending on everything other than the armed forces, adopt a balanced-budget amendment, repeal Mr Obama’s health-care reforms and overhaul big “entitlement” programmes such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security—the government schemes for, respectively, health-care for the elderly and the poor, and pensions. Even food stamps, the last refuge of America’s poorest, would be on the chopping block. ....... Mr Romney wants to ban gay marriage and, in almost all cases, abortion, although neither step is in the president’s power. Mr Obama is resolutely pro-choice and, after much dithering, now says he supports gay marriage. Immigration is another fault-line. ........ Mr Romney wants to make life so miserable for all those in the country without permission that they will “self-deport” ...... Romney .. promises to cow countries that have crossed America, including China, Iran, Russia and Venezuela ....... Romney .. says the causes and effects of global warming are too uncertain to justify expensive remedies. ......... Most polls have shown the two candidates within a whisker of one another for months, although Mr Obama has recently showed signs of pulling away. Americans do not often turf out sitting presidents: over the past 70 years, only three—Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George Bush senior—have been shown the door after one term. ........ it has been over 70 years since unemployment was so high at the time of an election. ..... economic discontent is shared by Americans of all stripes: young and old, rich and poor, male and female, white and minority. ...... Mr Romney, with a personal fortune of some $250m .. the wealthiest presidential candidate in generations ..... a race between limping candidates ................ Mr Romney, meanwhile, is an extremely capable businessman. As well as creating a fabulously successful private-equity company, he turned around the failing Salt Lake City winter Olympics of 2002. During his time as governor of Massachusetts he ran the state in a pragmatic manner, co-operating with the Democratic legislature to close a big budget shortfall, in part by raising revenue, and to pass the health-care reforms on which Mr Obama’s were based. ...... Almost all this advertising, needless to say, is negative...... Where previously there was hope and change, in short, there is now fear and loathing.

States of play

Polling over the past few days shows little movement in the race, with Mitt Romney enjoying a slight advantage nationwide and Barack Obama holding the edge in the electoral college. In Ohio (which is being surveyed daily) Mr Obama is maintaing a lead, as he is in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Colorado, Iowa, Florida and North Carolina (where early voting is under way in earnest) are still very tight. If the election were held today, Mr Obama would win 286 electoral-college votes to Mr Romney's 252

White working-class voters: Fed up with everyone

2008, when he became the first Democrat to carry Indiana since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 ....... working-class whites, once the majority of the electorate, accounted for just 39% of voters in 2008. ..... They favoured John McCain over Mr Obama by 18 points. This year polls show them preferring Mr Romney by even larger margins: 25 points ........ social issues are much more significant for working-class voters in the South, a majority of whom own guns and strongly object to gay marriage ...... in the manufacturing cities of the Great Lakes region, many of which have a strong union tradition that does not exist in the South, the prime concerns are far more likely to be the economic dislocation caused by automation and globalisation ....... He never holds a campaign rally without pointing out that he supported a government-funded bail-out of the car industry and Mr Romney did not. He also talks up his plans to increase taxes on the wealthy and to make it harder to ship jobs overseas ...... These arguments seem to be working for Mr Obama in Michigan and Ohio, which have lots of jobs in the car industry and where he remains ahead

The swing states: Ohio: Coal or cars?

with the election just ten days away, Ohio is too close to call. Although most polls put Barack Obama ahead, Mr Romney has closed the gap to just a point or two ..... Ohio: the unemployment rate, at 7.0%, is nearly a point below the national average ...... to cars. An estimated 850,000 Ohio jobs depend on the industry, and his rescue of GM and Chrysler has helped to save a lot of them ...... In the end Ohio will be settled not by ideology, but by the grim mechanics of voter turnout. ...... OFA Ohio now boasts 125 offices, against the 40 Romney “Victory Centres” in the state. ...... Dashboard, a whizzy app that helps volunteers meet up, place phone calls to undecided voters and watch the latest Obama videos.

The youth vote: Young, drifting but back

Young voters backed Mr Obama by such a huge margin in 2008 (66% to John McCain’s 32%) ....... The unemployment rate for 18- to 29-year-olds stands at 11.8% ..... In early October a Harvard Institute of Politics poll found 55% support for Mr Obama among under-30s, next to 36% for Mr Romney. ...... Just 28% said they preferred Mr Romney’s economic policies. ...... Almost as many under-30s describe themselves as conservative (33%) as liberal (37%). ..... In its polling throughout 2012 the Pew Centre has found that just half of young voters claim to be registered to vote; lower than at any time since 1996 ...... In 2008, she says, young voters would weep tears of frustration when told they had missed the deadline to register during the primaries. This year few paid attention until Labour Day. ..... since 2008 the story has been the inability of government to protect citizens from the ravages of recession. ....... the stronger organisation of Mr Obama’s ground campaign

Latinos and the election: Throwing votes away

72% of Latino voters plumping for Mr Obama, next to a pitiful 20% for Mitt Romney ....... the anti-immigration arms race conducted by the party’s presidential candidates, very much including Mr Romney, in this year’s primaries seems the best explanation for its difficulties in winning Latino support. ..... swelling numbers of Mexican-Americans have turned Colorado and Nevada into battlegrounds. New Mexico, once a swing state, is widely considered a safe bet for Mr Obama this year ..... The Latino population in Texas is growing so quickly ..... George W. Bush, who won around 40% Latino support in 2004 because “he knew how to eat the tamale.” ...... In polls Latinos emerge as optimistic, aspirational types with a fierce belief in the importance of education.

Barack Obama and black voters: Returning to the mountaintop

He was descended not from slaves, but from an immigrant African father and a white mother. His mother raised him in Hawaii (just 2% black) and Indonesia. In 2007 Hillary Clinton had much higher favourable ratings among blacks than Mr Obama did. Many of Mr Obama’s earliest prominent supporters were white and Jewish, and indeed he has faced consistent criticism, first as a candidate and then as president, for being too aloof from the black community. Only after defeating Mrs Clinton in Iowa, which is less than 3% black, did he start to attract large numbers of black supporters. ...... one of the more salutary indirect effects of Mr Obama’s inauguration was that it put paid at last to the notion that blacks have self-appointed “leaders” who interpret the political views of black Americans to white America. After all, Messrs Jackson, Smiley and West may have thought Mr Obama was too unseasoned and accommodating to be president, but 95% of black American voters disagreed. ....... in 2009 the median wealth of a white household was 20 times higher than that of a black one, the largest gap since the federal government began tracking wealth data by race in 1984. The median wealth of black households had fallen by 53% over the preceding four years, compared with just 16% for white households. In August 2012 the unemployment rate for blacks was 14.1%. That was down from a high of 16.7% in August 2011, but it still far exceeded the national average of 8.1%. ...... stubbornly high black unemployment, combined with Mr Obama’s perceived indifference to it ...... the host of voter-ID and voter-registration laws enacted since 2010 that have the effect—and arguably the intent—of making it more difficult for black Americans to vote. Courts have rejected some of them (notably a Texas voter-ID law), but plenty remain. Small wonder that many black Americans are entering the election’s home stretch peeved that Republicans seem to have given up trying to persuade them, and have resorted instead to trying to keep them away from the polls

Election issues: foreign policy: It's not easy being indispensable
Who won the foreign-policy debate?
The foreign-policy debate: A win for Obama

To a remarkable degree, Mr Romney tacked to the moderate centre, seeking above all to distance himself from the record of George W. Bush and the sweeping ambitions of the neoconservative right. ...... Romney has a (frankly nonsensical) plan to set American defence spending at the arbitrary level of 4% of national wealth ..... Judging by Mr Romney’s answers, he is confident that his conservative base is fired up and ready to vote, and so can afford to tack smartly to the centre in search of rustbelt voters worried about jobs lost to China. Many of his answers sounded tailored to a block of undecided voters long ago identified by Romney aides as a key target: middle-aged women worried about schools and jobs for their children. ..... recent polls have shown the president’s once imposing lead among women shrinking to single digits. ....... At times, both men headed a farcical distance away from foreign policy, as they sought to appeal to war-weary, inward-looking voters. ...... After the race-altering shock of a disastrous first debate for the president, back on October 3rd, this third debate left the contest where it has been for some days: absolutely deadlocked.