100-day sprint: Hurdles mount for Romney
New polling out today from Quinnipiac, the New York Times and CBS suggest that while the popular vote for president remains in a dead heat, the battleground states are tilting toward the Democratic incumbent.
According to Quinippiac’s numbers, Barack Obama now leads by 11 points in Pennyslvania, and has also established 6-point advantages in Ohio and Florida.
Those three states, combined with the states Obama already has safely in his column, give the president 294 electoral college votes — 24 more than he needs to win a second term.
Another troubling sign for Republican challenger Mitt Romney is that he seems to be making little headway with groups beyond the GOP’s core voter bloc of whites and men.
This latest survey shows a larger than expected margin for the Democrat, particularly in Florida and Ohio, and is noteworthy because it puts Obama above the 50% mark in both states for the first time.
Politico has reported that — if the polls are accurate — Romney is currently winning only one of the ten battleground states expected to decide this year’s presidential race.
Romney leads narrowly in North Carolina, while Obama has slightly larger advantages in nine other states.
Meanwhile, Nate Silver at the New York Times, is suggesting that there is now a 3.9% chance of Obama winning the presidency, while losing the popular vote.
A split between the winners of the popular vote and the Electoral College is still relatively unlikely, in the view of the model. There is only a 3.9 percent chance that Mr. Obama will win the Electoral College but lose the popular vote, it estimates.
However, the model now assigns just a 1.3 percent chance to the reverse happening: Mr. Romney’s winning the Electoral College while losing the popular vote.
The good numbers for Obama come at the end of a rough overseas trip for Romney, where he stumbled into several gaffes and also saw his staff tangle with the press corps.
Tags: election12, politics, polling
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As Hannibal used to say in the A-Team, “I love it when a plan comes together.”
Romney is doing his damnedest to hand this thing to Obama on a silver platter. Serves the Republicans right for whoring themselves to the far right. Maybe they’ll learn….
But Romney isn’t the candidate of the far right. He’s the candidate of big business and country club Republicans.
Big business and country club Republicans? If he had that kind of support he might have a chance! The Republican “spectrum” is so broad at this point that in trying to be all things to all people in order to gain the nomination the candidate ultimately becomes nothing to anyone. If he had a clearly defined centrist position he would have a shot at winning. As it is Obama’s track record (or lack thereof) is Romney’s only chance. What a sad place we have come to that these two clowns are our mainstream choices. Did-nothing vs. know-nothing.
This week, Mitt proved that he’s just as dumb as George W. Travelling the world and insulting those in your path is a Republican hallmark, and in my mind, the sort of thing that led us to 9-11. God save us from Mitt Romney
Still blaming it all on Bush! Can you come up with something original? The 9-11 attacks were conceived, planned and set in motion while Clinton was President. He continues to dodge that bullet.
That does not make sense Larry. Romney is NOT the tea party candidate he does have a relatively standard centrist position. I think you have a point that he compromised that position during the primaries to win, but everyone knows he is not the conservative standard bearer.
Frankly Newt would be doing better right now, at least the race would be interesting and people would be fired up or even Santorum.
This guy offers nothing. There is no reason for Moderate socially liberal Republicans to run for office, we essentially have one as President now.
The only poll worth mentioning day was the number of people lining up at Chick-Fil-a.
Kind of reminds me of what the polling places will look like in November. A lot of Obama-weary voters out there.
Interesting polling data. This must be the first time time that voters are choosing to stay at the bottom of the hole?
When will Republicans recognize that their guy was President for 8 years between 2001 and 2009?
And why didn’t Romney visit France on his European/Asian trip? He speaks French fluently and he lived in France for some time, no brainer right?
There’s still four weeks until the Republican nominating convention.
With our hyper-fast news cycles and media-saturated culture, that’s plenty of time for the GOP to pick someone else.
Why not? Can’t be worse than Romney.
What about Charlie Crist or Meg Whitman? The GOP has a deep bench of vetted candidates.
It’s just too damn bad that the Republicans who could win a national election aren’t willfully ignorant and malevolent enough for the party’s base.
I do think though that since Clinton, we have seen the Democratic Party move to the right enough on many issues to basically capture a hunk of the middle that used to vote for moderate Republicans.
Look at the differences between Romney and Obama. They act like they are large but really? Ok tax breaks for 99% or tax breaks for 100% of the people? The reality on the ground is that most people realize that the actual outcomes under both guys is going to be about the same.
With the possible exception of Foreign policy? Which is big and one thing the president really controls. Obama has done an excellent job in this area and for me that gives him the edge, domestically I don’t see any real and true difference between these two candidates.
Its not like George McGovern versus Romney, its not like we have these starkly different philosophies and policy plans that are radically different.
Mervel-
There is a difference between Obama and Romney on domestic issues:
If Romney wins, you’ll pay more in taxes and he’ll pay less.
If Obama wins, you’ll pay about the same and Romney might pay more.
That may seem squishy – and it is – but if we don’t get back to sane taxation, we’re screwed.
Actually, Mervel, the policies are very different. (although less so if you assume that Romney is really a closet moderate). The policies he (Romney) is running on are standard modern orthodox Republican policies. Laissez faire (I have to look up the spelling on that one every time) economics – low taxes, cut spending, but strong military. etc. The fact that it is mathematically impossible doesnt seem to bother them – see latest economic analysis of his budget proposals.
Obama is more straight up centrist – and we assume he is a closet liberal. He believes in an activist federal government that solves problems like health care, which requires tax money.
Plus there is all that social cultural stuff- gay marriage, abortion, etc.
You’re right, Mervel, Romney isn’t the Tea Party candidate but pandering to them and other far-right groups robs him of the moderate support he needs to win a general election. The state of the Republican Party these days almost makes getting the nomination and winning the election mutually exclusive. Better to run someone like Christie who leaves no doubt about his position and presents a clearly defined difference from Obama.
I would favor Christie also Larry. I think he could be both strong and yet not out there on these other issues, he is just a better candidate. I do think his health would have been an issue though.
Pete, wj, yes on paper they are proposing what looks different. But lets face it outside of the foreign policy direction, which I admit is really important, I just don’t see anything being very different domestically. I think healthcare will have to be solved in some way, we already have a government health care system it is just a matter of what kind of government health care system we want. Taxes will not change, it is possible under Obama that taxes may go up marginally for the very wealthy and under Romney they won’t. But for the average person taxes will be the same under both guys.
But Pete, you are right, math will define much policy in the future anyway. I think the most that would happen under Romney would be an explosion in our debt even beyond what we have seen under Obama. He won’t cut anything and he will lower taxes=massive debt.
Social issues are just window dressing, they are by definition “social” not political. I am basically a social conservative, yet I don’t think social issues are political issues they are a reflection of our culture our choices socially.
Mervel, social issues become political when politicians enshrine them in law. You think gay marriage is window dressing? Ask someone who is gay if they agree with you. Ask a mother who didn’t want to be a mother.
Politics is all about society. You’re anti-war, right? You don’t think war is a social issue?
The decision to make war using US troops and assets is foreign policy decision not a social decision. The President can decide who dies and who lives, he can decide these issues, almost alone as we don’t use Congress anymore to decide to go to war or not. This is a very important role for the President.
I think gay marriage is simply not that important of an issue compared to things like poverty and war from a national standpoint, the same goes for abortion, the same goes for divorce and adultery and other modern foibles and sins.
Besides that the President has only marginal influence over those topics. Most people in the US are tired of the blowhards on both sides going on about these topics.
Chick-fil-le? Come on we must have more important things to worry about.
The Republicans of today have a problem. Believe it or not, I voted for Nixon twice.
Their problem is having been hijacked by the Tea Party. The problem with the Tea Party is it is backward looking, not forward. They want their country back but the country they want back no longer exists. Not only that, they have a fantasy idea of the past. Maybe they watched too many episodes of Father Knows Best.
Neither the 50’s nor the 60’s were what many people dream they were. In the 50’s we lost our first war. In the 60’s we were well on our way to loosing our second war and the peace and love of the period was a cruel joke. The best thing about the 60’s was the music.
Want to go back to the 40’s? Well, we did win that war but at a high cost.
The 30’s? Now you’re talking a real depression.
Maybe the 20’s?
What I”m trying to point out is how we tend to look at the past through rose colored glasses. Learn from the past but don’t dream about it. You can’t go back. You can’t go home again. And even if you could, you would probably be very disappointed.
They didn’t watch Father Knows Best; they watched Red Dawn! Wolverines!