Yes, Ohio is leaning toward Obama. And that’s a big story.
I’ve been arguing for months that national pundits have been giving a skewed sense of the presidential race, portraying it as far closer than it actually is.
I don’t suggest that the contest is over, or safe for the Democrats, but Barack Obama has held a systemic, unambiguous lead all year.
Even when the “horse race” national polls were locked in a dead heat, the Democrat had a clear advantage in enough states to give him very close to the 270 electoral college votes necessary to capture a second term.
The resistance to this narrative surfaced again this week in the Washington Post, where Chris Cillizza argued stubbornly for the paper’s logic in not shifting Ohio into the “leans Obama” category.
An NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll out this week put Obama 7 points ahead of rival Mitt Romney among likely voters. It also put Obama at the 50% mark that is generally considered safe territory for an incumbent.
Other polls have shown the race a bit tighter in Ohio, but with the exception of one outlier (from Republican-leading pollster Rasmussen) a half dozen recent polls have put the president ahead in Ohio by at least four points.
Cillizza acknowledges that there are other factors that make Ohio look like an Obama lean, including the state’s relatively strong economy.
He neglected to mention that there are yet other indicators — from the importance of Obama’s auto industry bailout to Ohio, to Democrat Sherrod Brown’s lead in the Senate race — that suggest that the state might be tough turf for Republicans this year.
He also doesn’t mention that other states that look statistically just as close as Ohio, such as North Carolina, are described as “lean Republican” when they tilt the other direction.
“To be clear, you’d rather be President Obama in Ohio today than Mitt Romney,” Cillizza acknowledges, but he still says moving the state out of the toss-up category would be “jumping the gun.”
Why?
The reasons given are curious. For one thing, Cillizza points out that Romney really, really needs Ohio and isn’t going to give up the fight there. True enough. And it’s very possible that Romney will find a way to win Ohio.
But that doesn’t alter the reality that right now, Ohio leans Obama.
Cillizza is a little more convincing when he points out that Ohio is often close, historically speaking, but he’s less convincing when he suggests that Obama may still be riding a bit of a post-convention bounce.
Again, it may be that in the days ahead Ohio will stop leaning toward Obama (because “the bounce” fades or for some other reason) but that doesn’t change the facts on the ground now.
It’s also true that of 35 polls conducted in Ohio this year, Obama has lead in all but five — often by margins as wide as the one we are seeing after the convention. So acknowledging the lean hardly seems premature.
This is, as Cillizza notes in an awkward sort of way, huge news. He points out that no Republican has won the White House in the modern era without claiming Ohio. The math is even harder this year. So Ohio is a do or die that looks very difficult for the GOP.
Whether you support Romney or Obama, that’s a big story.
In the end, I suspect that part of the reason journalists shy away from describing the political situation in a straight-forward way is that it feels a little biased.
If the Washington Post moves Ohio into the “blue” column, that means acknowledging that Obama has — at least for the moment –corralled at least 255 electoral college votes, just 15 shy of the number he needs for victory.
Meanwhile Romney (even with North Carolina already in his column) has just 206 electoral college votes — a whopping 64 votes shy of the finish line.
Sounds like a blow-out. But I would argue that there’s real drama in these numbers, if played straight by journalists.
They give a sense of the magnitude of Mitt Romney’s challenge, the kind of leadership and charisma and strategic smarts he’ll have to display to pull off an upset. And that journey begins in Ohio.
Tags: election12
Good analysis. Ohio does indeed lean Obama–for now. The dynamic in this campaign has been very stable for months, but something unforeseen could change that. Seven weeks is an eternity in politics. Running as an extreme conservative hasn’t helped Romney’s cause. Moderate Republican Mitt, if he could ever have gotten through the primaries, could be leading at this point.
Mitt Romney’s challenge goes beyond leadership, charisma, and strategy. The hard right has been critical recently, and developing a narrative to explain a Romney loss. He is also being hit very hard by the Obama campaign about his tax returns. There must be something in those that the Romney campaign considers very damaging. Most politicians would have released them, taken the heat for a few days and moved on.
“Moderate Republican Mitt, if he could ever have gotten through the primaries, could be leading at this point.”
Except that he’s up against moderate Republican Obama, who doesn’t have half the issues he does (except, of course, that he has the whole Teapublican party frothing at the mouth to replace him– I mean issues that matter to the undecideds who will determine this election).
“Seven weeks is an eternity in politics.”
I keep seeing comments to the effect that generally nothing much changes in the last two months before an election.
Mitt’s biggest problem is boring and rich Mitt who wants to be President mainly because he wants to be President.
Why does it matter whether there’s drama in the numbers? It’s not a TV show. Or maybe it is.
Our own political “Hunger Games”
I agree with Brian. The electoral college really seems to be in Obama’s pocket right now.
I think Romney HAS to win both Ohio and Florida to even stand a chance. The odds look long to me.
It is looking a little grim for Romney, and the amount of sniping and blaming by Republicans and conservatives (not completely the same thing) about the Romney campaign is starting to become more noticeable.
At this point, two of the so-called swing states (Michigan, New Mexico) are out of contention for Romney. Of the rest of the swing-states, Obama is ahead with ‘Likely Voters’, and more ahead with registered voters, in every state except North Carolina.
Sure there is still about 6 weeks, and the debates are still ahead. But there are very few undecideds – fewer than in past elections. His performances in the Primary debates don’t indicate that he will win over many undecideds. Romney can still turn things around and win, but I don’t see much that would indicates that he will.
I think he will need an outside event to turn things around for him.
I’ve had it in Obama’s hands for a couple of months. The older tax reports issue is a red herring particularly given out Secretary of the Treasury who had trouble with paying his own taxes yet was confirmed.
The remarks Brian made the other day about a segment of the party out tilting at windmills (my description) about Obama’s religious affiliation are about as poignant as the Romney not being a Christian. In other words there are not enough people in that camp to acknowledge.
What Romney has to overcome is the known quantity of Mr. Obama and Romney isn’t a lot different than the man we have plus there is a perception of the party being hostile. Just like Obama said a lot before getting elected but reality set in quickly I think people know that enough of what Romney has said has to be filtered through information he does not yet know and the realities of office.
It is clear that some of our economic woes are not of our own making as in the backslide of our economy when Greece tanked. The fuel price spike, is at the hand of speculators who act like headless chickens when a refinery does down yet the usage is already down and the supply sufficient still their wealth is enhanced by the ridiculous variety of gasoline blends by state and season. Yet the pollution infecting our West cost comes in part from beyond the Pacific.
So as was sort of mentioned above, we have Romney flavored by segments of his party . He would be more electable if he switched parties.
Why isn’t page 7 of this poll a big deal?
Do you consider yourself:
1) Dem 38%
2) Rep 28%
Big whoop. What this poll proves is that Democrats barely favor Obama over Romney.
Do you really expect one-third more democrats to show up in November?
The whole election is leaning Obama. Romney’s last best chance is the debates and he is reputed to be good at them. But “leaning” doesn’t mean Obama has it in the bag.
Romney comes off as a rich prick in any debate. Americans are sick of these people, and we keep trying to elect our way out from under the rich mans thumb, but they keep buying their way into office….We definitely need to spend more money on education in this country.
Thanks for the trenchant analysis, Mike.
horse race political stories are never “big stories.” Now, the actual election, or stories about the actual issues could be considered “big stories,” but the latest polling data is never a “big story.”
In the past, when called by a pollster, I hang up, but from now on if I am called by a pollster i will answer their questions falsely. I intend to start a movement where people lie to pollsters so that polls are no longer reliable and people therfore stop obsessing about them. “Journalists” would go onto immediate shock as they would have to report on actual new stories instead of the latest polling data.
It is all over, there is no reason to show up at the polls. That seems to be the message I am hearing in the press. Maybe we should not be surprised that we have a turn out of maybe 40%.
What’s sad is the media bias.
Imagine a poll where 38% Republicans were polled and only 28% Democrats were polled, and the results showed Romney up by 5 points in Ohio.
There would be no end to those crying foul!
It’s totally sad.
JDM – the pollsters are pretty good at picking the demographics to poll. They do survey research all the time for all sorts of products etc. they spend a lot of energy figuring out who is likely to vote. Thats there business, and if they are wrong, people wont hire them next time around.
Their business (not there)
Peter Hahn:
When your sample includes one-third more democrats than republicans, a pollster that knows their business says, “that’s not good enough” and keeps sampling.
You have heard of “we report, you decide”.
This is “we hide the truth, and distort the facts”.
JDM, think about it. If Democrats think Obama is assured re-election, they’re more likely to stay home on November 6, and they’ll be less likely to donate to his campaign effort. So who benefits from the supposed liberal bias?
Everyone knows that pollsters don’t take advanced math classes in college. They thought that class on Algorithm was a Greek folk dance class and skipped it.
Maybe we can take up a collection and send JDM on a tour to let them know how they’re doing it wrong.