Can Romney win without Ohio? Yes.
Here’s a new measuring stick for just how badly Barack Obama blew himself up in that first debate: It now appears that Mitt Romney could, very plausibly win the White House without claiming Ohio.
It would be an astonishing feat. A man who was, by some measures, the most unpopular Republican standard bearer in his party’s history could pull off an upset that literally no other Republican presidential candidate has achieved.
Let’s do the math. Mitt Romney is currently running slightly ahead of Obama in the national horse race poll, with the latest Gallup poll putting Romney up 6 points — his biggest lead ever.
But in Ohio, Romney still trails by roughly 3 points and with early voting now underway, the Obama team is scrambling to lock in that advantage.
Given all the factors, election guru Nate Silver at the New York Times gives Obama a 69% chance of winning Ohio. Not a lock, but that’s an infinitely more solid advantage than the Democrat now holds nationwide.
So what happens if Obama wins Ohio? Let’s assume for the moment that the Democrat will also hold Michigan and Pennsylvania, where he now leads in various polls by 5 to 7 points.
That gives Team Obama 255 electoral college votes — 15 shy of a second term. Sounds like a lock, right? Not so fast.
Politico’s poll averages now give Romney the edge in Colorado (less than a 1% lead), Florida (2.5% advantage) and North Carolina (4.7%), states that give the Republican an increasingly solid foundation of 244 electoral college votes. That’s just 25 EC votes shy of a win.
To surge from behind and claim the White House – again, without Ohio – Romney just needs to hold the states where he’s now leading and win Virginia, Wisconsin and either Iowa or Nevada. That would give him 273 electoral college votes.
A squeaker, with no room for error — but a win nonetheless.
So where do things stand now in those states?
Virginia is a statistical tie, with Obama up by just .8%. Wisconsin, where Romney trails by 2%, is tougher, but that’s hardly an insurmountable gap and he has favorite son Paul Ryan to campaign for him there down the stretch.
(Nate Silver only gives Romney a 25% chance of winning Wisconsin, but for what it’s worth my gut tells me that his odds there are significantly better than that…)
Polls in Iowa and Nevada also give Obama a 2-3 point lead.
Obviously, Romney is hoping to win it more handily than this, claiming Ohio and perhaps even tipping another blue state or two into his column. If Obama doesn’t shift the momentum, that may be possible.
But the new map has to have Democrats worried. Even if they pull off a narrow win in the battle for Ohio, they could lose the bigger political war in dramatic and historic fashion.
Tags: election12
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More horse race stuff. Meanwhile the MSM don’t seem to care very much that Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein was arrested for just being at the debate site.
What about this allegation on DemocracyNow?
“GREG PALAST: …Mitt Romney, through Ann Romney’s blind trust—not so blind, they could see exactly where the money was going—gave their money to Paul “The Vulture” Singer, a guy you and I have been following on Democracy Now! for five years. Singer, with two of his hedge fund buddies, bought up the auto parts division of General Motors for only 67 cents a share. They were able to turn 67 cents a share into $22 a share by threatening GM and the U.S. Treasury with a complete shutdown of the auto industry. They had complete control of all the steering wheels and steering columns of every car that was being made in America. GM would have been liquidated. They literally threatened to shut down GM. And so, they—the government simply allowed GM to pay them $12 billion. About half of that was straight from the U.S. Treasury in a takeover of Delphi’s pension fund.
Once they got the money—once they got the money, they eliminated 28 of 29 auto plants in the U.S. They moved—they eliminated every single job of every UAW member; 25,200 UAW members all lost their jobs. Almost every plant was then moved by the Romney group to China. Delphi is making a fortune today. So you have 25,000 workers who lost their jobs to China. Three hedge fund managers made at least $4 billion, $4.2 billion. And the Romneys have made at least 15, but the evidence suggests that it’s more like $115 million for the Romneys, about a 4,000 percent profit.
What we can’t get from them at this moment, this may be the reason why they are not releasing their 2009 taxes, because that would give us a better hint. Unfortunately, they’ve not only moved the company operations to China, but they’ve moved their incorporation of the auto parts division of General Motors from Troy, Michigan, to the Isle of Jersey in the Mediterranean Sea, which hides their taxes and also, of course, hides their accounts. So that—that’s the story.”
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/10/18/greg_palast_mitt_romneys_bailout_bonanza#transcript
I like the NPR news story today about Romney’s plans to spend more on the military and “defence”. Does the man have ANY clue? Does he know how big the defence budget is now, or how it compares to the rest of the nations or the whole world in general?? Our candidates talk about balancing the budget, but act like they can’t see the elephant in the room.
I’m beginning to root for falling off the fiscal cliff…
Knuck, This is the reason the debates may have had an unusual impact. All these nutty allegations are tossed around and then when he shows up for the debate you are like “this guy does not look like the kind of guy that “murdered” the wife of a factory worker at a company that his firm bought years ago?”
I am sure that if this is relevant we will hear about it on more than Amy Goodman’s show.
too tight, don’t worry we a heading there and it is more than defense that will take a hit. I think there is one reason why you will see that avoided. Lots of folks in DC will lose their jobs if it happens.
The sad thing about our democracy is the huge difference between Americans polled and American voters. George W. was elected by a tiny fraction of the population….everyone else was watching television or something.
It’s a shame for all of us if the only thing that prevents the fiscal collapse is government jobs and military spending. We’ve spent enough on these recent wars to put a solar collector and a windmill on every house in the country, yet we want to cut green projects so we can afford to fight for oil.
“this guy does not look like the kind of guy that “murdered” the wife of a factory worker at a company that his firm bought years ago?”
Paul, what the hell are you talking about? Is there some allegation that Romney murdered the wife of a factory worker? If there is I’ve never heard of it.
On the other hand Greg Palast’s allegations can be checked out. I certainly don’t have the resources to fact check them but I believe the Nation does (although after what was it? Newsweek? was found not to be fact checking stories I guess all bets are off) but check out the story in the Nation:
Mitt Romney’s Bailout Bonanza
http://www.thenation.com/article/170644/mitt-romneys-bailout-bonanza#
There are lots facts that can be checked and we will see if anyone bothers to refute any of them.
Knick – Paul is making a valid hyperbole. There was a ad skewering Romney for closing a plant that led to some bodies wife dying. It was part of a very successful strategy to paint Romney as a heartless Uncle Scrooge. then Romney got to go on tv during the debate and insist that he was just an average guy just trying to get the middle class more jobs. Obama didn’t call him on it and the rest is poll history.