As the Obama and Romney campaigns march into the crucial summer months, there will be a relatively small group of battleground states that will define the outcome.\u00a0 Here’s my prediction of where 2012 will be decided.<\/p>\n
Arizona.\u00a0 Polls show that Barack Obama is within striking distance, thanks in part to the deep hostility that the state’s Hispanic community feels toward Mitt Romney.\u00a0 If Democrats can flip Arizona, it may be all over.\u00a0 Latest poll:\u00a0 Romney +2.<\/p>\n
Colorado.\u00a0 Republicans desperately need to stop their slide in the Rocky Mountain West and Mitt Romney might be the sort of economy-first candidate to pull it off.\u00a0 If he can flip Colorado, his chances soar.\u00a0 Latest poll:\u00a0 Obama +13.<\/p>\n
Florida:\u00a0 This is the biggest state in the US that remains in play.\u00a0 The guy who claims Florida almost certainly wins the White House.\u00a0 (Though, unlike Romney, Obama has a plausible path to victory that doesn’t include Florida.)\u00a0 Latest poll:\u00a0 Romney +1.<\/p>\n
Ohio:\u00a0 Democrats appear to have locked down most of the Great Lakes region, and Pennsylvania is inching out of reach for the GOP.\u00a0 But Ohio is still on the razor’s edge and it’s another must-win for Romney.\u00a0 Latest Poll:\u00a0 Obama +2.<\/p>\n
Virginia:\u00a0\u00a0 This is another state that Obama can survive without winning, but which looks more and more like a make-or-break battleground for Romney.\u00a0 The GOP needs to reclaim its ownership of the “Shallow South.”\u00a0 Latest Poll:\u00a0 Obama +8.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The big take-away here is that despite national polls which show a virtual tie, many of the contests are being fought on what used to be reliably Republican turf. That makes things very tough for Romney.<\/p>\n
If the GOP loses Arizona, Colorado and Virginia in a single election cycle, it might signify real long-term challenges for the party.<\/p>\n
UPDATE:\u00a0 Real Clear Politics’s new analysis<\/a> puts 253 electoral college votes as solidly or “leaning” into the Obama column, just 17 shy of the number he needs to win — and that’s without any of the five states listed above.\u00a0 Which shows just how brilliant and efficient Romney’s campaign needs to be.\u00a0 Romney needs to find a whopping 100 EC votes to win, which means he has to run the table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the Obama and Romney campaigns march into the crucial summer months, there will be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6548,6550,20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5919"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5919"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5920,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5919\/revisions\/5920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}