If the election were held today, Nate Silver’s model gives the president a 96.4% chance of winning. He also shows Obama trailing in South Carolina by 0.2% in his weighted poll average. It’s worth keeping your eye on. I’ve been waiting to see Georgia move into the toss-up category, but, based on admittedly sparse polling, it seems to be moving away from the president. Of all the states that Obama lost, only Montana and Missouri were closer than Georgia.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the Republicans are suffering a bit of a malaise because they don’t really like their candidate. They don’t really trust him, and he isn’t really any more likable to them than he is to the rest of America. That’s why we could really see some drop-off in participation if the polls don’t tighten sufficiently to offer some hope of victory. That’s also why we’ve seen a sudden outbreak of foolishness about “unskewed” polls by Dick Morris and others. It’s critical to the hopes of downticket Republican candidates that the base doesn’t give up and stay home. This may happen on the West Coast regardless, once they see Florida, Virginia, and Ohio declared for the president. But as long as the east coast and central time Republicans believe the Rasmussen and other skewed polls are accurate, they may be able to get a decent turnout.
One thing I hope the Obama administration is thinking about is that we have senate elections in Indiana, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and Arizona that are all critical. Forget what the polls say today, the president won Indiana and Nevada four years ago, he barely lost Missouri, he did admirably well in Montana, and he probably would have won Arizona if John McCain had not called it his home state. I don’t want the president to take states that are essential to his Electoral College victory for granted, but I want to see him invest a little effort campaigning in some of these states with big senate races. Even if he doesn’t win them, by holding down the margins he can improve the senate candidates’ chances of prevailing.
And he might want to schedule a stop in South Carolina.
He needs to keep working to shore everything up so he is confident of victory. But there should come a time when he can take a couple of shots at flipping an extra state or two. Widening the playing field will also send an important message. It will not only strike fear into the Republicans, but it will tell America that this election is being contested in more than just a dozen “swing-states.”
Both Obama and Biden have started going after Republicans in Congress and are stepping up the tempo in their attacks. I expect, if they not only see themselves as competitive in a state, but the Senate candidates also being competitive, you will see both of them heading to thvarious states you mentioned.
Plus, it is interesting the Rove’s SuperPac has targeted 5 Senate races they are going to dump ads into. What is interesting is that IN is one of those states which early on nobody thought would be competitive (thank you Tea Party) and that WI is not on the list. I think they see both Obama and Baldtarting to run away with their respective races in WI.
I was worried Kaine wouldn’t win, but he’s been polling really well. Pretty confident George Macaca Allen is gone.
If you take a closer look at that South Carolina result, you will see that it is spurious. There hasn’t been a poll of South Carolina since January.
It seems pretty clear what the Obama maximum is: the 2008 states minus Indiana. Maybe a landslide could take Missouri, but I doubt it.
That may be true about South Carolina, but is there really a strong basis for assuming that polls in September are strongly indicative of how the race will unfold? In some measure, yes, it is rare for someone who is behind in late September to come from behind to win. But is it unusual for a candidate who is trailing badly in late September to see their position collapse? What happened to McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, and McCain?
Did people see McCain losing Virginia, Indiana, and North Carolina this far out? Did they see him almost losing Missouri?
In retrospect, it seems only McGovern and Dole seemed doomed from convention to election. After the first debate with Mondale, Reagan looked quite vulnerable.
And, again, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton each won resounding reelections. If you think Romney is running anywhere near as strong as Kerry you’re nuts. The whole world thought Kerry had won when the polls closed in 2004.
Historical experience is that margins tend to close toward the election instead of widen. What you are arguing is that this year might be different. The probability of an Obama landslide in Nate’s model is 3.7%. How many elections would have shown that high a probability six weeks before the election? I doubt we have the historical data to figure that out.
All this talk of polls is killing me. I am calling in to a state everyday that shows up as yellow on the polling maps, not pink or baby blue, because it is so split.
I’m doing persuasion calls so I am obviously talking to undecided and undeclared voters but I do not trust polls. For every Democrat or Democrat leaning (sanity loving) person, please don’t let the polling make you complacent. Those super pac ads are powerful and I have to fight a new lie every day it seems.
It takes knocking on 14 doors to get 1 vote and the contact rate on phone calls is declining so it takes more work to reach voters.
All this is to say, please please please go to your nearest OFA office or use the online call tool but do something. The big money, corporate, super pac attempt to dominate our elections is offensive and must be crushed. We have to win big this year.
What are you counting on? Why do many of the major media polls indicate that Democrats will turn out 7 to 9 percent higher than Republicans?
Kerry was down 1.5 in the RCP average, and lost by 2.9. Hello?
I don’t think Donnelly, McCaskill or Tester want Obama anywhere near their states in their reelection bids, particularly McCaskill. Although a trip to St. Louis like 2008 might juice up the dem votes.
I don’t think Donnelly, McCaskill or Tester want Obama anywhere near their states in their reelection bids, particularly McCaskill. Although a trip to St. Louis like 2008 might juice up the dem votes.
I think that their distancing from Obama for the past four years has been one big mistake. It makes Obama look too extreme for their states and as a consequence weakens their own positions. McCaskill might get lucky because of Todd Akins’s big mouth. But the other two will likely not be helped even if Obama takes Montana and Indiana.
Did you see the McCaskill-Akin debate? McCaskill made a strong, unapologetic defense of Obamacare.
Also worth noting that the largest Obama rally in 2008 was under the St. Louis arch in October.
Really? I figured it was the one in Portland…
75K attended the Portland rally in May, 100K attended St. Louis in October. The Portland rally was also the largest rally at the time when it was held.
Are there real GOTV efforts in Arizona and South Carolina (or Georgia) that could deliver tighter margins without Obama having to go there.
The only reason that I see for a presidential visit to some of these states is to scare the GOP into thinking that these states might have come into play and reorient their resources. A day in Scottsdale’s retirement communities could scare the bejeepers out of Republicans.
They should send Joe Biden on a tour of the major retirement communities in Arizona along with the Dem running for Senate. Obama probably won’t win AZ but it would hopefully demoralize the R’s and inspire the closet D’s who live in fear of their overbearing lunatic R neighbors. Lots of down-ticket stuff that’s way too far to the Right there and could be brought more into balance.
groups like VotoLatino.org and Mi Familia Vota have field organizers all over. DFA just held its first bilingual campaign academy but haven’t heard much from OfA or the DNC on the ground here.
Plus, Carmona is going to pick up a lot of Indys and Rs so anything is possible.
So I saw this online posted by Roger Simon, but I admit to not reading the actual article. But watching Lawrence O’Donnell I’m actually just realizing that “The Stench” in the title is actually Politico quoting Paul Ryan calling the Romney part of the Romney/Ryan ticket “The Stench”…WOW!
“Paul Ryan vs. The Stench”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81618.html#.UGJkd8jVS6M.twitter
Back on topic, I don’t know if POTUS needs to go to those places, but I def think a campaign stop or two from FLOTUS and/or Biden might be a good idea.
okay, having finally read the article. I think the “stench” attributed to Ryan are supposed to be snark. Still, after seeing the expression of Paul Ryan in the video where Romney says Obama did not raise taxes, I can believe that Ryan is regretting this whole VP thing.
Saw that also, I don’t think, though that Ryan’s use of “the stench” is snark. The part in the article about powerpoint used for killing cattle is obviously snark, but keeping in mind what kind of narcissistic lowlife Ryan is, very possible that he “jokes” on the campaign bus about “the stench”.
This ain’t the Obama campaign’s first rodeo, as the saying goes. By contrast with the Romney campaign, the Obama team has some seasoned veterans who seem to know what they are doing.
I remember the 2008 campaign, how stunned everyone was at the ground game spread across the States, but I’m not sure if Howard Dean might have been more responsible ultimately for that?
I don’t really understand why Romney is doing so badly with his team stuffed with Bush veterans. It’s like they all got drunk and left the kids in charge?
They, Rove et al., don’t realize that what worked during the Bush campaign, doesn’t work post economic meltdown, Iraq, etc. If they’d run RMoney in 2000 he’d be doing better
Bush said it best…
and, speaking of post 2000, we’re also post creation of DFA and OFA, war on workers, war on women
I can tell you that Howard Dean did not have much at all to do with 2008. In fact the Democratic committees did not have much confidence at all in the way we Obama campaigners approached the work–but after the election they certainly wanted us on their committees, wanted to adopt our methods, etc.
Howard Dean did do some smart things but the Obama campaign really brought it to a new level.
Thanks for clearing that up, I know there was a bit of confusion about that. Failure is an orphan but success has a thousand fathers and all that, right? There was the “50 State Strategy” he was advocating, but that wasn’t exactly what ended up happening, was it?
I just remember accounts of Obama’s campaign offices being opened in so many states in huge numbers,,,it was literally an army.
Our OFA volunteer numbers have increased significantly over 2008 this time around and the last couple of months it seems as if they’ve been pouring in. Hope that’s true for the rest of the country as well.
Keep in mind, in some places Obama being more visibly tied to the Congressional races backfires.
The ‘unscewed polls’ do hint at a battle that is familiar turf for the Fox & Friends and that is to shoot the messenger. If they, rightly so, see the polls as messenging the Rep voters to give up and stay home, an understandable strategy is to say the polls are rigged, just as the MSM has a liberal bias, and all the more reason to demonstrate your freedoms at the voting booth. It’s all they’ve got left at that last juncture.