Huffington Post's Pollster.com
For all the hype about Mitt Romney wanting to "expand the map," his travel schedule today makes clear exactly which states the Republican is trying to secure. He was in Florida this morning, and he'll hold two events in Virginia this afternoon, before heading to Ohio and New Hampshire.
The fact that Virginia is still very much up for grabs has to be discouraging for Republicans. It's extremely hard to imagine the scenario in which Romney pull together 270 electoral votes without Virginia -- and right now, President Obama appears to be slight favorite.
The latest NBC/WSJ/Marist poll, for example, shows the president with a one-point lead. In fact, looking over all of the Virginia surveys from the last few days, Obama leads in all of them except one, and the exception is Rasmussen -- a pollster very friendly to Republicans -- which shows Romney up by a single point. Nate Silver's projection gives the president a 72.6% chance of winning here.
It's a reminder to keep a close eye on the commonwealth tomorrow night, because it may well be the swing state that dictates the outcome. If the president wins the likely-blue states, and then picks up Iowa, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Virginia, he'll pass 270 -- even without Ohio and/or Florida.
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Republicans in Virginia can only blame themselves for making this close. Had they not gone vaginal probe and government hate they would easily carry Virginia. Alot of government workers live in Virginia, and the relentless narrative that all government workers are sloths does not sit well with people. These are career people, not political appointees.
GOP operatives are not dumb, and the innovations pioneered by the Obama campaign will be exploited much more brutally and effectively by conservatives.
Picture a GOP machine putting a 4 year investment into all the key swing states.
The GOP gets an immense hard on with their pumped up ground game, causing their voters to outperform the Dems not just in the Presidential but all the downballot races. Do we really think the GOP will not get hot and bothered by the potential of this new Viagra and the plutocracy won't use it to screw the US even more efficiently than they have in the past?
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Obama's team may have nuked the clueless Romney campaign this time around, but there were unintended consequences from Hiroshima.
The marketing sophistication that Sasha Issenberg has been writing about in Slate (such as this article) and in his book Victory machine can be applied by the GOP just as effectively as it has by the Obama campaign. The GOP will no doubt learn the worst lessons from the big money, algorithmic marketing sophistication- the same stuff the Obama campaigned used which is a political re-purposing of the technology that allows corporations to know to send you mass mailings for baby products when your purchasing profile fits that of an expectant family.
Not only will it identify themes that will avoid alienations of large blocks of voters (the Virginia fiasco, and Romney's "illegals" theme), it will allow the GOP to behave in a more chameleon fashion to tailor messages given the known affinities of particular voters.
I am a big believer in techniques that win elections for Dems, but this technology is a powerful masking tool and does not care about the truthfulness of the ideas or the merit of candidates being promoted. As the GOP picks up these weapons and uses them effectively, we will be examining how anti democratically manipulative these tools can be.
John, not quibbling that the GOP can still cause a lot of trouble and even more should they adopt President Obama's GOTV methods in the future, but I think you're missing one important thing: the reason the President's GOTV are so successful for him and other Democrats.
Given a choice between what Democrats stand for and what Republicans want to do, the great majority of voters in this country support the Democratic positions. A great GOTV effort only wins elections for a party when there's a large supply of non-voters who support the positions the party holds.
Republicans just don't have those positions. Or candidates.
Actually they were pioneered by Rove.
Issenberg is not just talking about GOTV. He's also talking about microtargeting techniques that Rove actually pioneered using to great effect in 2004. The national GOP has positions that resonate with devout Catholics, but other messages that alienate those who have family members who are undocumented immigrants. Maybe it would be best if I didn't attempt a paraphrase of his main themes. He speaks well for himself and I highly recommend reading some of his articles on Slate.
Rove used very coarse segmentation, but the clustering of target voters can be much more fine grained and because of the highly targetable internet advertising, social media and email this allows much more fine grained targeting of messages designed to persuade.
Statistical analysis is my thing and though I don't know this particular application, analysis of large bodies of information can reveal non intuitively obvious things. For example, most pundits labor under the mistaken belief that the most persuadable voters are in the middle. Statistically this has been shown to be false- But don't take my word for it, search in this article for the Emily's list findings, or the "middle-partisan fallacy".
Of couse there will be lessons learned on both sides. The right wing has to convince it's $$$ people to invest in the ground game, and these election results will certainly go a long way towards that. My points are that the GOP has burned it's bridges with women, and with government workers. Same with Hispanics. Let these fools invest whatever they want, but if they want to win they surely better moderate their radical positions IMHO.
I don't think people have very long memories.
How else could a 1% Wall Street guy be this close in the national polls just 4 years after Wall Street crashed the economy?
Exactly
I just hope the Block the vote affects them unilaterally ...it would be poetic justice
Maybe the VAgina's in VA will make that state swing to the left.
Hakuna Vagina!
Virginia is a must win for Romney. Watching the polls over the past week it is drifting to Obama, consistently but close. If Obama wins Virginia, the game is up for Romney and he knows it.
Obama 324 Romney 214
another mandate for moving use forward!!!
When you look at Nate Silver's chart, the single number with the most probability is 332, and has been for a long time. That includes OH, VA, and FL. Without FL, it's 303, which is a lot closer to his predicted number. But you have to remember that his prediction is just a compilation of all the possible numbers and their relative likelyhood.
It would be SWEET to get Florida, but I will be very happy with 303.
yes true but that was just a quick SAWG on my part.
smiles
Mike, I'll be satisfied with 270...
Agreed. Just noting that the states where Obama currently has a lead in the polls, the total is 303. That doesn't count FL or NC. From there he could afford to also lose OH and VA and still get 272.
He got 358 four years ago. Forget Indiana (-11) and you're at 347. Give up NC (-15) and you are down to 332. Drop Florida and you still have 303. Lose Virginia (-13) AND Ohio (-18) and you still have 272.
Yes, the GOP can still STEAL this election, but they have to "expand the map" of voter suppression outside of FL and OH. Which may explain Pennsylvania.
Piggyback on what no mas said, I just want 270. Everything else is icing on the cake.
NOTE: Obama got 365 last time, but the states he won then have 358 votes now, due to the 2010 census.
Look at all of those swing states turning a pretty shade of Obama blue.
Paul Ryan is the Pope's hope. Their agendas are the same. Both seek political power and the chance to have the government enforce their religious edicts, and then they can blame the government for taking away women's rights.
We are not far from having a Taliban form of government.
FYI, Obama can get 272 electoral votes WITHOUT OHIO OR VIRGINIA.
He would need to get all the other ones he is currently favored in, including IA, NV, CO, etc.
At Real Clear Politics they show a tie, with a ridiculous number of tossup states (141 electoral votes). But if you go to the "no tossup" map, you get the same 303 that others predict.
Yep. Latest PPP poll out of Colorado is Obama 52 - Rombot 46
https://twitter.com/ppppolls/statuses/265463410018365440
4 more years for President Obama
Muslim fundamentalists, Christian evanglicals, Roman Catholics, and fundamentalist Jews have some of common denominators. They all are dominated by old men and they are all opposed to giving women control of their own bodies. They claim their God insists that women are lower creatures, but I have never known a woman who was second class to any man. Why do all these groups want to deny women control of their own bodies. Is the motivator fear or hate?
Both. Put the word "fundamentalist" in front of "Christian," "Moslem" or "Jew" and you turn those nouns into adjectives describing the particular shade of brown of that variety of bullshhitt.
Think MacDonald should be prepared to be "probed" on the morning after!