How does Romney lose Ohio?

As the polls come in one swing state after another showing Romney with a lead, it appears that Ohio is going to be bell cow for the whole race.

So I looked at the past 3 races to get a beat on what it's going to take for Romney to win Ohio.

Here are the results of the past three Ohio races..........








Let's start with the total vote counts in '04 and '08. All the campaigns in these years had huge Ohio ground games, which accounts for the total vote being so much higher than 2000.

I think it's probably safe to assume that this year's vote total is going to be similar to the past two elections; roughly 5.6 million votes cast. There's some evidence that the McCain vote was suppressed because of evangelical no shows but that only works to Romney's favor.

Now let's look at McCain's total vote of 2,677,820. I cannot think of any scenario in which one McCain voter would switch their support to Obama this round. In my mind, if you weren't inclined to vote for Obama four years ago, why would you vote for him today? The great economy?

That means that to take Ohio, Romney needs to flip about 135,000 Obama voters from '08.

A hundred and thirty five thousand votes is well within the Bush '04 count which is probably a republican's total upside.

How likely is this to happen?

Consider the following difference from '08

1) The economy, not exactly running on all cylinders.
2) A republican governor and secretary of state, which should limit the number of illegal democratic votes in Cuyahoga county.
3) The Romney war chest. It's absolutely huge and ready to dump money everywhere.
4) Coal miners
5) Talk to a few unemployed 25 year olds who were so bright eyed and bushy tailed in 2008. 
6) Delphi pensioners sold out during the auto bailout.
7) Kasich, Portman, and Mandel are all about the state with their individual infrastructure, something McCain had none of in 2008.
8) Romney is not McCain. McCain so pissed off evangelicals, many opted not to show up. These people are foaming at the mouth to get into a voting booth this go round.


With all that said, how does Romney lose?

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Mitt Romney Jokes and One Liners at Al Smith dinner with President Barac...

How is this race even close?

Apparently, Romney is big in rural areas..........

The random cellphone and land line poll of 600 likely rural voters in nine battleground states Oct. 9-11 has Romney at 59 percent among the survey’s respondents. Obama’s support is now down to 37 percent among rural battleground voters, a plunge of 10 points from the actual rural vote in those states four years ago.

The nine battleground states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin have a collective rural population of 13.6 million, according to the Census Bureau.

“It’s a boon to Romney,” says pollster Anna Greenberg of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, the Democratic partner in the survey. “It will help him … because, of course, he will lose urban areas by a similar margin. And the suburban areas are still pretty competitive.”

This is what I don't get. Romney is doing better than McCain in 2008 with the following groups

1) Jews
2) Men
3) White working class
4) Hispanics
5) Catholics
6) Asians
7) Young people
8) Old people


And to some level he's doing better among blacks.

In fact, I haven't seen a subset that Romney's doing worse with outside of women and even that gaps closing.

So if he's doing better than McCain among all these groups, how is this even close?

More....

McCaskill: The Good News Is Emissions Are Down Because Of The Recession

If the Obamunists get their way they'll totally wipe out global warming by killing the US economy in its entirety.

Clinton "takes responsibility"

What does that mean?

Seriously, ever since Janet Reno "accepted responsibility" for the Branch Davidian FUBAR, I've always wondered what that meant to a politician.

To "accept responsibility" means to accept consequences. If it's a big enough screw up that should mean either loss of job or criminal charges or some other negative consequence.

Imagine going into your boss and "accepting responsibility" for a lost account because you forgot to follow up with important information to the customer.

What are the potential consequences?

Well, if you are a Secretary of State it means........

1) you admit to a boo boo.
2) you travel to Peru
3) you collect your next direct deposit

This is why I hate politicians.

Worst Debate Question Ever (from 1992)

This isn't the worst debate question ever. The answer was the worst ever.

H.W. should have walked off the stage and slapped the crap out of this guy.