Did Obama Actually Reach the Top of His Hill?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

If I were to be honest right this moment about what I think is going on with the election, the map above would be it. If you asked me 5 days ago, I'd have been fairly intent that Romney had Ohio sewn up, that Wisconsin was highly likely, that Virginia was locked up. With Hurricane Sandy giving Obama a boost at the end here, we're forced to go with what the data has, and I'm not sure Romney has the path to victory he had a week ago anymore, nor do I have any clue what to make of the states in beige. My gut says Obama takes 3 of 4 of them, if not all 4, even though I still can't make the math work on how some of the poll toplines mesh with the trends in early voting, independent voter preferences and party identification. Regardless, what should have been a cakewalk for Romney has clearly not been.

So what went wrong?


* Romney failed to capitalize: He wasn't "Mr Nice Guy" the way McCain was, for sure, but the reality of the failed presidency of Barack Obama never really made clear from Romney in a way that resonated with the voters he needed. His massive, massive whiff at the town hall debate regarding Benghazi is really unforgivable and likely lost him that debate outright. That they continued to fail to hammer home this massive foreign policy failure (or much of any of Obama's multiple failures in this regard) is a key reason why this stayed close. Part of this was due to...

* Romney's mismanagement of resources: Romney has had a cash on hand advantage for two months now. You'd never know it. Dumping money into ads is one thing, but ads and rallies and lawn signs don't move votes. The "Death Star" approach worked in the primary because no one had any direct money to fight back with, and the campaign's assumption that a flood of advertising and cash in the final weeks would work here clearly did not. Granted, much of the message was blunted by the hurricane, and you can't control that, but when you have 8 weeks of a financial edge, 4 weeks of the wind at your back after the first debate?

* The media: Let's face it - the media largely gave Obama a pass on Benghazi, held Obama to a standard for the bad economy that they haven't historically held others to, and so on and so forth. Meanwhile, Romney's record was distorted, his message thrown into disarray, etc. The media is what the media is, and we can't really change that, but Romney's inability to counter that is on him and his campaign. It would be bad form for Romney to push the Hurricane as well, but given how NYC is faring, given the gas riots and such, we'd expect...different coverage. But hey, Governor Christie is appreciative, so we'll run with it, right?

So can Romney still pull this out? If he does, it will be because the polls are wrong, plain and simple. I've held from the beginning that the data needs to be in the forefront, and the polls, at the end of the day, have not held constant with what one would expect from Obama's presidency. We can complain all day about the sampling of the polls, the likely voter screens, etc, but the data is what the data is, and if the polls are wrong, this will be why:

* Sampling: The likely voter screens have been looser than ever this year, some showing upwards of 80%. The polls have often - but not universally anymore - shown higher-than-expected Democratic samples, but when the better-sampled polls aren't doing much better for Romney, it becomes clear that it's more statistical noise than anything else. That Gallup's shown the most realistic likely voter screen and also the most favorable national poll to Romney isn't a surprise, but Gallup hasn't polled in a week and Sandy is impacting trendlines.

* Ground game: My assumption, at this point in time, is that Romney's ground game advantage in many of these key states will not be enough to overcome 3 point deficits in the polls. If a poll is a tossup, if the state is within 1 in either direction, turnout advantages begin to matter. I don't think Romney is going to lose Iowa by three points, but I don't think he can win it by a hair or two, either.

* Math: It's funny to say this, but this is ultimately Romney's only saving grace at this point - that the prognosticators, even Nate Silver at one time, note that winning campaigns don't lose independents at the rate that Obama is losing them. There's also the early voting issue, which is something pollsters have shown themselves to be quite questionable at while Romney has shown significant gains relative to 2008. Combine these two issues with turnout statistics thus far and...

Overall, I don't really think Romney's going to win at this point. He can, it's possible, but he blew the biggest gift given to a candidate in 30 years on his road to get to this point. Hopefully Republicans learn from this if Obama is coming out as the victor in 30 or so hours, but we'll see where that goes.

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, aside from the unemployment rate, what if anything suggested that this would be one-sided in favor of Mitt Romney?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Without rehashing every post I've made on it all over again: economic growth, voter demographics, approval ratings (which only improved recently), and the like.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

* Romney was a terrible candidate out of touch with most of america. He had the unfortunate task of appealing to an increasingly hyperbolic right who has taken over the Republican party and then having to switch gears to appeal to the rest of the US which made him come of as extremely double-faced.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Romney wasn't the best, but he wasn't the worst, either. Given the nature of attacks on social issues in regards to Romney, I'm not sure Santorum could have handled that sort of attack, for example.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Nobody worth beans would have won the Republican primary.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

To be fair, nobody worth beans actually ran.

Maybe it's for the best if Obama wins and we continue this slow-burning death spiral. Ryan's star certainly hasn't diminished in the last two months, and he would have been much better in retrospect.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Nobody popular with the general public was going to win the republican primary. Republican powers that be knew this so they pushed the guy who was best at two-facing it. Unfortunately they pulled a Kerry.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

So economic growth, which is only one issue, is the one the GOP wants to run on? Really? Voter demographics favor the Dems, not the GOP. Approval ratings are a notoriously poor guide.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I don't know why you never use cuts until being prompted.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

So economic growth, which is only one issue, is the one the GOP wants to run on? Really?

Romney took his eye off the ball a few times on this, as t was easily the most winning issue out there.

Voter demographics favor the Dems, not the GOP.

I fully disagree. You're thinking solely ethnic and gender-based demographics (which Michael Barone makes a good point about (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/10/29/changing_demographics_wont_mean_the_end_of_republican_party_115941.html) here), I'm thinking along those lines as well as ideological demographics.

Approval ratings are a notoriously poor guide.

I'm not convinced of this at all, but Obama passed that threshold recently, so it's largely stopped mattering.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Mainly because my monitor is huge and I never think of it for anyone else.

That and I despise them. :)

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Not everyone's screen is a huge LCD plasma! Elitist!

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Oh well. Each of us hates a rule or two. One stubbornly refuses to put more than two words of "opinion", another insists to kill people's f-list screens with humongous texts, and I'm really hating the prohibition from occasionally punching people on the face through the screen. And yet... Duh!

[weswilson]

Show me on the graph where the opinion "Romney will win Ohio" was formed.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Ohio's truly been in Mitt's column since June. Accepting the bad summer as it was, we're looking at a 3 point differential on average at worst since the summer - that's within the margin of error of most polls, and the RCP average doesn't weight for poll accuracy.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Hey, I fix it. No harm, no foul.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

my monitor is huge

Go Big Daddy!

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Freaking work beckons.

Leaving this here:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/02/us/politics/paths-to-the-white-house.html

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

How? The GOP's advocating the kind of policies that got us into the mess to start with. How is that really a winner?

What are ideological demographics? And frankly put, so long as the GOP wants to chase the evil brown-skinned immigrants it will reap what it sows for that.

Harry S. Truman would beg to differ on this. As would George W. Bush.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Is that a Nook in your pocket, or you just happy to see me?

[oportet.livejournal.com]

Maybe Republicans can learn a lesson from this, the same lesson they should have learned in the 2008 election, the same lesson Democrats apparently learned after 2000 and 2004 - personality is more important than policies. Even if you disagree and put policies first - if the policies are nearly identical, personality comes in for the tiebreaker.

No matter what happens, I think Romney overachieved - and if anyone besides him made it out of the Republican Primary, Obama would be declared the winner before I fell asleep tomorrow night.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

You know it's going down the tubes when the candidate starts talking about himself in the 3rd person, Bob Dole style.

Also, it's very unfair of you to pre-load a concession - my macro offensive won't be ready until mid-day tomorrow but it's not too late for you to accept my icon-based wager!

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

I hate them too. I can't understand why people are annoyed by having to scroll but are not annoyed by having to click to see hidden content.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

It was always Obama's race to lose, not Romney's.

At no point did battleground state polling ever give Romney the win in a 'no toss-up' situation.

And dear lord, what is with the right wing and Benghazi?

It's strange how you tout the math, when you ignore the historical data that favor incumbents in a recovering economy.

And it's unfortunate that once again it seems that Republicans will once again go, "he wasn't conservative enough!" as a response to this instead of joining the majority of the nation on progressive issues. Or maybe it's fortunate since if the economy recovers enough by 2016 and they pull this same shit again it'll give us another 8 years of a Democrat President.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

The spoiler tag at least keeps it from going to a new page. I like that.