Republicans: Where Do They Go Now?

Great discussion of Nate Silver's Electoral Analysis by Young Turks - video below.

They make the point that Nate made one mistake because he believed the "tipping point" state would be Ohio. This time that wasn't the case - it was Colorado. Even if Obama had lost the popular vote by losing Florida and Virginia, he still would have won the electoral college by winning Colorado. That's remarkable!

Cenk Uyger: Virginia went to President Obama by a larger margin than the president won the national popular vote. Which means that Virginia is more Democratic than the average state. . . . (The Republicans) have nowhere to go! They are up the creek and the paddle got left behind years ago.

Michael Shure: There are states now where the Democrats - we always say Arizona, but I think Arizona is a couple of election cycles away from the Democrats. But Nevada is now a blue state. It's a blue state because of the changing demographic there, the population. It's a union state. Retirees are going further south. It seems to me, even with the high unemployment in Nevada, that it's a blue state.

John Iadarola: Obama lost North Carolina to Romney by about two points, and by contrast, Al Gore, who won the popular vote, lost it by 13 points. So ...(Dems) are making massive inroads even there.

Nate Silver's 538 Blog with Chart (see below on this page)

Cenk Uygur, Michael Shure (political correspondent, TYT and Current TV) and John Iadarola (Host, TYT University) break down the numbers and discuss where the GOP could possibly go from this point, and what they can do.

Florida Finally Calls it for Obama

Finally, Florida has finished counting (well mostly) and can certify that President Obama won the state on November 6. Woot-Woot!!! Those 332 Electoral Votes were hard-won and I applaud all the hard work done by Obama For America, the League of Women Voters, and many other groups in Florida. You did good!

Even Rick "Voldemort" Scott couldn't stop the Obama with voter suppression. I hope and pray that Obama really meant it when he said "we have to fix that" about the long voting lines in Florida and elsewhere. Seems to me they could tell states not to load up the ballot with written referendums during a Federal election. A 12-page ballot in November should go the way of the dinosaur.

CBS News:

After a four-day count with neck-and-neck tallies, President Obama was declared the winner of Florida's 29 electoral votes Saturday, earning 50 percent to Mitt Romney's 49.1 percent, according to the Secretary of State's office.

The victory puts the president - who had clinched reelection Tuesday night even without Florida - at a final 332 electoral votes to Romney's 206. It also marks his sweep of eight of the nine swing states, with North Carolina his only battleground loss.

Mr. Obama's margin of victory is over the half-percent mark that would trigger a computer recount unless Romney had waived it. A handful of overseas and military ballots, which have a Nov. 16 deadline, are believed to remain outstanding, but under Florida law, recounts are based on Saturday's results.

Nate Silver: Obama has 86% Chance of Winning

Obama becoming a heavier favorite, in 538's view. Now 86% to win Electoral College. fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) November 5, 2012

Obama unlikely to win by anything like his post-DNC margins. But Romney has no momentum, Obama's state polling is robust, and time is up.

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) November 5, 2012

Headline from 10/29/84: "Mondale upset win predicted": news.google.com/newspapers?id=…

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) November 5, 2012

Good point when considering the Republicans want us to believe that Mitt is going to win in a landslide!

Also the last PEW Poll statistics have come out:

Final Pew Poll: Obama 49 Mitt 42 registered voters. Obama 48 Mitt 45 Likely voters. #p2

— Steve Weinstein (@steveweinstein) November 4, 2012

Pew Poll: Who do you expect to win? Obama 52 Mitt 30. This question is always a strong predictor.

— Steve Weinstein (@steveweinstein) November 4, 2012

Final Pew poll of campaign shows Obama regained much of the ground he lost following the 1st presidential debate pewrsr.ch/Tsny9I

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) November 4, 2012

Ohio's Jon Husted now "Secretary of Voter Suppression"

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted is going to keep trying to suppress the vote until the very last minute. This guy has no shame and no sense of fair play. He just wants Romney to win and will do anything to fix the vote in Ohio. Outrageous and scary that one man can have this much power over millions of voters in a state that often swings the election.

We could have legal problems on Wednesday thanks to this one unethical bureaucrat. Shades of Katherine Harris in Florida when she refused to certify the vote during the 2000 election that gave George W. Bush the Presidency instead of Al Gore.

From The Nation

Once again Husted is playing the voter suppression card, this time at the eleventh hour, in a controversial new directive concerning provisional ballots. In an order to election officials on Friday night, Husted shifted the burden of correctly filling out a provisional ballot from the poll worker to the voter, specifically pertaining to the recording of a voter’s form of ID, which was previously the poll worker’s responsibility. Any provisional ballot with incorrect information will not be counted, Husted maintains. This seemingly innocuous change has the potential to impact the counting of thousands of votes in Ohio and could swing the election in this closely contested battleground.

“Our secretary of state has created a situation, here in Ohio, where he will invalidate thousands and thousands of people’s votes,” Brian Rothenberg, executive director of ProgessOhio, said during a press conference at the board of elections in Cuyahoga County yesterday in downtown Cleveland. Added State Senator Nina Turner: “‘SoS’ used to stand for ‘secretary of state.’ But under the leadership of Jon Husted, ‘SoS’ stands for ‘secretary of suppression.’ ”

In 2008, 40,000 of the 207,000 provisional ballots cast in Ohio were rejected. The majority of the state’s provisional ballots were cast in Ohio’s five largest counties, which are strongly Democratic. Moreover, provisional ballots are more likely to be cast by poorer and more transient residents of the state, who are also less likely to vote Republican.

The number of discarded provisional ballots could rise significantly due to Husted’s directive. It’s also very likely that more provisional ballots will be cast in 2012 than in 2008, thanks to a wave of new voting restrictions in Ohio and nationwide. The Associated Press reported that 31 percent of the 2.1 million provisional ballots cast nationwide in 2008 were not counted, and called provisional ballots the “hanging chads of 2012."

Absolutely insane line to vote in Columbus, Ohio (via @finneganlatimes) twitter.com/thinkprogress/…

— ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress) November 4, 2012

Pundits on Sunday Talk shows attacked Romney ads being shown in Ohio that imply that car companies that took bail-out money are now shipping jobs overseas. It was a bad day to be a Romney surrogate:

It's Not Just Nate Silver Predicting Obama to Win Ohio and the Election

source: NYT 538 Blog

Nate Silver is getting pushback and lots of trash talk for sticking to his prediction that Obama will win the electoral college on Tuesday. Right now the prediction is that Obama has 85% chance of winning the electoral college if the election was held today. Actually, the election IS being held today, thanks to early voting, with thousands of new voters participating in every state. The vote may be slightly disrupted in the Northeast thanks to Hurricane Sandy, but plans are in place for mobile truck polling places in places like New Jersey and New York, which are blue states for Obama anyway. Ohio and Pennsylvania were not as affected by the storm, so any disruptions there are more likely to be overcrowded precincts and shenanigans from their Republican overlords in charge of the election.



And Obama is still set to win Ohio and Pennsylvania based on poll after poll. The only people who seem to doubt that are the pundits who are trying to make this into an "undecided" race when the numbers show something else entirely.

All the quotes from Nate, his detractors and other pundit hackery here:

Snark Amendment: Wagering War on Nate Silver
(Yes, the title is a pun not a misspelling)

There's a good reason for Silver's prediction. Look at the Polls:



All Obama needs is to win Ohio and then Romney can't possibly patch together enough votes to win. Yet media hacks like CNN's Wolf Blitzer, MSNBC's Chuck Todd, and several writers at Politico keep calling the race too close to call. They sound just like the wingnuts at Breitbart and Fox, so where is the journalistic integrity? If they won't report the facts then they are useless, and no better than Dick Morris or Karl Rove.

Particularly despicable is Chris Cillizza of Washington Post who moved Ohio to "Toss-Up" status the other day just because Mitt Romney needs the state to win. No real arithmatic involved, just pandering to the right, or perhaps nervousness about some Republican getting mad on the internet, LOL. Oooo, scary!

Washington Post

The Fix is moving Ohio from “lean Obama” to “tossup” in our presidential ratings amid a slew of polling that suggests that the race has tightened over the past month, even as the incumbent retains the slightest of edges.
. . . After reviewing all of the available public polling data as well as talking to operatives in both parties about the private polls they are privy to, we are convinced that Ohio is a 1-3 point race in President Obama’s favor at the moment.
That — coupled with the state’s electoral history and the absolute necessity for Romney to win the state if he wants to be president — leads us to move it back to the “tossup” category.

In response, numbers guy Sam Wang of Princeton wrote a piece called Perverse media incentive watch: Chris Cillizza

...Cillizza is hardly alone. A few days ago, Wolf Blitzer at CNN cited a single Ohio poll, done by his own organization, showing Obama up by 4%. He then proceeded to call this a "tie," revealing an amazing inability to interpret a simple number. Compounding this is the fact that dozens of polls have been conducted in Ohio. The odds of an Obama lead are extremely high. So why does he persist?
The news media have an incentive to fuzz up the picture: ratings and profit. A message that the cake is fully baked does not automatically bring back the viewers. Without the artificial suspense, Cillizza and Blitzer are put in a position of having to say something substantive or interesting that gets beyond a horserace number. Think how much work that would be.
The same problem extends to the aggregation of polling data, which many sites do (FiveThirtyEight, Oct. 31). But think of all the headlines you have seen about "Romney ahead nationally," "Obama pulls ahead in Wisconsin," "it's a dead heat," and other permutations. Each of these headlines was based on a single poll. But aggregation would lead to fewer news stories - and less of the breathless horserace coverage we are used to.

Today Wang stuck to his guns, writing:

President Obama is peeling away. As you can see from the electoral vote (EV) estimator, he is the candidate with the momentum, not Romney. In terms of EV or the Meta-margin, he's made up just about half the ground he ceded to Romney after Debate #1. And the indicators are still headed straight up.
A few days ago, the word was that Team Romney was buying ads in Minnesota and Pennsylvania. If he wins either of those states I will eat a bug. Ohio...a really big bug. And yes, I will post a photo.
Today I'll address a common concern among the commentariat: will President Obama lose the popular vote? Steve Lombardo is on the case with some Excel curve fitting of a quality that cannot even identify the Debate #1 bounce. Hmmm, someone take his keys away.
Anyway, the short answer: I estimate Romney's chance of winning the popular vote at 6%, odds of 16-1 against.

Here is the Princeton breakdown of states and electoral votes. Looks like Sam Wang won't have to eat a bug.


Another projection by the University of Illinois, Urbana, Election Analytics gives a similar result as Wang and Nate Silver:


Still not convinced? How about four different oddsmakers on Predictwise.com:



So there it is.

David Rothschild writes on Yahoo's The Signal: All eyes on—where else?—Ohio

Since the final presidential debate, 15 polls have surveyed voter opinion in Ohio, the state that is more likely than any other to determine the election. President Barack Obama leads former Gov. Mitt Romney in 13 of them. The candidates tied in one, and Romney leads in one. Those last two polls were both conducted by Rasmussen, one of the more right-leaning polling institutions, as FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver has documented.

No one is saying Ohio is a walk for the president. The Huffington Post's Pollster and the RealClearPolitics average both have Obama leading with 51.2 percent among those who express a preference for either major candidate. There is still time for a shift toward Romney, and it's always possible that there is a systematic bias in the polls.

But I don't think it's likely. Historically, polls have been pretty accurate this close to the election. Based only on these surveys, the Signal gives Obama a 75 percent chance of victory in Ohio. When we factor in prediction markets, that figure ticks up a small amount, to 77 percent.

None of these analysts should be vilified for doing simple mathematical algorithms based on dating that other people provide to them. What is much more worrying is the press spinning numbers in a way they know to be DISHONEST just three days before a major election.

Can We Bet on the Presidential Polls?

PBS News has a great behind-the-scenes look at the polls and other methods for checking the Presidential odds. One point made by an expert in the video (see transcript below) is that some Democrats might have skewed the polls after the first Presidential Debate because they were so fed up the morning after and hung up on pollsters. Yet anyone who was Republican in the same demographic (age, gender, income level, location) might have enjoyed talking about the debate, so their data got recorded instead. Hence, the polls tightened up all of a sudden and Obama lost his lead. That makes sense to me.

If the swings in the polls are making you dizzy and all this feels like a big crapshoot, well . . . that's basically what it is. So the conclusion for PBS Newshour is that betting and gambling websites might be just as accurate, and perhaps more soothing to ruffled voters, than the more academic pollsters who care more about who is voting and why.
Here are a few websites mentioned:
Intrade
Betfair
PredictWise.com
Iowa Markets




PBS Transcript Here

PAUL SOLMAN: Earlier this week, Quinnipiac surveyed voters in three of this election's swing states: Colorado, Wisconsin and Virginia.

MAN: Your telephone number was randomly generated by a computer, and I need to pick someone at random from your household to participate in this survey.

PAUL SOLMAN: To make sure they're polling a scientific sample of likely voters, these callers use random-digit dialing of landlines and cell phones. But that's just for starters, says Doug Schwartz.

DOUGLAS SCHWARTZ, Director, Quinnipiac University Polling Institute: When we call a household, we don't automatically speak to whoever picks up the phone, because they tend to be women. We speak to whoever has the next birthday in the household.

We also call over several days, because we don't want to just reach the easy-to-reach people. For example, seniors, people with young children are easier to reach. So we will call a phone number at least four times between 6:00 and 9:00 during the week, but then we will also try on weekends.

We also conduct interviewing in Spanish. So, it all gets back to this principle of making sure that everyone has an equal chance of being selected.

PAUL SOLMAN: But, of course, not everyone wants that chance.

Do people get angry at you?

DEETA MOUNING, Quinnipiac University Polling Institute: Oh, yes, they do. They blast us out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

But since every pollster claims to come up with a scientific random sample eventually, how can the results be Romney up by four and Obama down by three at the very same time?

A hefty margin of error, says newly minted Ph.D. economist David Rothschild, who works at Microsoft Research in Manhattan.

So, Rothschild incorporates models, polls, and markets into a constantly updated forecast on his blog PredictWise.com.

Last we looked, his data mash-up gave President Obama a 65 percent chance to win.

DAVID ROTHSCHILD, Microsoft Research: I never sweat too much about any individual poll because there's too much noise.

PAUL SOLMAN: Too much noise meaning?

DAVID ROTHSCHILD: Too much movement.

PAUL SOLMAN: Take the so-called bumps after a vice presidential pick, or a convention. Or take the first presidential debate. Say you're a Democrat the morning after.

DAVID ROTHSCHILD: A pollster calls you, you don't want anything to do with it. You're just -- you're upset. You hang up that phone.

They call another guy, exact same demographics as you, because they're trying to fill some sort of demographic hole or whatnot. He's a Republican. He's stoked. He wants to yell for how excited he is for Romney.

The same person on paper looks like he switched to Republican, but what happened really is, is that the Republicans want to talk that day vs. a Democrat who is like, I'm not even answering the phone. I'm in a bad mood. Obama screwed up last night. So...

PAUL SOLMAN: Between prediction markets and polls, which do you trust?

DAVID ROTHSCHILD: Prediction markets, because prediction markets have all of this polling information available to them, as well as additional information.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Through this one, the Iowa Market, 1,600 people place their bets, with a $500 limit per punter....

Director Joyce Berg:

JOYCE BERG: Right now, the markets are favoring Obama. If you look at the winner-take-all market, that market is showing our traders believe there's an 80 percent chance that Obama will get more than half the popular vote.

PAUL SOLMAN: That was before the first presidential debate, however. The odds are now much lower.

But they're still above 60 percent that President Obama will win the popular vote.

So, who's right, the professors, the pollsters, or the plungers?

. . . JOYCE BERG: So, we have gone back over time since the '88 election, looked at over 900 polls, and compared the IEM prediction to the poll prediction, and found, in 75 percent of the cases, the IEM was more accurate than the polls.

We also look at night-before forecasts, and there, in that case, we are usually within about 1.3 percent of the actual election outcome.

PAUL SOLMAN: For the latest odds from Iowa, Intrade and Betfair, just go to our Making Sense website, where we link to all of them in real time.

Ohio Secretary Jon Husted Appeals to Supreme Court

I guess there are no lengths this guy Jon Husted won't go to in order to stop Ohio voters from casting a ballot for Obama. Secretary of State Husted was ordered last week to set up voting for the last three days before November 6, which is the way they have traditionally voted in Ohio. Instead, he is appealing the Circuit Court decision to the Supreme Court of the U.S.

From John Husted's Press Release:

COLUMBUS – Secretary of State Jon Husted today announced that he will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to make the final determination on whether the General Assembly of the State of Ohio or the federal courts should set Ohio election laws. Husted will be appealing the Friday decision by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Obama v. Husted. Regarding this decision, all of the following may be attributed to Secretary Husted:
“This is an unprecedented intrusion by the federal courts into how states run elections and because of its impact on all 50 states as to who and how elections will be run in America we are asking the Supreme Court to step in and allow Ohioans to run Ohio elections.
“This ruling not only doesn’t make legal sense, it doesn’t make practical sense. The court is saying that all voters must be treated the same way under Ohio law, but also grants Ohio’s 88 elections boards the authority to establish 88 different sets of rules. That means that one county may close down voting for the final weekend while a neighboring county may remain open. How any court could consider this a remedy to an equal protection problem is stunning.

This is profoundly sad, and it's a shame that Ohio's Republican Governor won't man up and tell this guy to allow the election to proceed. I guess people will have to march in the streets for justice to be done. Let's hope the Supreme Court rules that this is a state's rights issue and lets the lower court verdict stand.

But then again, they might want to fix another election since it's been several years since 2000. Ugh.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Epic Crowd for the President in Madison, Wisconsin

Huge turnout for President Obama in Madison, WI, yesterday. I love to see him with all that adoration in Paul Ryan's backyard, not to mention Scott Walker.

More Pics at BarackObama.com

A few people showed up to see President Obama in Madison. 30,000, to be exact: twitter.com/Obama2012/stat…
— Obama 2012 (@Obama2012) October 4, 2012

Justice for Pennsylvania Voters!

A Judge in Pennsylvania ruled today that the complete Voter ID law will not be implemented for the November 6th election!!! While poll workers may still ask to see ID, they can't force anyone to use a provisional ballot or tell someone to leave the voting precinct. They have to let people vote, so yay!

I hope Democrats in that state are preparing for poll-watching to make sure no one is intimidated at the polls. I can see ways this may still be a problem, but as long as the news gets around that people can vote without the ID in this particular election, then all should be well. What this means is that the large urban centers of PA won't be singled out for voter suppression, thank God!

CBS News: In Reversal, Judge Blocks PA Voter ID

Tuesday's decision is a sharp contrast to Simpson's ruling in August when he refused to issue an injunction and upheld the law. In that opinion, Simpson said the law "is a reasonable, non-discriminatory, non-severe burden when viewed in the broader context of the widespread use of photo ID in daily life."

He also said that opponents of the voter ID law "did an excellent job of 'putting a face' to those burdened by this new requirement," but he did not "have the luxury of deciding this issue based on my sympathy for the witnesses."

Opponents appealed his decision to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. After hearing arguments from both sides, the Supreme Court returned the case to Simpson and ordered him to "reassess" his ruling based on the availability of ID cards and in light of "expedited" efforts put forth by the Pennsylvania government.

Simpson's decision may not be the final word on this case. It can be appealed back to the state Supreme Court, which is next scheduled to meet Oct. 15 in Pittsburgh.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

GOP Halts Voter Sign-Up in 5 States

Because of a shady consulting firm now under investigation in Florida, Republicans have stopped registering voters in five swing states. This is almost too good to be true - Rachel Maddow called it "the reverse of an October surprise" because it is such a gift to the Democrats.



Rachel Maddow made the point that usually each party would remain in a state until the deadlines, which you can see from the graphic below are a week away in some cases. So this is premature, uh, pull out . . . ahem . . . for the Repubs.





NBC News: RNC Cuts Ties with Firm Over Voter Fraud

Out of 304 Republican voter registration forms recently dropped off by a Strategic Allied employee at a small "satellite office" of the Palm Beach elections office, 106 were flagged as potentially fraudulent-- including "a lot" with "similar looking" signatures and others with apparently phony addresses, Susan Bucher, the Palm Beach elections supervisor, said in an interview.

Among the suspect home addresses were those that matched a gas station in Miami, a medical building in Boca Raton and a Land Rover automotive dealership in Palm Beach County, she told NBC News. Bucher said she called in the political director for the Palm Beach Republican Party and the GOP official agreed that the registration forms were a problem. She then took the forms to the Palm Beach County State's Attorney's office on Monday and requested the investigation.

In a statement issued Tuesday night, Mike Grissom, executive director of the Florida Republican Party, said: "When we learned today about the instances of potential voter registration fraud that occurred in Palm Beach County, we immediately informed the Republican National Committee that we were terminating the contract with the voter registration vendor we hired at their request because there is no place for voter registration fraud in Florida."

From the first video below, the discussion between Chuck Todd and Michael Isikoff:  

Chuck Todd: Mike, you can't help but sit there, Republican Party has been pushing this line, Acorn, all of this, and the only evidence this year comes from their side.  

Michael Isikoff: Exactly. I should say I spoke last night to Nathan Sproul, he says he is the victim. He says he has strict quality control measures. . . . He is furious at the Florida Republican Party for suggesting his firm was involved in voter fraud. You could see lawsuits here which would make it even messier.

All Over but the Shouting for Romney

It's all over but the shouting. Well, except the debates, but I don't think those are going to make much difference. Maybe it's just all over but the crying, recriminations, blame game, and circular firing squad. Well, actually all that has started even in the national media, so we have to look away when it becomes embarrassing. And try not to enjoy it too much, heh . . .

Whatever: the fact remains that many of the Electoral Maps are beginning to look the same as the race tightens up and early voting is beginning in many states. The idea that this is still a "horse-race" between Romney and Obama, or that many states are in the "toss-up" category is probably bogus. I don't rule out voter suppression or election day shenanigans, but Romney almost needs to win every swing state in order to get to 270 electoral votes, and I just don't see how that could happen at this point.

Business Insider quotes Romney saying last week: "I’m very pleased with some polls, less so with other polls, but frankly at this early stage, polls go up, polls go down."

Yep, polls do go up and down, yet many voters are locking in their choices by getting to a voting booth now or sending in their absentee ballots. The election is "happening now," as Wolf Blitzer likes to say.

Business Insider also points out the pitfalls of Romney's almost impossible path to victory because every state they mention is leaning Obama at the present time. If Romney loses one, he basically loses all of them.

Florida is a virtual must-win for Romney. If he loses, he would have to take swing states Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Nevada and Virginia to get past 270. That's an extremely illogical path to victory — especially because two of those states (Ohio and Wisconsin) have moved to the "lean Obama" column on the RCP average.

. . . Without Ohio, Romney has to win Florida, as well as New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, Virginia and Colorado.

. . . if Romney loses [Virginia] he'll have to hang onto Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire, Iowa and Colorado as the most plausible path to victory. If Ohio keeps leaning as left as it has been lately, Romney will have to do something implausible — like steal away Michigan or Pennsylvania, two states where Obama has a huge advantage.

. . . If Romney cannot win North Carolina, it's a twofold kick in the gut. First, it would likely mean he's not performing well in other, less-reliable Republican states. Second, he'd have to hold onto Ohio, Florida, Virginia, New Hampshire, Iowa and Colorado to get to 270.

. . . Without Colorado, Romney would have to hold onto Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Nevada.

So there it is - even if Romney holds onto Colorado or North Carolina, what are the chances of all those other states going his way? His chances are slim to none. Obama wins. End of story. I'm not taking anything for granted - just look at the maps!

Nate Silver's 538 Blog on New York Times


CNN Election Map


Real Clear Politics Map

Obama's New Ad Brings Hope to the Table

Obama talks about his vision for American as if he's sitting at your kitchen table.



Compare that with Romney's vision in "Too Many Americans":



And the Obama counterpoint, with quotes from the 47% video:

Romney Losing in Ohio, Race Tightens in Arizona

This morning Nate Silver on 538 gives Obama an 81.9% chance of winning.

He gives Romney just an 18.1% chance of winning.

His "Nowcast" says that if the election were to be held today, Obama would have a 97.8% chance of winning.

Well, actually the election IS being held today because most states have early voting or absentee voting.

Romney has been on a bus tour of Ohio this week, but they may be pulling their advertising out of Ohio to save money because the push isn't working. When you read about how dreadful the rallies are for Romney in that state, it becomes apparent why it might be a lost cause:

From the New York Times

On Wednesday, the Romney campaign reserved $3.4 million worth of advertising time in eight swing states. Nearly half of that — more than $1.5 million — was for Virginia. The rest was spread across Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Wisconsin. His total ad spending for the week is more than $10 million.

Ohio isn't listed. Now it could be that SuperPac money will rush in with more advertising, but at some point the Republicans will shift towards the down-ticket races instead.

When you read about some of his rallies in Ohio its pretty clear why enthusiasm is evaporating. Read, for instance, this devastating snapshot from The Atlantic:

In the Columbus suburb of Westerville, Romney began his day in a high-school gymnasium bedecked with a confounding array of slogans. A whirling "debt clock" raced upward from 16 trillion; video monitors read "Victory in Ohio"; a bright-blue banner professed "We Need a Real Recovery"; and a powder-blue banner stated "We Can't Afford Four More Years." The governor, John Kasich, welcomed him to the stage with a whiplash-inducing mixed message: "Ohio's coming back! Our families are going back to work!" he said, extolling the state's fast-improving and better-than-average unemployment rate. And then, quickly turning dour: "But every day I have to face the headwinds from this president."

Romney's native-son celebrity endorser, golf legend Jack Nickalus, then gave an excruciating 10-minute speech. Nicklaus, now 72 and a Florida resident, is nicknamed "The Golden Bear" after his Columbus-area high-school mascot, and the crowd held signs reading "The Golden Bear for Romney-Ryan." Romney told the crowd he believed Nicklaus to be "the greatest athlete of the 20th century," inviting some ridicule from the sports world, and gave a mostly lifeless 20-minute spiel in which he assured voters he would not lower their taxes. [b]"By the way, don't be expecting a huge cut in taxes, because I'm also going to get rid of deductions and exemptions," he said.

Nancy Pelosi was on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow last night hinting that Obama might have a chance in Arizona now, and AP is reporting the Dems may start to advertise there. That would be huge and would give Obama another path to victory.

AP Story

Signaling confidence, Obama's team is considering competing in Arizona.

Obama looked at competing in Arizona in 2008, but decided against it because of the support there for home state Sen. John McCain, the GOP nominee. Obama still won 45 percent of the vote.

This year, Obama's team talked early on about running in Arizona, which offers 11 electoral votes, but it never did. Now, with an internal Democratic poll showing Obama narrowly leading Romney, Obama's team might make a play for the state that has seen a 160,000 increase in voter registrations by Democratic-leaning Hispanics over the past four years.

Buying television time in Phoenix, the state's largest city, is expensive and Obama advisers are closely watching their finances.

That's not to say that competing in Arizona would be all about winning: going up on the air in the state — or sending the president in to campaign there, could force Romney to spend valuable resources defending a state he should be able to count on in the quest to reach 270 Electoral College votes needed for victory.

If any other red states begin to move into blue territory, then it's over for Romney. I think lots of Republicans here in Tennessee are going to vote for Obama, we may actually go 50-50 this time.

Repubs See the Glass More than Half-Full for Romney

pic by Matt Dawson


The Far Right is desperate to believe that the polls are much closer than is being reported by the "lamestream media." They believe the polls are actually neck and neck in the swing states and that the country is trending much redder rather than blue.

What does Adam say on Mythbusters?

"I reject your reality and substitute my own."

Now they even have their own Pollster trying to "Unskew" the polls.

From BuzzFeed

Dean Chambers, a blogger on Examiner.com who writes from his home in Duffield, Virginia, took that complaint a step further — producing wide Romney leads far beyond what the Republican's campaign or Republican pollsters have suggested is the case.
He created the site unskewedpolls.com, retooling national polling data this July after reading an ABC News/Washington Post poll that "just didn't look right." Looking at the internal data, Chambers saw that the polling unit had sampled more Democrats than Republicans.
"There's no way they can justify that sample," Chambers, 44, told BuzzFeed.
Since July, Chambers has re-weighted national polling data from organizations like Gallup, ARG, and the three networks, to fit the Rasmussen Reports partisan trends. Chambers has published 30 "unskewed" polls on his website and on examiner.com, a national network that pays independent bloggers on a wide range of subject by traffic. In the last month, Chambers's tooled polls have Romney up by seven or more points.

You can see what is wrong with this picture if you compare the Unskewed Poll with the latest snapshot of the country via ElectoralMap.com. To your basic Tea Partier, the country is much more red, the blue of the Democrats is diminishing, swing states only swing to the right, and of course - they win. The problem is that doesn't have much to do with reality. Mitt Romney is an unlikable candidate who makes three gaffes a day, and therefore President Obama will be reelected in just a few short weeks.

But this snapshot of GOP denial is one for the ages.

"Unskewed" Electoral Map Via Examiner


Nonpartisan Map from RealClearPolitics

Republicans Freak Out in "A Tale of Two Emails"

Today, the Obama campaign sent out this email:

Huge news:
We finally closed the gap. We outraised Mitt Romney and the Republicans $114 million to $111 million in August. Unbelievable. After three straight months of getting beat -- and not by a small margin -- more than 1,170,000 supporters made a donation to close the gap.

I admit, I sent in a small donation yesterday while buying a few of cool birth certificate buttons ($5). :)  I love the way Obama is smiling - the birther joke is not on him!
And now he has even more to smile about, too.

Stay with me to the end of this post to discover why this is a "Tale of Two Emails."

First there are the polls which keep bouncing:

CNN Poll: Obama up six points over Romney - wp.me/p4HKM-14ds

— CNN Political Ticker (@PoliticalTicker) September 10, 2012

Sometimes the election is won or lost at the conventions and this looks like it could be one of those years.

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) September 9, 2012

Obama posts gains again in all three tracking polls. reut.rs/RKUihZ

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) September 8, 2012

Here are the full results of our Ohio poll which finds Barack Obama leading Mitt Romney 50-45: publicpolicypolling.com/main/2012/09/o…

— PublicPolicyPolling (@ppppolls) September 10, 2012

Here's a statistic that seems like it might be good news:

Romney up 10 in North Carolina as long as he gets 30% of the black vote: nccivitas.org/wp-content/upl…

— PublicPolicyPolling (@ppppolls) September 10, 2012

Except that according to the WSJ/NBC poll Romney has ZERO percentage of the black vote, and I assume that goes for North Carolina as well. I think NC is probably neck and neck right now, but then it is a traditionally red state and Obama doesn't need it to win. He really needs Ohio, and he seems to have that state in the bag as of now.

Due to falling polls, the Obama bounce, and fundraising that isn't helping Romney at all, the Republicans are forming a circular firing squad. Or maybe we should say they are forming a circle with Romney in the middle as the target. They have to blame someone for the failure of the Republican Convention, the double-disaster of Paul Ryan and Todd Akin, and the basic fact that people are rejecting the far-right scary Teapublican Platform.

Here's Joe Scarborough from MSNBC talking about Obama's speech at the DNC, via Huffington Post.

"We were 10 minutes into the president's speech last night... and I just sat there thinking, 'game, set, match, the Democrats have trounced the Republicans in these conventions,'"

Then via Examiner he called Mitt Romney a "flawed candidate."

Well, duh! I think we knew that back during the primaries. Cry me a river.

Here's Mark Helprin in a Time Magazine piece called "The Troubles" painting a dark and dire future for Mitt as the campaign crashes and burns. I love it when the Republicans finally use apocalypic four-horsman language to describe what their chosen candidate is doing to their own party, instead of directing it at Obama and Main Street.

Romney still has the debates, millions and millions of dollars in TV ads and weeks of campaigning to try to turn things around. But he faces the immediate threat of both quiet and loud we-told-you-so’s from Republicans who last year had the very worries they fear are being manifested now. Romney is an awkward, unlikable candidate....

 . . . he is in danger of living out the Haley Barbour dictum: in politics, bad gets worse. Super PACs might start shifting their money from the presidential race to save the House majority and look to pick up Senate seats. Romney’s own fundraising will take a hit. Stories about Romney pulling up stakes in Michigan and other ostensible battlegrounds will add to the death stench. And there will be an avalanche of suggestions and second-guessing from pundits and Republican operatives and politicians about Romney’s tactics, strategy and staff.

Excuse me while I have a good laugh, LOLOLOL. *snort*

And Halperin is correct ~ people inside the Romney camp are getting worked up - as in "freaking out" - about the poll numbers. Maybe it's that "death stench" floating in the air:

According to Business Insider:

In a new campaign memo circulated this morning, Romney's pollster Neil Newhouse warns people not to get "too worked up about the latest polling."

"While some voters will feel a bit of a sugar-high from the conventions, the basic structure of the race has not changed significantly," Newhouse writes. "The reality of the Obama economy will reassert itself as the ultimate downfall of the Obama Presidency, and Mitt Romney will win this race."

The author of that article, Grace Wyler, makes a good point:

"The bottom line is that people don't send "don't freak out" memos unless people are in fact freaking out."

Yes, compare that email memo to the happy tone of Obama's fundraising email, and you can see which camp is on top right now.

Laughing again. I wonder if this is the week when the first "insider"from the Romney campaign jumps ship to save his or her own career?

It might be a good week to keep a bowl of popcorn ready.

Court in Ohio Restores Early Voting

This is great news for the Obama Administration, who filed the lawsuit against Ohio and Secretary of State Jon Husted. Judge Peter Economus ruled that the state had no good reason for closing the polls that last weekend before the election. Yay!

Interesting side-note about Judge Economus:

Judge Economus and his father, who immigrated to America in 1916, were featured in a segment of "Gasoline Alley," a nationally syndicated comic strip. The theme of the comic emphasized the spirit of America and the naturalization process that we all hold dear. Judge Economus and his wife, Marie, have three daughters and three granddaughters.

How nice that he is playing a role in making the vote more accessible, too!

Reuters Story

Ohio, a prized swing state in the November6 presidential election between Obama and Republican Mitt Romney, allows voting in person to begin on October 2. But the state cut off early balloting on the Friday before Election Day, except for members of the military, saying that would prevent fraud and give election boards time to prepare for voting.

In granting a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Peter Economus wrote that lawyers for Ohio's Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted failed to "articulate a precise compelling interest" in establishing a Friday deadline for non-military voters.

"On balance, the right of Ohio voters to vote in person during the last three days prior to Election Day -- a right previously conferred to all voters by the state -- outweighs the state's interest in setting a 6 p.m. deadline," Economus wrote.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said in a statement that he would appeal the ruling.

My previous posts about Ohio's voter suppression:

Ohio's Secretary Husted Fires Democratic Officials
True the Vote Poll Watchers are Dangerous Vigilantes
State Senator Nina Turner D-Ohio On Fire Over Voter Suppression
Ohio's Racist Voting Agenda on Display

Ohio's Racist Voting Agenda on Display

(Unless you are African American and Want to Vote)
What is going on with Republicans this weekend? Are they finally losing all their marbles over the fact that they are going to lose in November? We have Paul Ryan yesterday saying his foreign policy cred is all about voting for war, Todd Akin from Missouri discussing "legitimate" rape, and now this guy from Ohio admitting that the powers that be don't want black people to vote, period, and are doing everything they can to stop it.

I hope this is a trend . . . It can only be good for Obama & the Dems. :)

A member of the Ohio Board of Elections, Doug Preisse, who just voted to ban weekend voting for everyone, now says he did it to stop the "African-American-Voter-Turnout-Machine." Hmm, I didn't know Ohio had one of those, thanks for demanding that they quote you, LOL.

You cannot make this stuff up!

From the Columbus Dispatch

I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine,” said Doug Preisse, chairman of the county Republican Party and elections board member who voted against weekend hours, in an email to The Dispatch. “Let’s be fair and reasonable.”

He called claims of unfairness by Ohio Democratic Chairman Chris Redfern and others “bullshit. Quote me!”

Well, he may wish he hadn't been quoted because the internet exploded with people calling for the ACLU and the Defense Department to stop holding back and do something about Ohio voter suppression.

By tonight, Preisse was backtracking somewhat and probably wishing he hadn't sent that email to the newspaper. But these guys just aren't too smart, so he told BuzzFeed several times that the African-American voters are a "political operation." He makes it sound as if Ohio has declared war on black voters, and we all have a right to be ticked off and fighting mad about such talk. :(


Interview with BuzzFeed

In an interview with BuzzFeed, Franklin County GOP Chairman Doug Preisse, a close ally of Governor John Kasich, said his comment — which provoked Democratic outrage — was simply straight talk.

Democrats "are trying to say that I had somehow consciously constrained hours for that purpose," Preisse said. "No, I am saying the opposite, that I am asking the question, and I am indeed questioning how far this process of democratic, small ‘d’, democratic voting process should be contorted to favor a political operation. I don’t think we should go overboard in doing that."

. . . Preisse scoffed at the criticism, telling BuzzFeed of a disputed voting plan put forth by Republican Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, "I believe it should be easy to vote, and I believe that under this plan it is.

"I believe that Republicans and Democrats of good will can have a difference of opinion, an honest difference of opinion here, but I also believe that there is no question that the forces of Obama and the other side of the aisle would love to just throw the barn doors open and have 24-hour voting and just go too far in the other direction," Preisse said. "It seems to me we can have a reasonable discussion about this."

Of Democrats' early voting efforts, he said, "How far should the taxpayers be asked to go to accommodate that political operation? That’s where we’re having a difference of opinion."

The Voting Nightmare in Pennsylvania

This story keeps getting worse. I'm losing sleep over it because the whole thing is diabolical and shouldn't be happening in the United States.

The Voter ID Law was upheld yesterday by a Republican judge who saw no harm in disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of voters. The next thing to do is appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court which is deadlocked 3-3, Dem against Republicans. Time is of the essence, but there just seems to be no answer.

CNN Political Ticker Report:

Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania Judge Robert Simpson issued an order on Wednesday saying there was no constitutional reason to stop the law from taking effect. In his opinion, however, he wrote that he had "sympathy" for the witnesses.

The coalition, however, seeks to appeal the law in the State Supreme Court, requesting that the court hear the case on an expedited basis because the election is less than three months away.

The ACLU of Pennsylvania, the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia, the Advancement Project and the law firm of Arnold & Porter filed the appeal jointly.

"The fight in this case could go on after the election. Judge Simpson's ruling was on the request for a preliminary injunction. There could still be a hearing for a final injunction," said the ACLU of Pennsylvania in a statement.

On the same day as that ruling - no coincide - the State of Penn decided to drop a plan to allow online absentee voter registration.

Talking Points Memo

A spokesman for the Department of State said county elections officials told the agency that implementing the new online initiatives as well as voter ID requirements was too much to handle less than three months before the election.

*sigh* I've lived half a century and I just can't believe this is happening in every presidential election.

"You Better Stop, Hey, What's that Sound?
Everybody Look What's Going Down."

Pennsylvania Voter ID Law Upheld

I'm sad about this . . .

Philadelphia Inquirer Story

Even before Commonwealth Court Judge Robert E. Simpson Jr. released his decision, lawyers on both sides of the case had pledged to appeal the ruling.

A petition to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is expected within days, if not hours. More legal briefs and courtroom arguments are expected. Others have been eyeing a parallel challenge in federal court.

Simpson denied a request for a preliminary injunction blocking the state from implementing the law, which requires voters to show state-issued identification before casting ballots.

Opponents complained the new law will unfairly bar as many as 1 million Pennsylvanians from the polls. Supporters say it was necessary to cut down on election fraud.

From Think Progress:

Voting rights advocates plan to appeal the case to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which will likely issue its own ruling before the November election. There is currently an even 3-3 split between Democrats and Republicans on the Court; the 7th Justice, Republican Joan Orie Melvin, is under suspension because of an unrelated corruption scandal.

Since Simpson ruled to uphold the law, Democrats will need one crossover vote to win a majority and strike down the law. Chief Justice Ronald Castille, a moderate Republican from Philadelphia, is most likely to side with the Democrats.

The federal Justice Department is also looking into whether Pennsylvania’s voter ID complies with federal law.

Romney And Obama Camps Trade Barbs

Ouch! Thanks to a speech in Chillicothe, Ohio, yesterday and a statement from the Obama camp, Mitt Romney has a new hashtag on Twitter: #unhinged.

But that's okay, because Romney came roaring back at Obama today on CBS This Morning.


(Obama's) campaign and his surrogates have made wild and reckless accusations that disgrace the office of the Presidency. Another outrageous charge came a few hours ago in Virginia. And the White House sinks a little bit lower.
This is what an angry and desperate Presidency looks like.
President Obama knows better, promised better and America deserves better.
. . . So, Mr. President, take your campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago and let us get about rebuilding and reuniting America. …
~ Mitt Romney in Chillicothe Ohio yesterday, via Business Insider




Governor Romney's comments tonight seemed unhinged, and particularly strange coming at a time when he's pouring tens of millions of dollars into negative ads that are demonstrably false.
~ Obama Campaign Retort from Ben LaBolt

Romney on CBS This Morning:



Mitt Romney: CBS This Morning Interview 8-15-12

The President's campaign is all about division, attack, and hatred. My campaign is about getting America back to work and creating greater unity in this country, which of course has always been the source of America's vitality and strength.
...I think "unhinged" would be what we have seen from the President's campaign.
... I think if you look at the ads that have been described and the divisiveness based upon income, age, ethnicity and so forth, it's designed to bring a sense of enmity, and jealousy, and anger. And this in my view is not what the American people want to see.
...The President seems to be running just to hang on to power. I think he'll do anything in his power to try and get reelected. I want to get this country going again. That’s what brought me to the race and hopefully we can have a debate about issues and our differences on issues and contrast in that area. But these personal attacks, I think, are demeaning to the office of the White House and the comments yesterday by the Vice President, I think, just diminish the White House that much more…. I think the comments of this nature sink the White House just a little lower. The American people expect something better from the President than these kind of divisive comments.