[Nesster]

This guy makes some good points, ones we need to keep in mind.

Having failed rather spectacularly to correctly predict Mitt Romney’s running mate—I said it definitely would not be Paul Ryan less than 24 hours before he was picked -- I should probably avoid political predictions for a while. But as all those who make their livings in the prediction business know, the secret to success is to make so many of them that a few are bound to be right.

That said, I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that Barack Obama will win the election easily, at least in the all-important Electoral College. I have thought so for some time, but wanted to wait and see if the party conventions changed the political dynamics. They have; they have made me more certain of Obama’s victory.

Pollster Nate Silver has done an excellent job of assembling all of the known political data on where the presidential race stood as of Wednesday. His analysis leads him to project that Obama will beat Romney 51.2 percent to 47.6 percent in the popular vote, and 311 to 227 in the Electoral College where only 270 votes are needed to win. Overall, Silver gives Obama a 76 percent chance of winning the election.

Those who don’t follow the data intensively can be forgiven for not knowing what good shape Obama is in, because it is rarely reported in the mainstream media. There is a simple reason for this: it has a huge vested interest in maintaining the idea that the election is so close it cannot be called and will come down to the last vote cast on Election Day.

That is because the media have huge political operations with many highly-paid commentators who need people reading and tuning in daily to see if their preferred candidate has made any headway. There is also an enormous amount of data being produced daily that requires reporting and analysis—polls, campaign contributions, charges and counter charges, endorsements, gaffes and so on. It is not hard to spin this vast cacophony of material in such a way as to maintain the fiction that the election will be close.

The media, collectively, are in the position of sports announcers calling a game where one team is heavily favored and well ahead. They need to keep people watching so that advertisers will get value for their money. So they use every cliché in the book to tell viewers that “it ain’t over till it’s over” and about all the times the losing team has come from behind to win and so on and so on.

Of course, it goes without saying that once in a while, the losing team does make a comeback and wins unexpectedly. But by the time that happens, all except the winning team’s hardcore fans have changed the channel or left the stadium. However, we all know about those magical come-from-behind victories because the media have an incentive to hype them as a warning to fickle fans that they better stay tuned next time.

The same is going on today with the presidential race. Reporters and commentators are building up Romney’s chances and downplaying Obama’s to keep people interested. This was most evident last week when Republican speakers at their convention were played up and their talking points repeated, as if they were changing the course of the election as they spoke. This week, they are doing the same for the Democrats.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I thought the Republican convention went very poorly. And apparently, I was not the only one. According to Nielsen, television ratings for the Republican convention were down sharply from 2008. And according to Gallup, Romney’s convention “bounce” was the worst for any candidate of either party except for John Kerry in 2004—and we know what happened to him.

We don’t yet know what kind of bounce Obama will get, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it will at least be significantly better than Romney’s. Whereas few Republicans raved about any convention speech other than actor Clint Eastwood’s rambling conversation with an empty chair, Democrats are raving about those by Michele Obama, Bill Clinton and a number of other speakers at their convention.

To be sure, there are still opportunities for Republicans to level the playing field. There will be three debates between Romney and Obama, as well as one between the respective vice presidential nominees. They could make a difference, but history does not show that debates have much impact.

There is also the possibility that the Republicans’ huge money advantage could tilt the race in their favor. However, academic research and anecdotal evidence say that over a certain threshold, additional campaign spending has very little value. For example, in the 2010 governor’s race in California, Republican Meg Whitman outspent Democrat Jerry Brown $177 million to $36 million, yet Brown won very easily, 54 percent to 41 percent.

Too much money in a campaign can be counterproductive to a candidate. Voters become annoyed seeing the same commercials day after day, and resent intrusive phone calls and junk mail from candidates who do too much of it. But it is contrary to human nature for candidates not to spend whatever money is contributed to them. It has no value the day after the election.

In short, while it is not impossible for Romney to win the election, it is Obama’s to lose. As we get closer to the election and this view becomes widespread, it could influence congressional races and tilt the balance in the next Congress. Democrats may be able to free up some money budgeted for Obama to help candidates just needing an extra push to win, while Republicans may pull money from their winnable congressional races in hopes that still more advertising can pull the election out for Romney.

Finally, there is the unknown factor. I won’t even speculate on what that could be. But it goes without saying that Obama could royally screw up in some way or suffer from some foreign policy or other crisis beyond his control. But knowing what is known today, I am comfortable predicting an Obama victory in November.

Read more at Why Barack Obama Will Win the Election Easily

[jeffkrol]

you only have to go to 538...
but the author I believe is correct..... I've suspected this it before in my home state..

The "powers that be" (internal polls) know the real score though..........

Personally I stick w/ 538 at Wapo...
Election Forecasts - FiveThirtyEight Blog - NYTimes.com

[Na Horuk]

Ah, the parties also want it to look like it will be tight. If victory seems assured, people might decide to not waste their time voting and then the unexpected can happen - the underdog wins. Who knows, though.

[Rondec]

I definitely think that Obama is in the driver's seat in this election. There aren't going to be any big revelations about Obama that come out and swing the election. The only thing that could possibly change anything would be a really poor performance on his part in the debates (unlikely).

As to the media's desire to make it a close race, I suppose they do, but the bigger issue is that with the electoral college being what it is, it is more confusing. You can have a pretty close race in the popular vote that is not close at all in the electoral college (once again, pretty likely to me).

[jeffkrol]

. You can have a pretty close race in the popular vote that is not close at all in the electoral college (once again, pretty likely to me).

And you can lose the popular vote yet still win...

[Nesster]

The latest campaign news

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—A new poll released today shows the Presidential race extremely tight among voters who had no access to a working television for the past two weeks.

On the campaign trail, Republican nominee Mitt Romney seemed buoyed by the news, urging his audience not to watch television, read newspapers, or log on to the Internet between now and Election Day.

Mr. Romney attempted to rebut Vice-President Joe Biden’s biggest applause line from last night by telling supporters, “On Day One of my Presidency I will kill General Motors and bring Osama bin Laden back to life.”

As for President Obama’s biggest applause line, “I am the President of the United States,” Fox News said they were fact-checking it.

With the fall campaign officially begun, both Obama and Romney must now spend hundreds of hours and millions of dollars to become President of Ohio.

Only sixty days remain until the election, or in Paul Ryan’s words, “Forty days.”



Read more Poll: Presidential Race Close Among Voters with No Television : The New Yorker

[jeffkrol]

For Colorado, Virginia and other states with major military outposts, Romney's commercials stoke fears about billions of dollars in defense spending cuts if Obama and Congress can't find a substitute for automatic cuts envisioned by a fill-in-the-blanks debt deal they reached last year.

If Romney effectively pinpoints state-specific priorities and problems, the solutions he offers are left more to the imagination. Thirty-second ads don't lend themselves to substantial detail, but the blueprints here are especially vague.

To cope with federal red ink, the ads vow he'll "cut government spending" without saying from where. To bolster the manufacturing sector, the fix is to "stand up to China" on trade without indicating how. To encourage domestic energy production, viewers are told he will "repeal Obama's excessive regulations" and "foster innovation" without going any further. To answer worries about defense, the answer is simply "reverse Obama defense cuts" without hinting at how to plug the resulting budget gap.

"trust them".... Resistance is futile........

AdWatch: Swarm of Romney ads strikes local chords - Businessweek

[jeffkrol]

The latest campaign news

[boriscleto]

Daily Kos: Romney goes dark in Ohio, because who the hell knows

[Nesster]

on that note... Romney?s Playing Field Narrows -- Daily Intel

Romney is targeting eight states: Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and New Hampshire. No Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania. This is surely not because Romney is husbanding scarce cash. Campaign aides also told Fox News yesterday that they basically have so much money they have to come up with ways to get it out the door, Brewster’s Millions–style, before election day. (“We have $100 million we've just raised. If you look at our burn rate to date and our cash on hand, there's not much more we can spend on infrastructure. So we've got to start spending our general election funds in a big way, because you know what the value of that money is on the day after the election? Zero.”) And it’s probably not because they want outside super-PACs to spend in those states, either — they can’t legally coordinate, and the super-PACs will take their cues from the Romney campaign about where to fight. (The GOP super-PACs have already pulled out of Michigan and Pennsylvania.)

The reason this looks worrisome for Romney is that he’s pursuing an electoral-college strategy that requires him nearly to run the table of competitive states. The states where Romney is not competing (and which aren’t obviously Republican, either) add up to 247 electoral votes. The eight states where Romney is competing add up to a neat 100 electoral votes, of which Romney needs 79 and Obama just 23. If you play with the electoral possibilities, you can see that this would mean Obama could win with Florida alone or Ohio plus a small state or Virginia plus a couple small states, and so on.

Unless I’m missing something badly here, Romney needs either a significant national shift his way — possibly from the debates or some other news event — or else to hope that his advertising advantage is potent enough to move the dial in almost every swing state in which he’s competing.

[jeffkrol]

on that note... Romney?s Playing Field Narrows -- Daily Intel

We have $100 million we've just raised. If you look at our burn rate to date and our cash on hand, there's not much more we can spend on infrastructure.

Gee wish the US had that problem...........