Romney a Lock - You Can Put it On the Board YESSSS!!

Here's one where practical experience and academic research meet. Both agree that the most effective means of influencing voters, by about a factor of 10, is face-to-face contact between a campaign and an individual voter -- a factor that's multiplied if the campaign is represented by a neighbor, co-worker, etc. In short, much of the money spent on TV ads would be better spent by paying people to hang out in the local saloon to talk politics.

 

Where do I apply for that gig?

 

And should I wear a suit when I do?

/crossthread

 

Obama looks great in qualitative areas, but his quantitative metrics specifically related to the economy are awful if taken at face value.

I believe that is the area that Rove and his Super pacs will try and highlight.

 

I don't see any of that working. I don't think the ad that acts like he's more interested in being a celebrity than being a president works.

I don't know what would work, but everything they've done to this point barely registers.

 

The question is, would Romney as president, do anything different economically from previous Republican administrations? If not, then it would just more old GOP policies of huge tax cuts for the wealthy, eliminating regulations, gutting domestic programs and anti-labor legislation.

 

Same here.

Although I'd negotiate free beer as part of my compensation. That way, it won't show up on my W-2s [cross-thread]

 

More evidence it will be close (and the Rasmussen is not an "outlier"):

 

"I'm running to pay down our debt in a way that’s balanced and responsible. After inheriting a $1 trillion deficit, I signed $2 trillion of spending cuts into law. And now I want to finish the job by streamlining government and cutting more waste, and reforming our tax code so that it is simpler and fairer, and asks the wealthiest Americans to pay a little bit more."

-- President Obama (Campaign Speech, Ohio State University, 05/05/12)

http://articles.latimes.com/print/2012/may/05/news/la-pn-transcript-obama-campaign-kickoff-20120505

Couple of points:

- Where did you cut $2 trillion?

- What's the deficit now?

- Have you streamlined government, cut waste, or reformed our tax code yet? If not, why would I expect you to accomplish it in a second term?

 

I think we all know the answer to that, Green. You described the GOP platform to a T, minus the vaginal probes and assault on Planned Parenthood, et al, of course.

And count me in as well. It's annoying debating my former HS peeps -- who despite the fact that many of them don't have pots to piss in, think Obama is the anti-Christ -- on Facebook.

 

Know what gets me about the list of "swing states"? How relatively few of them actually swing. Pennsylvania, for instance, has voted Democratic in five straight Presidential elections. So has Michigan. North Carolina and Virginia went Democratic exactly once in the last 40 years, exactly as often and in the same election as did Indiana, which is never called a swing state. Ohio has gone back and forth since 1988, and so has Florida, but they're about the only two. It would be more accurate to call these states "states Romney must win some of to win" states, but that's too long for cable graphics.

 

As Silver usually puts it, the "tipping point" is more interesting than the "swing states." Yeah, North Carolina could be close, but if Obama wins it, it's only in a national mood that puts Obama comfortably winning the election. I really, really can't wait until Silver gets his model up and running so we have the Word of God on this stuff.

Obama won the 2008 popular vote by 7.2%

He won Virginia, Ohio, Florida, Indiana and North Carolina by smaller margins than that. If Romney is even in the popular vote, he should be able to win McCain + those five, but that only gets him to 266.

That makes the tipping points Colorado (Obama won by 8.4%) and Iowa (9.3%). Which supports the point that Romney really needs something like 52-48 to win the electoral map. 51-49 probably still wins the election for Obama.

If Romney winning Florida or Ohio is really in all that much doubt on election day, he's already lost, because he's not winning Iowa and Colorado unless he's popular enough to win those states by a few points.