The swing states: a round-up

The road to 270


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Dear Red States,




To sum up briefly:
You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states.

We get stem cell research and the best beaches.


We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand.

We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom.

We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss.






We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.



Citizens of the Enlightened States of America


Frankly, it is disappointing that an analysis so rife with fallacies and inaccuracies finds its way into The Economist. At best, it doesn't stand up to your usual professional standards; at worst, it is plain old biased.
To point out just two examples: you put Colorado squarely in Mr. Romney's column based on a "wildly successful rally", even though you freely acknowledge that the polls there show a tie. You declare Michigan in play based solely on Mr. Obama's worst poll there -- which still puts him in the lead!
Any unbiased analysis recons that while a victory for Mr. Romney is by no means impossible, his path there is, in fact, tenuous, and would require upsets in most swing states where Mr. Obama currently leads in the polls.

Connect The Dots

I will play Nostradamus and make some predictions:

Obama will win a second term.
Romney will over perform fellow Massachusetts presidential candidates Michael Dukkais and John Kerry. And under perform John McCain from 2008.
Utah will go 90% for Romney...but it doesn't matter since he loses his 'home states' of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Michigan and California.
Ohio will go to Obama. The victory will be traced back to the 2008 Big Three Auto Bailout and the lack of Romney support. A Key swing state again proves its worth.

Big turnout for a perceived close election will boost Democrat turnout. What is thought to be a razor thin margin is a popular landslide of more than 5%.

Early voting is key. Election day lines are long and slow.

Hispanics vote 70% for Obama.
Blacks over 90%.
Gays over 90%.
Single mothers are the other key, voting 70% for Obama.
Obama will also win swing states of New Hampshire, Iowa, Virginia, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
Obama will lose North Carolina and Florida.
Romney gets the demented senior Alzheimer votes in FL nursing homes.
Romney is wildly popular in Southern Trailer Parks. I am talking 'fire your all your guns in the air at once' popularity.

Independent Gary Johnson undermines Mitten's numbers in Colorado and New Hampshire. Pot is the issue. After this election, Mitt should now try pot.

Paul Ryan wins! ...his House seat back.

The Senate will stay Democrat with a loss of one seat.

The Tea Party nuts in NJ, Missouri, Indiana and Ohio are kept out of the Senate chamber.

The House will stay Republican with a loss of 12 seats. Tea Party backlash.

The Tea Party will disavow Romney as an Etch-a-Sketch Conservative, and will clamor for True Conservative in 2016.

The PACS strategy of television ad bombardment is now seen as ineffective 'throwing spaghetti at the wall'.

Hurricane Sandy distracts Americans in the last week of the election. Now news is All Obama--All the Time-- 24/7. Mitt is hauling boxes of water bottles and it looks strained and staged.

Mitt supporters cry out: "Remember Romney did really well in the First Debate!" America digs out of the rubble, pumps out the basements, and tears out walls.

Poor timing can make us all look like Fools.

The real threat to Republicans in Demography.

Polls have a major flaw: They ONLY sample landline phones when 30-40% of Americans exclusively use mobile phones. Polls under sample the young, minorities and the on-the-go players. I give Obama an extra 5% on any phone poll

The blame begins on Wednesday.
Romney hits the Jack Daniels. Maybe goes shopping for another younger trophy wife.
Obama winters in Hawaii.

In the End, Mittens is a weaker candidate than John McCain.

However Obama is less fresh and embattled as the incumbent in the Great Recession.

But Obama wins because Romney's weak campaign skills, poor press skills, coarse attempts at disenfranchising voters, negative campaigning, declining importance of tv ads, a poor Republican Convention, bad decision making(ie. Detroit Big Three Bailout and advocating dismantling FEMA), bad international diplomacy skills(insulting Britain, France, and Poland in his Summer Insult the Allies Tour), big wealthy donors lacking a true grass root support, "Secret" 47% comment, and poor timing Act-of-God Hurricane Sandy. A better Republican 2012 candidate would have been Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, or Colin Powell.

Romney remarkably resembles fellow Boston Brahmin, John Kerry.


Pennsylvania and to a lesser extent, Nevada, are not really "neck and neck."

And how can Ohio be "neck in Neck" when Romney has never once had a lead in a majority of polls there?

New Conservative in reply to Bardejov

It's all down to Rasmussen. If they're right and 50 some other polling organizations are wrong Romney wins.

Rassmussen has Romney up 2 nationally
and puts him...
Ahead in Ohio
Ahead in Iowa
Ahead in Virginia
Ahead in New Hampshire
Ahead in Colorado
Tied in Wisconsin

They are what keeps the RCP aggregator so close.

PBuchman in reply to Abraham Yeshuratnam

Your post is rife with misinformation. A few points:







LafayetteBis in reply to Sfeo


Brian Pelican in reply to LafayetteBis










4hrvBNw9E3 in reply to DKSCW

This article is essentially an analysis of Real Clear Politics' Electoral College Map. For poll addicts like myself it's woefully off the mark. I honestly expected more from the Economist.



Connect The Dots


The legislatures then overrode 744 of Gov. Romney's Vetoes.
And Romney wants to claim all credit for Massachusett's accomplishments!


Massachusetts was not lead by Romney, but despite of him.


So who is more of a bipartisan bridge builder?




He burned his bridges with his wise leadership.
He will do the same for America.


Remember 800 VETOS in a single 4-year term governorship

Hitler was more bipartisan than Governor Romney.

Stuart Gordon


Peter Miles



This is the most interesting point - more interesting then the slightly flimsy analysis in the article itself. A post-election examination of the polls, polling, the pollsters will be one of the most interesting things about this election -- not for most people, granted, but from the point of view of political analysis. The difficulty of polling reflects the shifting demographics and not just in terms of their usual groupings but in terms of the changes in the way people live and get their information. As "new Conservative says, people will learn a lot from which of the pollsters got it right and which got it wrong and why -- if Rasmussen and Gallup have somehow been more correct than all the others then people will have to make adjustments in how they decide their underlying assumptions.



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