Don’t Get Cocky
August 27th, 2012 - 8:45 am
David Harsanyi says the momentum has moved to Mitt:
Though Democrats, and helpful pundits, have encouraged the perception of Obama’s inevitability all year, nearly every major national polling firm has had the race within the margin of error from the start. Polls now show Romney not only competitive in Virginia, Florida and Ohio, but also making gains in states that conventional wisdom says were out of his reach: Wisconsin, Michigan Nevada and others.
Apparently, I’m not a “helpful” pundit, because I told you just over a year ago that all those states were in play — including WI and MI. Here’s the very first EC map I put together for the 2012 cycle, back on August 4, 2011.
I’ll continue to do my level best to be unhelpful.
Same map I had, except MN I had as Blue. And I thought there was a small chance with ME.
Strangely, the Obama camp sees NC as being in play. I don’t get it. They barely squeaked by there in the last election, as in IN. They have given up on IN, so why keep trying in NC? Large black population, maybe?
When they decided to focus on NC, they were working from predictions that didn’t pan out. They were going to benefit from all those new voters they’d registered in 2008, who would come out once again to defend their loan modifications, food stamps, health insurance rebates and other government goodies. Remember, too, they figured unemployment would be in the 5-6% range by now. They did their level best to boost Romney as the Republican nominee, figuring a RINO would depress Republican turnout and fail to attract independents once they got through demonizing his private equity background.
With the economic and electoral winds at his back, Obama would cruise into Charlotte for his coronation and solidify his tenuous hold on the state.
Now they know this isn’t going to happen, but it’s way too late to change convention venues and they can’t be seen as losers in their own convention state. So they’re keeping up the happy talk, at least for the next couple of weeks. Then they’ll start trying to “adjust expectations”.
I’ve got Romney down for 300+ electoral votes with a most likely number of 315.
We’ll see.
The map looks pretty prescient right now except i keep remembering how even in the 2010 landslide most of the close ones all went dem (the co ans wa senate seats & about a dozen house seats called the day after. State after state keeps going to tossup column but none of the long term tossups (fl, oh, va even nc) are going red and i cant shake the feeling that on all the close ones Acorn under another name wil drag O over the finish line