North Carolina No Longer Ranked 2012 Swing State; Now Listed As Toss-Up State (NY Times Analysis)

Explaining The Times’s Battleground State Ratings

Six months before Election Day, nine states that President Obama carried four years ago are now firmly up for grabs in the latest New York Times ranking of key battleground states, while Mitt Romney holds an early advantage in two other states the president won in 2008.

As the general election race intensifies, Mr. Obama begins with a slim edge in several critical states and has a variety of paths to winning re-election, according to the Times analysis of electoral votes.

But there are considerable opportunities for Mr. Romney, whose candidacy is in a position of strength in enough states where a victory could deny the president a second term.

The Times ratings, which will be reviewed periodically throughout the campaign, find nine states are locked in the tossup category: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

In the quest to win the necessary 270 electoral votes, the president has 185 solidly on the Democratic side and Mr. Romney has 158 in safe Republican territory.

The analysis finds 115 electoral votes in the tossup category, with 32 leaning Democratic and 48 leaning Republican.

The Times rankings are based on interviews with Republican and Democratic strategists and the economic climate, political volatility, polling and electoral history in each state.

Here is a brief rationale for the current collection of toss-up states:

Colorado:

The president’s victory here in 2008 was among his favorites, after the state had voted Republican in eight of the nine prior presidential races. A wariness of big government is testing Mr. Obama this time, but Mr. Romney faces his own challenge appealing to independents and women, whose support was critical to Democratic wins in races for the Senate and governor in 2010.

Florida:

A wave of home foreclosures and a sour economy has complicated Mr. Obama’s path to a repeat victory here.

A growing number of conservative retirees offer Mr. Romney hope, but the outcome could hinge on whether he can win over Hispanic voters, particularly younger Cuban Americans in southern Florida and Puerto Ricans in central Florida.

Iowa:

The state that paved Mr. Obama’s path to the presidency could complicate his re-election, despite an economy that is more robust than many other states. Mr. Romney faces a challenge of exciting evangelical voters who did not support him earlier this year at the Iowa caucuses. In a close race, these six electoral votes are critical to both sides.

New Hampshire:

The president is leading in some early polls, but the state is too volatile to make any predictions at this point.

Mr. Romney has been seen as a favorite son, having been governor in the state next door, Massachusetts.

The Republican gains in 2010 have created a backlash among some Democrats in a state that will be a backdrop for the presidential campaign.

Nevada:

The Romney campaign has a ready-made laboratory to argue that the policies of the Obama administration have not worked, particularly in a state with the nation’s highest rates of home foreclosure and unemployment.

But the president is traveling to the state again and again, hoping his appeal to Hispanic and lower-income voters will deliver the state again.

Ohio:

It is hard to picture Mr. Romney winning the White House without Ohio.

An improving economy could help Mr. Obama, particularly with a revival in the auto industry, but the state’s conservative leanings still pose a significant challenge.

It will likely break late, with neither candidate winning the early enthusiasm race.

Pennsylvania:

Republicans have lost the last five presidential elections here, but it is not an automatic lock for Mr. Obama. Democrats have an edge in voter registration, but new voting laws concern party leaders.

This state could eventually lean Democratic as the campaign moves along, but the president has yet to prove that the key independent voters will be on his side.

Virginia:

The population shifts in Northern Virginia are changing the state’s political demographics. The president carried the state by seven percentage points in 2008, but that margin belies the true fight underway in the state this time.

This is one of the states Mr. Romney needs to put back in the Republican column if he is to be elected.

Wisconsin:

The political climate here is volatile, given the June recall election of Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican.

A flood of outside money – pro-union and antiunion – has created a charged dynamic.

The president has an early edge over Mr. Romney, but the environment is too uncertain to safely move the state into the Democratic-leaning column.

The Times rankings also include four states that lean Democratic, including Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico and Maine, which allows its electoral votes to be divided and Mr. Romney is fighting for at least one.

In this group, Michigan and New Mexico are the most competitive and could become true tossups as the race progresses.

In an interview last year, Mr. Romney declined to commit to competing aggressively in his native Michigan, saying he would make his determination on the state of the race rather than family sentiment.

This state is worth watching closely.

The Times rankings also include four states that are leaning Republican, including Arizona, Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina.

(One electoral vote in Nebraska, which also allows its allocation to be divided, is also included in this category, after Mr. Obama won it in 2008.)

In this group, North Carolina is the most competitive and could become a toss-up as the campaign develops.

Four years ago, Mr. Obama narrowly carried the state and is aggressively targeting it again.

Arizona is another state to watch, with the president’s re-election team sizing it up over the summer to see if it is worth making a full investment in the fall.


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Sources: AP, ABC News, AlJazeera English, CBS News, CNN, McClatchy Newspapers, NY Times, Youtube, Google Maps

Obama & Romney's 2012 Election Armageddon: Electoral vs Popular Votes (Deja Vu' Bush & Gore!)

How Another Electoral Split Decision Could Divide America

In looking ahead toward the November election, Republican strategists should take proactive steps to avoid a damaging, dangerous conclusion to the presidential race and to prevent the very real chance that Mitt Romney will win the Electoral College even while losing the popular vote badly to Barack Obama.

The problem stems from the lopsided margins President Obama will surely pile up in a few uncontested states with big populations, including California, New York, Illinois, and Massachusetts.

Romney, meanwhile, will likely prevail by comparable margins in only relatively small states: Utah, Idaho, the Dakotas, Alabama, and Alaska.

The big states that offer Romney his most plausible path to Electoral College victory probably will be won by much smaller margins, leaving Obama with a clear popular-vote advantage.

All credible scenarios for a Romney victory with his “swing state” strategy begin with the presumptive GOP nominee holding all 22 states McCain carried, which are worth six additional electoral votes this time because of reapportionment.

From this Republican base, Romney needs to implement a three/two/one trifecta: winning back the three traditionally Republican states (Indiana, North Carolina, and Virginia) that Obama carried last time; seizing the two perennial battlegrounds that elected George W. Bush twice (Ohio and Florida); and then winning one more state—even a very small state—(New Hampshire is a likely candidate) to bring him the magic number of 270 electoral votes.

In order to accomplish this feat, Romney needs to add as few as 650,000 votes to McCain’s totals in just six decisive states to get an Electoral College victory with the bare minimum of 270 votes, even though Obama won in 2008 with a near-landslide margin of nearly 9 million votes in the popular total—18 times Al Gore’s popular-vote advantage over Bush.

A more likely outcome would give Romney wider margins of victory in swing states, while carrying a few other hotly contested states in the bargain. For instance, he could prevail in both Nevada and Iowa (where he developed strong local support in the caucuses) for a total of 282 electoral votes to Obama’s 256.

But even assuming that in each of the states mentioned above he won by 20,000 votes (bigger than Obama’s North Carolina margin last time, and large enough to avoid notorious squeakers like Florida’s 528-vote margin in 2000), Romney would still fall far short of a popular-vote victory.

Even without adding to his own vote totals (despite population growth and expansion of the voter rolls), the president would still pile up an advantage of at least 7 million votes—substantially more than Bill Clinton’s comfortable margin of 5 million against George H.W. Bush in 1992.

GOP partisans may blithely dismiss such calculations as meaningless since the Constitution unequivocally declares that the candidate with the most electoral votes becomes the next president, and the national tally of popular votes means nothing in the eyes of the law.

But only once before did a sitting president lose the White House despite winning the popular vote, and Grover Cleveland’s 1888 margin over rival Benjamin Harrison was slender—48.6 percent to 47.9 percent. By contrast, Mr. Obama could prevail by as much as the 7 percent margin that gave him victory last time, while still losing the Electoral College to Romney.

Grover Cleveland quietly vacated the White House without protest, confirming his reputation as a leader of unassailable integrity and profound humility. Would this happen in 2012? Would President Obama attempt to calm angry spirits of his partisans on Nov. 7 were the results to show a “split decision?”

It’s easy to imagine the national levels of rage, and impossible not to envision the president of the United States lending his voice to the angry chorus.

In the five weeks before Dec. 17, the day when electors formally assemble in their respective state capitals, the president could push electors to shift support to him—even if they defied state legislation requiring winner-take-all distribution of electoral votes to the victor in that state and ignored laws of 24 states threatening punishment to “faithless electors.”

The arguments would be fiery and, most likely, somewhat effective: insisting that basic fairness and democratic principle should trump any concern over the creaky, 19th-century relic known as the Electoral College.

Obama might even consider the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.

Between 2007 and 2011, eight deeply partisan Democratic states (Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois, Hawaii, Washington, Massachusetts, Vermont, and California) and the District of Columbia enacted legislation demanding that their electors cast their votes for the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of which candidate won the state.

This provision would only take effect if enough states agreed to this compact to represent a majority of all electoral votes; in an emergency, Democrats might attempt to coerce the five wavering states they need to take action in time to make a difference.

Such action would raise a host of constitutional questions, but the Supreme Court might be unable to provide a final settlement of a disputed election as it did in 2000.

For one thing, Obama has already made contempt for the court a hallmark of his presidency—as he did when he used the State of the Union address to openly condemn the Citizens United decision on corporate spending for political advertising.

If the court strikes down key elements of the Affordable Care Act in June, the president will no doubt display additional outrage.

The element of race could give an especially dangerous edge to any protracted battle over a disputed election. How many Republicans would lose heart at the prospect of evicting the nation’s first black president on a “technicality” after a clear majority of his fellow citizens expressed support for renewing his White House lease?

What, then, could responsible politicians do to head off the most dire consequences of an inconclusive election?

For Republicans, the answer is easy: they must campaign vigorously in all large states, even those with no realistic possibility for statewide GOP victory.

Though the Romney campaign will naturally resist investing precious resources on lost-cause states with hugely expensive media markets (California, New York, and Illinois), they should overcome their reluctance.

With no super-heated statewide races in these population centers and no visible Republican drive for statewide victory, conservative voters might feel a natural inclination to stay home—allowing Obama to run up his margins.

If Romney can hold Obama’s margin to 55–45 in some of these heavily Democratic big states, he should win the popular vote; if, however, Democrats run up the score past 60–40, then Obama will win a popular-vote majority even if he loses the Electoral College.

Of course, the ideal way to avoid a national crisis over a disputed electoral outcome would be for Romney to win an unexpectedly comfortable nationwide victory, sweeping to Reagan-like success even in states assumed to be solidly Democratic.

Failing that sort of unanticipated landslide, the best policy would be to compete fiercely in every major population center while recognizing that in this unique election, even popular votes that seem theoretically irrelevant may play a role in averting catastrophe.


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Sources: CNN, C-Span, The Daily Beast, Youtube, Google Maps

Democrats In Congress Being Outspent By GOP Candidates (Super PACS)

Post-Citizens United Money May Swamp Congressional Candidates

Political spending by deep-pocketed donors and cash-rich corporations threatens to sow chaos in this year's congressional races, political consultants warn.

A billionaire or corporation writing a check for $1 million -- or even $10 million -- isn't enough to swing a presidential election. But when it comes to congressional campaigns, it could be plenty.

“You can work for months and years to develop a fundraising advantage over your opponent of $2 million, $5 million or $10 million. And all that can be wiped out in seconds by a few people giving to a super PAC," said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman.

While Republican and Democratic candidates are, in theory, equally susceptible to that kind of unlimited outside money, it’s the Democrats who sound much more alarmed.

"No one is safe, and everyone's got to protect themselves," said Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf. "Super PACs can strike at any time they want."

"There's sort of no way to fend it off because it's so much," said progressive strategist Mike Lux. "It's just so much money that even when you know it's coming, it's hard to deal with."

Lux said his biggest worry is the last-minute ad blitz -- a staple of elections dating back to the '90s. Now with the rise in outside money, election-eve ads can hit "at an even more massive level,” he said. The result: candidates who "can't compete with an overwhelming mass of money at the end that swamps the close races."

The Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, along with a subsequent lower court ruling, struck down post-Watergate caps on political contributions by corporations and individuals. As a result, super PACs fueled mostly by contributions of $500,000 or more have already pumped $78 million into the Republican presidential primary, outspending everyone else and flooding the airwaves with negative ads.

Successful congressional candidates in 2008 spent an average of $1.4 million to win a House seat and $7.4 million to get elected to the Senate, according to the Campaign Finance Institute. Potential spending from super PACs -- and their secretive 501(c)(4) cousins -- dwarfs those amounts.

One super PAC, whose wealthy donors are targeting incumbents from both parties, has already spent nearly $1 million in just eight congressional primaries. But that's widely considered to be just a minor foreshadowing of what is to come in congressional races in the general election.

And while most outside money will likely be targeted for maximum ideological payoff, in some cases it could also be personal.

"If somebody is pissed off at a particular member for a piece of legislation -- even a line of questioning at a committee hearing -- I absolutely see that kind of revenge giving," Lux said.

Sheinkopf said he imagines there will be districts where people with money "hate the incumbent or the challenger" and can now pull out their checkbook and underwrite a deluge of negative ads. The result, Sheinkopf argued, is that "personal pique will substitute for democratic reasoning." Even candidates who are feeling confident are likely to hoard money they might otherwise have sent to their party committees or to members of their party in closer races, Sheinkopf predicted.

"It will mean the continued breakdown of both parties, because it's now every man and woman for themselves," Sheinkopf said.

With all that money sloshing around outside the official campaigns, said Gary Kalman, federal legislative office director for the U.S. PIRG consumer group, "there's going to be certain people that are going to be little bitty players in their own elections."

Meanwhile, competition for voter eyeballs grows more ferocious. "What's different is you used to be an only child or in a well-behaved family. Now you're in a family of eight, and if you don't eat your food quickly, it's going to disappear," said Democratic media consultant Will Robinson.

Federal Election Commission rules still require that broadcast stations give candidates for federal office "reasonable access" to the airwaves at the lowest cost available. So super PACs can't actually push candidates who have already bought ads out of the way.

"But what they can do is come in and buy every available piece of air around them," Robinson said. Some media markets will sell out, as Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia mostly did in the 2008 general election. "Things are very Darwinian right now," Robinson said.

Robinson predicted that advertising scarcity will also extend to prime online ad space. In key swing states, "online is beginning to disappear already," he said.

Another feature of the post-Citizens United world is that while super PACs have to disclose their donors -- not in real time, but eventually -- donors who don't want anyone to know they're behind a given ad campaign are allowed to launder unlimited political contributions through tax-exempt groups, known as 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) organizations for the Internal Revenue Code regulations that cover them.

Those ad campaigns make it impossible for the public to know for sure where the money is coming from -- but, Lux contended, not necessarily that hard to guess. "It'll be coming from the banks, number one, because everybody hates them so badly," he said. "Certainly oil companies will want to hide their dollars. Some of the big telecom companies."

Not everyone is unhappy with the new order, of course. "I'm more optimistic about the current system than I was prior to Citizens United," said Republican strategist Keith Appell. "Both sides can raise plenty of money," he added. "My feeling is as long as the playing field is level, then that’s the best of all worlds. In the end, it nets out fine."

Democratic political strategist James Carville said that the ability to spend unlimited sums endows big donors with so much power that they don't even have to use it.

"You can threaten," he said. "The real impact of this is, let's say you want something -- there's a bill that you really care about -- you go to someone kind of on the fence, and usually you would say, 'I'll do a fundraiser for you.' Now you say, 'If you don't vote for this, I'm going to dump a million dollars on you.'" Or, he continued, "'If you don't vote to give me a pollution exemption, I'm going to croak you.'"

"The potential for mischief here is pretty good," Carville said.

Las Vegas casino owner Sheldon Adelson and his family have kept Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich alive in the primaries, with at least $10 million in contributions to the pro-Gingrich super PAC.

But Adelson's ability to spend unlimited sums will also make him hugely influential the next time he wants something from Congress, noted Carville. "He could say, 'Anybody votes against this? I'm worth $23 billion.'"

Indeed, all the moguls need is few examples of "croaking" people who crossed them, Carville said, "and you establish the principle."


Sources: Brookings Institution, Hoover Institution, Huffington Post, Youtube

McCain Camp Hits Back At Palin..."He Say, She Say"

McCain campaign fires back at Palin


Top aides to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign hit back at Sarah Palin Friday, after news reports revealed that the former vice presidential nominee’s soon-to-be-released book criticizes the campaign’s press strategy.

According to excerpts from copies obtained by media outlets, Palin charges that the staffers assigned to her by McCain’s team blocked her from speaking to the press aboard the campaign plane. And she asserts that former McCain communications aide Nicole Wallace ‘pushed’ her to do a September 2008 interview with CBS’s Katie Couric that resulted in serious damage to the former Alaska governor’s image.

“Aboard the campaign plane I was within twenty-five feet of reporters for hours on end. Headquarters’ strategy was that I should not go to the back of the aircraft and talk to the press,” Palin wrote, according to an excerpt that appeared Friday on the Drudge Report website. “At first this was subtle, but as the campaign wore on, [campaign aides] Tracey [Schmitt] or Tucker [Eskew] would call headquarters to request permission, and someone in DC would respond, ‘No! Absolutely not—block her if she tries to go back.’”

The excerpt also described Wallace as having aggressively “pushed for Katie Couric and the CBS Evening News” because “Katie really needed a career boost.”

Longtime McCain hand and former campaign manager Mark Salter disputed Palin’s account, and told POLITICO in an email that it does not line up with his memory of events.

Explaining the campaign’s decision to limit press access as Election Day drew closer, Salter said that “after we had been criticized in the press for a lack of disciplined messaging earlier in the campaign when we provided frequent and unscheduled access to the candidate, we felt it necessary to adopt the same deliberativeness and discipline employed by our opponents and rely less on impromptu press conferences with our traveling press, and more on interviews arranged in advance so our candidates would have the same opportunity our opponents enjoyed to discuss and prepare for the interview.”

Reflecting on the first set of interviews Palin did as the GOP vice presidential nominee, Salter said that the sit downs were “discussed and agreed to by senior members of the campaign staff in consultation with the candidate” and that Wallace did not choose either the journalists or the outlets Palin spoke to.

“Nicolle Wallace, along with others, was tasked with helping the Governor prepare for some of her interviews. She did not decide which interview requests the candidates would accept. Nor was she tasked with securing the candidates’ agreement,” Salter said.

“Those decisions were made by campaign management in consultation with the candidates. Campaign management and the candidates agreed to multi-segment interviews so the Governor would maintain a presence in the media while she was in debate prep,” he added. “And to the best of my knowledge, any interviews the Governor had with the individuals she referred to were approved and arranged by the campaign management with her agreement.”

Former McCain strategist John Weaver was more direct in his criticism, slamming Palin for using the book for “petty and pathetic” score-settling.

“Sarah Palin reminds me of Jimmy Stewart in the movie 'Harvey,' complete with imaginary conversations. All books like these are revisionist and self-serving, by definition,” Weaver wrote in an email to POLITICO. “But the score-settling by someone who wants to be considered a serious national player is petty and pathetic.”

“The problem wasn't who her interview was with, the problem was her interview,” he added. “Couric asked no trick questions. This just seems to be an attempt to obscure as bad a performance since Roger Mudd asked Ted Kennedy that simple question.”

Palin did not respond to a request for comment.



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Sources: Politico, MSNBC, Youtube, Amazon.com, Flickr, Google Maps

Good Day For Republicans! Super Tuesday...Democrats & Independents Are Fed Up Too!

GOP unity, support from independents key today


We think tonight will be very good for Republicans.

Two of the main reasons for that are superior party unity and pretty overwhelming support from independents.

In NY-23 despite the presence more or less of two Republican candidates on the ballot, Doug Hoffman is winning 71% of the GOP vote to Bill Owens' 67% of the Democratic vote. Hoffman leads Owens 52-30 with independents.

In New Jersey Chris Christie is getting 82% of the Republican vote while Jon Corzine is at 72% of the Democratic vote. Christie leads 52-29 with independents.

In Maine 77% of Republicans support the overturn of gay marriage while 71% of Democrats are opposed to it. Independents say they'll vote for it by a 52-46 margin.

In Virginia 94% of Republicans are for Bob McDonnell to 87% of Democrats for Creigh Deeds. McDonnell is up 63-33 with independents.

In Charlotte 89% of Republicans intend to vote for John Lassiter to 81% of Democrats for Anthony Foxx. Lassiter leads 51-40 with independents.

From the high levels of party unity it's clear that Republicans voters see the path back to power will require staying on the same page. And whether it's because the Democrats have bad candidates or they're unhappy with President Obama, independents are giving the GOP very high levels of support. It should be the best Republican election night since George W. Bush got reelected.



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Sources: Public Policy Polling, Google Maps

How Did Pres. Obama Win?....He Ran A Great Campaign And Reached Out To Swing States

Politico----

After nailing down the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama poured $33 million into state parties – more than double the amount transferred by Republican John McCain – with the bulk of it in huge payments to swing state parties just before Election Day.

The transfer payments, revealed in a Federal Election Commission analysis released Monday, provide new insight on how the Obama campaign was able to leverage its unprecedented fundraising windfall to overwhelm McCain in all phases of the race and extend the Obama-coattail effect down ballot.

The transfers funded state party volunteer and get-out-the-vote efforts that, when combined with electoral trends and the Obama campaign’s direct spending advantages over McCain in GOTV and advertising, presented a nearly insurmountable obstacle for the Arizona senator.

His campaign transferred $16 million to the parties in targeted states after he locked up the GOP presidential nomination, mostly from his primary election account – though the Republican National Committee supplemented his spending more than the Democratic National Committee did for Obama.

That’s because McCain’s general election finances were limited by his enrollment in the public funding program that gave him $84 million in taxpayer funds but capped his spending at that amount. Including the taxpayer grant, McCain’s campaign brought in $220 million, while Obama – who did not take the grant – brought in $746 million, largely from small, online donations.

As the cash continued flooding his website in the run-up to the election, Obama’s campaign was faced with a dilemma unprecedented in modern presidential politics: how to spend it all before Election Day.

The transfers to the state committees not only helped drive turnout in key states (Obama won 13 of the 15 states to which his campaign transferred the most cash), but they also reinforced the effects of his coattails and could boost Democrats in both the 2010 midterms and Obama’s own 2012 reelection bid.

Among the top beneficiaries of the Obama campaign’s largesse were the Democratic parties in Florida, which received $5.5 million, Virginia ($3.1 million), North Carolina ($2.3 million), Colorado ($1.9 million), Nevada ($1.6 million), Indiana
($1.4 million), Iowa ($700,000) and New Mexico ($450,000) – all states Obama won that had gone Republican in the 2004 presidential election.

The only states that Obama lost where the Democratic parties were among the top recipients of Obama’s generosity were Missouri, to which he transferred $2 million, and Montana, where the party received $738,000.

The state Party in Iowa, where the Democratic base launched Obama towards the nomination when he won the state’s first-in-the-nation caucuses back in January 2008received another $20,000 transfer the week after Obama’s landslide victory over McCain.

Over the entire 2008 election cycle – from January, 2007, through the end of last year – the DNC transferred another $78 million to the state Democratic parties, while the RNC transferred $46 million to state GOPs.

The money transferred from the candidates is more flexible than that conveyed by the national parties under federal election laws, according to Jason Torchinsky, who was an attorney for President George W. Bush’s reelection campaign.

“The money that presidential candidates transfer to state parties in the run-up to Election Day pays for party building – the grassroots get-out-the-vote activity that benefits the entire ticket,” Torchinsky said. “It’s vitally important to the success of the entire ticket.”

After the election, Obama also transferred $8.5 million to the Democratic Party’s federal committees for House and Senate candidates.

And, as of the end of March, his campaign committee still had $10 million in the bank and was continuing to fund a skeleton staff, though the campaign’s operations and vaunted fundraising list have been largely swallowed by the DNC.

Overall, the FEC’s analysis found, Democratic presidential candidates brought in more than $1 billion, compared to $472 million by Republicans, though the gap was largely attributable to the sums raised by Obama and Hillary Clinton, whose unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination took in $224 million.

Adding in the national party convention committees, the total raised expressly for the 2008 presidential election comes to $1.8 billion – 80 percent more than during the 2004 presidential election, according to the FEC.


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Sources: Politico, Flickr, Wikipedia, Google Maps