2012: Romney Has "Edge" In Ohio

reply to post by sonnny1


you bring up a good point about walker and in other republican related news politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com... it seems that even after the whole rape comment flap that its basicly a tied race atleast according to the link i posted but it does seem that even with public screw ups republicans might be holding on to more seats then others might have thought

reply to post by GogoVicMorrow


at this stage of the game for good or bad the independent candidates have 0 chance of winning the presidency and any thoughts of those candidate's winning is a pipe dream befitting something that cheech and chong would "cook up"

unless we end up doing some kind of huge change to our election process that wont be changing any time soon dispite how good any of them might be, they wont get air time,debate time or any major attention in the press and on the off chance one starts to do good the media will bury it .sad but true but the last independent that had a shot was Perot

reply to post by Taiyed


This is why I am not concerned:

Adrian Gray, who oversaw the Bush 2004 voter-contact operation and is now a policy analyst for a New York investment firm, makes the point that as of Tuesday, 530,813 Ohio Democrats had voted early or had requested or cast an absentee ballot. That’s down 181,275 from four years ago. But 448,357 Ohio Republicans had voted early or had requested or cast an absentee ballot, up 75,858 from the last presidential election. That 257,133-vote swing almost wipes out Mr. Obama’s 2008 Ohio victory margin of 262,224. Since most observers expect Republicans to win Election Day turnout, these early vote numbers point toward a Romney victory in Ohio.

Now here's a big question for your team. How are you going to win Wisconsin with 6 days left? Governor Scott Walker won in 2010. Walker won his recall election again this year by the same margin Obama beat McCain in 2008.

reply to post by alternateuniverse

Now here's a big question for your team. How are you going to win Wisconsin with 6 days left? Governor Scott Walker won in 2010. Walker won his recall election again this year by the same margin Obama beat McCain in 2008.

All the polls showed Walker winning.

All the polls show Obama winning WI.

You can't take the results of a Governor election and apply them to a Presidential election. Different issues, different people, different voters.


As for Ohio, I still see Obama taking it. Early ballot requests are not a reliable metric to use, that is why no one uses them to try to predict anything.

Since this thread was started Obama and Romney have switched being in the lead a few times. It goes back and forth. The truth is that it is way too close to be able to know who will win Ohio until election day. And even then I predict recounts that will take days. Whoever wins Ohio will be POTUS ... IMHO.

Originally posted by FlyersFan
Since this thread was started Obama and Romney have switched being in the lead a few times. It goes back and forth. The truth is that it is way too close to be able to know who will win Ohio until election day. And even then I predict recounts that will take days. Whoever wins Ohio will be POTUS ... IMHO.

Not in Ohio.

Obama has been maintaning a fairly consistent lead of 2-3 points.

Nothing is going to change that in Romney's favor by the time the election rolls around, too late in the news cycle. The only thing that might change are people seeing Obama take charge of Sandy and swinging towards him.

Originally posted by FlyersFan
Since this thread was started Obama and Romney have switched being in the lead a few times. It goes back and forth. The truth is that it is way too close to be able to know who will win Ohio until election day. And even then I predict recounts that will take days. Whoever wins Ohio will be POTUS ... IMHO.

Maybe someone can add a checkpoint every so many hours, maybe?
A checkpoint that you (anybody on this thread) will post and it shows the current leader in Ohio and the source' checkpoint...

Just a thought.

happy voting.

reply to post by Taiyed


Hi Taiyed,

Here's some useful information for you:

Taken From My OP:

Ryun, whose group has opened voter registration efforts in Ohio and other swing states, said that the Buckeye State's efforts to clean up voter rolls has also played a part in tightening the gap. He said that 450,000 dead voters and duplicate registrations have been nixed, and the majority were Democrats.

"Considering Obama won the state by 263,000 votes, Ohio's cleaner rolls could make a big impact," Ryun said. He added, "The five largest counties in Ohio have all shifted at least 6 percent and as much as 27 percent to the Republicans since 2008. While the polls show an Obama lead, these real votes--assuming registered voters vote for their candidate--demonstrate a Republican shift since 2008."

Add To That:

Adrian Gray, who oversaw the Bush 2004 voter-contact operation and is now a policy analyst for a New York investment firm, makes the point that as of Tuesday, 530,813 Ohio Democrats had voted early or had requested or cast an absentee ballot. That’s down 181,275 from four years ago. But 448,357 Ohio Republicans had voted early or had requested or cast an absentee ballot, up 75,858 from the last presidential election. That 257,133-vote swing almost wipes out Mr. Obama’s 2008 Ohio victory margin of 262,224. Since most observers expect Republicans to win Election Day turnout, these early vote numbers point toward a Romney victory in Ohio.

Ohio shocker: GOP closes early voting gap, boosting Romney By Paul Bedard

Still Confident About Ohio?

BTW, Here's How Wisconsin Is Shaping Up Today:

"We know the ideas that work. We also know the ideas that don't work, because in the eight years after Bill Clinton left office, his policies were reversed," Obama told about 2,600 people in Green Bay, Wis. Obama pointed to Bush's tax cuts that chiefly benefited the wealthiest Americans and charged that his Republican predecessor had given "free license" to the rich and corporations to "play by a different set of rules" than middle-class Americans.

In final push, Obama casts election as Bush vs. Clinton By Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News | The Ticket – 7 hrs ago..

reply to post by Taiyed


Some new information about early voting out today my friend:

Ohio:

Barack Obama is clearly winning the early vote in Ohio. But careful analysis of the actual numbers so far suggest very good news for Mitt Romney.

The Romney campaign claims the president is merely banking votes he would have received on Election Day anyway, so his early lead isn’t very important. They say their early voting strategy relies on targeting low-voting-propensity Romney supporters for early voting and leaving the others to turn out on Election Day. In other words, they claim Obama’s effort is merely harvesting votes while theirs is creating votes.

This approach makes sense, but it’s hard to prove it’s working without inside campaign information. I think I’ve found a way to do that, and my research shows the Romney effort might be paying off.

To do this, I looked at data from the George Mason University’s United States Election Project. Under the direction of elections scholar Prof. Michael McDonald, the project collects all the publicly available data on the progress of early voting in one place. The project also collects the early voting information from 2008 and provides data on how much of the share of the final turnout came from early voting in 2008 and how much of that turnout has already been cast in 2012.

I hypothesized that if the Romney campaign’s effort is working, the share of the total 2008 early vote that has already been cast should be higher in strong Romney counties than in strong Obama counties. That’s because if the Romney effort works, total turnout in those counties should be up in 2012, the bulk of that coming from the low-voting-propensity supporters who the campaign is asking to cast early ballots.

Through last Friday, that hypothesis is clearly correct:

McDonald’s site reports county-level early voting data from 53 of Ohio’s 88 counties, including all of the state’s largest. Across the state, 57.6 of the 2008 early voting turnout totals had already been cast in 2012. But the percentages are much higher in strong Romney counties than in strong Obama counties.

Twenty-two counties report that early voting in 2012 is already equal or greater than two-thirds the level in 2008. McCain carried sixteen of those, usually with high margins. Obama got more than 55% of the vote in only two of the remaining six, Ashtabula and Trumbull. All of those six are either in coal country or in a corridor from the Pennsylvania border through Canton that the Romney campaign is also targeting.

If anything, these numbers underestimate Romney’s strength in early voting because most of the counties not reporting early voting numbers are strongly Republican. McCain carried thirty-two of the thirty-five counties without county-level early voting statistics available on McDonald’s website, and the three carried by Obama are classic Ohio swing counties. The thirty-two McCain counties include two of the four Cincinnati suburban counties, the three biggest Republican counties in the Cleveland media market, and other large, strong GOP counties in the Dayton and Columbus markets.

Update:

McDonald’s site has updated their Ohio early voting numbers, so I conducted a re-examination to see if the pattern I discovered still holds. It does. There are now 23 counties in which the percentage of the 2008/2012 early voting ratio equals or exceeds 80 percent. McCain carried 17 of them, and the six Obama carried are still those in the eastern, blue collar part of the state. Cincinnati exurban counties Brown and Warren now report their early votes equal 99 and 93 percent, respectively, of the 2008 early vote percentage.

Large, big margin Obama counties remain at the bottom of the early voting ratio. Summit (Akron), Lucas (Toledo), Cuyahoga (Cleveland) and Franklin (Columbus) are all near the bottom of this analysis, with between 67 and 69 percent of the 2008 early vote percentage already cast in 2012.

[UPDATED] Early Ohio numbers promising for Romney By Henry Olsen | November 1, 2012, 1:28 pm

Ohio:

Early voting, touted as Obama's secret weapon in the Buckeye State, is down nearly 10 percent in Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, compared to the same time in 2008. Even before Hurricane Sandy ushered in nasty rain, early turnout was lagging behind the benchmark it set four years ago, local election figures show.

"I come from a Democratic family, a union family," said Dave Koler, an information technology program manager from North Royalton. "The first debate was a real swing for me. This might be the first time that I actually go Republican."

Koler doesn't feel like he's the only one.

"We had a lot of people who voted four years ago for Obama who I don't think are going to show up this time," he said.

In 2008, Obama won Cuyahoga County by 258,000 votes, just shy of his winning margin for the entire state. With Romney in better position in Ohio than the 2008 Republican contender, Sen. John McCain, Obama's turnout effort in Cuyahoga grows in importance, analysts said.

"It's the most important county for President Obama in the entire country," David Cohen, a political scientist at the University of Akron, said. "If he does not equal his totals there from 2008, that is a horrible omen for Election Day. He has to win by a 2-to-1 margin."

Obama has traveled repeatedly to Northeast Ohio, lavishing attention on the manufacturing sector and the auto industry he helped bailout. That attention did not go unnoticed by voters.

"Vote early?" joked Edward Madden, of Cleveland, while walking through the downtown area on a gloomy Wednesday afternoon. "I wouldn't vote even if you paid me to. That's not the message I want to send -- 'You blew it, here's four more years.' "

Crucial early votes for Obama lagging in Ohio stronghold By Brian Hughes

Ohio:

First interesting indicator of the morning from early voting: I mentioned Tuesday that early voting in Cuyahoga County, Ohio – the Democrat vote stronghold that includes Cleveland – slipped behind the pace of 2008 after running ahead for the first twenty-eight days of early voting or so. (We don’t know how these early voters are voting, but Obama won this county 69 percent to 30 percent last time around, so we can presume he’s leading this cycle on a somewhat comparable rate.) Well, the early vote collapsed Tuesday and Wednesday. Of course, a big chunk of that dropoff is from the remains of Hurricane Sandy dumping snow and wind and miserable weather on the Cleveland area. But if we see early voting continue to be slow in these final days, it will be a bit of evidence that the Democrats get-out-the-early vote effort in Ohio isn’t really expanding their total share of the vote; they’re just getting their traditional Election-Day-voters to vote earlier.

Virginia:

Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report notes that the early vote in Virginia is not going the way the Obama campaign hoped: “Today’s new 10/31 numbers even more troubling for Obama. His best counties way off 2008 pace.” He elaborates that as of yesterday, 185,489 ballots had been cast in Obama localities, compared to 214,783 by this point in 2008, while 115,908 in McCain, compared to 117,224 in 2008.

He adds, “Obama strongholds Arlington -20.0%, Fairfax – 20.9%, Richmond -13.7% (vs. just -9.2% statewide). Hmm…” and “In Romney strongholds, enthusiasm up.

By the way, I will be quite surprised if Romney-Ryan doesn’t outpace McCain-Palin’s vote totals and percentages in northern Virginia by a healthy margin. I say that based on the GOP get-out-the-vote operations improving in the 2009 and 2010 elections, and the almost unbelievable numbers of A) Romney-Ryan signs (paid for by the Republican Party of Virginia) in neighborhoods like mine where Obama-Biden yard signs appeared standard-issue for all homeowners four years ago and B) George Allen for Senate yard signs.

Wisconsin:

“If the election was held today, President Barack Obama would lose the state of Wisconsin because where his base is, we have not turned out the vote early,” Mayor Michael Hancock told a Democratic rally. “The suburbs and rural parts of Wisconsin – the Republican base – are voting. President Obama’s base has yet to go vote.

Early Voting Re-Cap:

In the poll, conducted Oct. 24-28, 19% of likely voters say they have already voted; that is unchanged from the same week in the 2008 campaign (Oct. 23-26, 2008). Currently, Romney holds a seven-point edge among early voters (50% to 43%); because of the small sample, this lead is not statistically significant. At this point four years ago, Obama led John McCain by 19 points (53% to 34%) among early voters.

Tough News for Obama in Early Voting Figures By Jim Geraghty

reply to post by Taiyed


Taiyed, in case you missed it. Here's a recap from yesterday and some new info today:

Taken From My OP:

Ryun, whose group has opened voter registration efforts in Ohio and other swing states, said that the Buckeye State's efforts to clean up voter rolls has also played a part in tightening the gap. He said that 450,000 dead voters and duplicate registrations have been nixed, and the majority were Democrats.

"Considering Obama won the state by 263,000 votes, Ohio's cleaner rolls could make a big impact," Ryun said. He added, "The five largest counties in Ohio have all shifted at least 6 percent and as much as 27 percent to the Republicans since 2008. While the polls show an Obama lead, these real votes--assuming registered voters vote for their candidate--demonstrate a Republican shift since 2008."

Add To That:

Adrian Gray, who oversaw the Bush 2004 voter-contact operation and is now a policy analyst for a New York investment firm, makes the point that as of Tuesday, 530,813 Ohio Democrats had voted early or had requested or cast an absentee ballot. That’s down 181,275 from four years ago. But 448,357 Ohio Republicans had voted early or had requested or cast an absentee ballot, up 75,858 from the last presidential election. That 257,133-vote swing almost wipes out Mr. Obama’s 2008 Ohio victory margin of 262,224. Since most observers expect Republicans to win Election Day turnout, these early vote numbers point toward a Romney victory in Ohio.

Ohio shocker: GOP closes early voting gap, boosting Romney By Paul Bedard

Still Confident About Ohio?

BTW, Here's How Wisconsin Is Shaped Up Yesterday:

"We know the ideas that work. We also know the ideas that don't work, because in the eight years after Bill Clinton left office, his policies were reversed," Obama told about 2,600 people in Green Bay, Wis. Obama pointed to Bush's tax cuts that chiefly benefited the wealthiest Americans and charged that his Republican predecessor had given "free license" to the rich and corporations to "play by a different set of rules" than middle-class Americans.

In final push, Obama casts election as Bush vs. Clinton By Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News | The Ticket – 7 hrs ago..

No Wonder Obama Plans To Visit Wisconsin Heavily The Next Few Days.

And Here's What Went On In Romney World Today:

Ohio:

Romney spoke to a crowd of 30,000, according to West Chester Fire Chief Tony Goller – making it the largest rally of the campaign, said Romney spokesman Chris Maloney.

“Candidate Obama promised to do so very much, but he has fallen so very short,” Romney said. “He was going to focus on jobs, then he focused on Obamacare, which killed jobs.”

Romney said that Obama asked voters to vote for revenge, but “I ask the American people to vote for love of country.”

Path to victory cuts through Ohio Written by Cindi Andrews, Paul Kostyu

*

Latest polling average has Obama at +2.9, and he is trending upward.

Originally posted by Taiyed
Latest polling average has Obama at +2.9, and he is trending upward.

Trending Upwards or Oversampling D's? lol

Crowd Size:

Last night, in the cold and with long lines, 30,000 people showed up in Ohio to see Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. That same day, Obama attracted a meager 2,800.

Trending A Bit Better Today:

In 2008, at his last stop in Cleveland, a Democrat stronghold, Obama attracted 80,000 people. This morning, at his last 2012 stop in that same city, Obama could only attract 4,000.

Obama attracted 1200 more people today in Cleveland for a total of 4,000. Even smaller than McCain crowds with the same exact venue from 2008.

Read More:

Yesterday, CNN's John King noted that in comparison to 2008, the Romney campaign's ground game and the verifiable enthusiasm King's seeing, give Romney a real chance to take the state:

And this is why we can't believe that fire hose of Ohio polls being turned on us. Nothing in those polls sense any enthusiasm for Romney. Most show Obama will best or beat his 2008 turnout advantage, which no one believes.

Furthermore, many of those polls claim that 30-40% of people have already voted, when the hard count shows that number closer to 22%. Moreover, hard counts comparing early voting in pro-Obama and pro-Romney counties show the GOP in much better shape than it was in 2008.

The race is going to be close, no question, but these polls are all modeled to give Obama an enthusiasm advantage no one is seeing with their lying eyes. It's all about turnout now, about winning outside the Margin Of Media.

Obama's Cleveland Rally Attendance 20x Lower than 2008 by John Nolte

reply to post by alternateuniverse


I guess if Obama wins, you are going to say that the election "oversampled" Democrats too, huh?

You can try to twist things all you want, but Obama has been polling consistently ahead of Romney in Ohio.

reply to post by Taiyed


Obama needs Wisconsin and Ohio to Win. He's not going to get NEITHER.

Speaking of that overly used adjective, "desperate."

Look Here:

Perrysburg police arrested four Toledo area men early Friday morning on charges of stealing Mitt Romney campaign signs in Wood and Lucas counties in Northwest Ohio.

4 men arrested in Perrysburg for stealing Romney signs while driving sheet metal union truck By Pat Galbincea, The Plain Dealer The Plain Dealer

reply to post by alternateuniverse


There really is no use talking to you, just wait three days.

--Champaign County: Was +3% GOP, now +23% GOP - 20 point shift.

--Columbiana County: Was +9% DEM, now +9% GOP - 18 point shift.

--Crawford County: Was +3% DEM, now +12% GOP - 15 point shift.

--Cuyahoga County: Was +36% DEM, now +30% DEM (GOP already has 6,000 more requests than in 2008) - 6 point shift.

--Erie County: Was +24% DEM, now +7% DEM -17 point shift.

--Franklin County: Was +5% DEM, now +5% GOP - 10 point shift.

--Greene County: Was +4% DEM, now +19% GOP - 23 point shift.

--Harrison County: Was +22% DEM, now +5% DEM - 17 point shift.

--Hamilton County: Was +7% GOP, now +13% GOP - 6 point shift.

--Licking County: Was TIED, now +16% GOP - 16 point shift.

--Montgomery County: Was +29% DEM, now +5% DEM - 24 point shift.

Double whoa! But, evidently, Nate Silver’s mock-worthy model didn’t get the memo.

Tweets:

Nate Silver ✔@fivethirtyeight 4 Nov 12 Basically early voting data seems consistent with polls. Drop-off for Dems in IA & NV, but they still lead. Ohio more similar to 2008.

matthew brown @matthewriedle @fivethirtyeight there has been a net swing of over 250k votes From Dem. To GOP in Ohio early voting.. How is this similar? Lol 4 Nov 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite

Nate Silver ✔@fivethirtyeight 4 Nov 12 Basically early voting data seems consistent with polls. Drop-off for Dems in IA & NV, but they still lead. Ohio more similar to 2008.

Gabriel Sterling @GabrielSterling @fivethirtyeight 180K fewer Dem early votes and 75K more GOP in a state where O only won by 262k is "similar" in Ohio. Really? 4 Nov 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite

Someone is going to need to keep an eye on Nate. Poor dear. Also needing watching? David Axelrod, who seems to be fixing to start scrawling in a tear-stained diary, if his appearance on “Fox News Sunday” is any indication.

Read More Tweets Here:
Whoa: Early voting in Ohio shows GOP way ahead of 2008 counts; Axelrod speechless
Posted at 3:19 pm on November 4, 2012 by Twitchy Staff

Today, Ohio Governor John Kasich appeared on CBS This Morning and says Romney internal polls are a couple points ahead.

Originally posted by alternateuniverse
Today, Ohio Governor John Kasich appeared on CBS This Morning and says Romney internal polls are a couple points ahead.

Are you aware that the Romney internal poll are part of his campaign team?