New Hampshire: Romney 50, Obama 48

New from Rasmussen, it’s the second poll in as many days showing Romney up two points in NH. Of the last eight polls taken in the state, he leads in four, is tied in two more, trails by a single point in another, and the last is an outlier. (Rasmussen’s last poll of NH, taken eight days ago, had Obama up by a point.) Why should you care about that? Simple: If Ohio doesn’t pan out for Mitt, his lone remaining path to the presidency may well be hitting an exacta with New Hampshire and Wisconsin. If he wins Florida, Virginia, and Colorado, all of which are big but necessary ifs, that’ll put him at 257 in RCP’s electoral vote model. He can then get to 270 either with Ohio (18) or with NH + WI (14). I’m thinking those two states are a bit likelier to turn red than, say, Iowa or Nevada, not only because of the current RCP poll averages but because of the GOP ticket’s regional ties to them. (Romney not only governed the state next door, he has a vacation home in New Hampshire.) Besides, Iowa and Nevada each have only six EVs, so the most they can do for him without winning Wisconsin, New Hampshire, or Ohio is clinch a dreaded 269-269 tie. But then, the odds of Mitt winning IA and NV (or PA or MI) while losing the other three seem astronomical. So Ohio remains Plan A, but Wisconsin and New Hampshire are Plan B. He’s on track, narrowly, in the latter state, but there hasn’t been a new poll of Wisconsin since Sunday. Maybe tomorrow? Until then, this intriguing tidbit will have to do:

Hearing Priorities USA is going back into Wisconsin after previously cancelling most of their buys there...

Priorities USA is, of course, Obama’s Super PAC. Team O is talking verrrry tough to Mark Halperin (“I was struck by the expression of near certainty that their candidate would be re-elected”), but Josh Kraushaar makes a nice point about the battleground states. One thing they have in common is that they’re not in O’s demographic sweet spot:

The one hole in that argument is their own acknowledgment of where they’re running strongest — the five-state firewall of OH, IA, NH, NV and WI. With the notable exception of NV, these are heavily-white states and skew older. These aren’t the states where their base coalition; it’s where they’re running competitively enough with white voters (particularly working-class women). And implicity, they acknowledge they’re not ahead (they’re tied, presumably) in the states with the highest youth/minority vote combo: VA, NC and CO.

So if the GOTV operation is firing on all cylinders in a state like VA but the race is even, one would imagine he’s struggling with white voters. And in order to win those firewall states, he has to overperform his natl average with those same white voters.

Via John McCormack of the Standard, the early voting totals among O’s base in Virginia are apparently lagging:

VIRGINIA EARLY VOTE: Up 18.8% in the 86 localities McCain won in '08, but up ONLY 4.4% in the 48 Obama won: sbe.virginia.gov/sbe_csv/STATS/

Huge drop-offs in Richmond, Arlington & C'ville indicative of understandable (yet troubling for Ds) decline in Af-Am, yuppie & college vote

Per RCP’s EV projections, if Obama holds on in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, and Nevada, he’s at 249 and needs to find 21 votes between Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and Colorado. Virginia has the second-most EVs in that list behind Ohio, so if he loses them both, he’ll have to win all three of the others to clinch. Not impossible, but if the bigger battleground states are tilting away from him, it’d be some trick if he figured out a way to reverse that momentum in the smaller ones and pile up enough of them to eke over the finish line.

Update: Just as I’m writing this, Time is out with a new poll of Ohio showing Obama up by five. However:

CNN/Time Ohio poll has Obama up 5, 49-44. Sample is D+9. It was D+5 in 08, D+1 in 2010... wow.

I think the significance of moving ahead in New Hampshire becomes clear when it is coupled with Romney moving ahead in Iowa. Those two states in Romney's camp means that Obama must run the table on all the rest: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nevada.

Romney is by common consent at least tied in Ohio but Republican intensity and Romney's near two to one advantage among independents should carry Ohio. But if Ohio fails,

Wisconsin is a very plausible win for Romney. One week ago on 18 October Rasmussen had Obama +2 but was a 4.5 MOE, however, Obama had achieved 50%. Nevertheless, Scott Walker beat the recall by about 7% and I think we will see the same positive forces at work in Wisconsin for Romney and it will mirror Ohio intensity and independent strength for Romney.

Pennsylvania remains a possibility. Pollsters anchored in Pennsylvania are much more favorable to Romney but all the national pollsters including Rasmussen have Obama about the same +5. It is unlikely that Romney will take Pennsylvania without Ohio but it is conceivable that the saturation bombing by Obama in Ohio might freeze the electorate in his favor while Pennsylvania is free to move with Romney momentum felt elsewhere across the nation where the negative ads have not been so intense.

An oddsmaker looking at this picture would have to say as he counts seven states that Obama must sweep that the odds collectively mount against him. For example, the pollsters have Obama up by RCP average 2.7% with Rasmussen having Obama +2% in Nevada. That means that Nevada is easily within Romney's reach and it would take very little to tip this state. When mixed and with other states, such as Wisconsin, the cumulative odds look good for Romney.

We have considered Republican intensity and independent proclivity but we have not talked about momentum. If Romney retains any part of the momentum he has enjoyed since the first debate he could easily take Nevada, Ohio, and Wisconsin. The Democrats are talking up an Obama resurgence after the third debate but I think most of that is air while the movement towards Romney is "secular" and any reaction to the third debate favoring Obama will be a limited short-term bounce. There are chartists and there are fundamentalists among traders and investors. If we stop being chartists for a moment and look at the fundamentals, I think there is a momentum shift which economists would call "secular" in Romney's favor because the economy practically mandates a change in government. The whole nation, like the whole stock market, is shifting away from a losing proposition. It is a paradigm shift changing the whole dynamic of the race against which Obama's performance in the last debate, even viewed in its best light, is insufficient to counter.

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