Posted on 10/30/2012 11:57:21 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
There’s been a never-ending stream of polls in this presidential race, but a new survey from Gallup could mark a key moment in the campaign. Mitt Romney, Gallup reported Monday, is leading Barack Obama among Americans who have already voted. Fifteen percent of those surveyed have voted, Gallup said, and among them, Romney leads the president by 52 percent to 46 percent.
The news was particularly bad for the president because at this time in 2008, Obama led John McCain by an even bigger margin. And it was made even worse because early-voting totals are lagging among some of the groups most important to Obama’s re-election. The most reluctant early voters, it turns out, are in the crucial (for Obama) 18-to-29 age group; just seven percent of them have already voted. The Obama campaign has been making a huge effort to get those voters to the polls early, because campaign officials worry that younger voters can’t be fully relied on to show up at the polls on Election Day. Obama needs all the early voters he can get because in some key swing states, Romney is likely to win among those voters who actually cast ballots on November 6.
Gallup’s numbers are for the nation as a whole. But Romney campaign officials believe the same trends are present in Ohio, the most important swing state in the election.
“The Gallup numbers nationally confirm what we think is happening here in Ohio,” says one Romney official. “It’s two things. One, their margin of victory in early voting is greatly diminished — drastically diminished. And two, they are having a very difficult time generating enthusiasm among young people.”
Asked for evidence to support those claims, the official cited a Romney tally showing absentee and early voting is ten percent higher in counties McCain won in 2008 than in counties Obama won. He also pointed to sluggish early voting in the Toledo area, which Obama won in ’08, and particularly energetic early voting in the Cincinnati area, which McCain won. In addition, the official argues that Republicans are “outperforming our share of voter registration in absentee requests and early votes” and that the GOP has “closed the gap on Democrats’ historical absentee and early vote advantage for 20 of the past 21 days.”
As far as younger voters are concerned, Team Romney is operating mostly on anecdotal evidence. First, they believe that Obama’s message this time, a mostly anti-Romney message, simply cannot be as inspiring to younger voters as his 2008 theme of there-is-no-red-America-no-blue-America-just-the-United-States-of-America. “It’s the opposite of hope and everything he ran on in ’08,” says the official.
The Romney case, at least the case it is willing to make public, is somewhat impressionistic. But the Gallup numbers are real, and if trends in early voting nationally are also happening in Ohio, then Romney has reason for optimism. “There’s a lot of evidence that we are erasing the deficit from the summer,” says the official. “The track is unmistakable.”
I think expanding the map to Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota at this late date is brilliant. Obama’s voting blocks are not as reliable and need a major and expensive GOTV effort to vote early, to make up the difference in reliability and enthusiasm. Since these were considered “safe” blue state, I doubt that Obama invested a lot in those states for such an effort. While Romney can saturate the airwaves in the last week of the election in those states (his most potent weapon), Obama’s most potent weapon of GOTV for early votes cannot be deployed so suddenly in the last week of the election. Our Mitt is quite a chess player!
Obama’s campaign war chest is probably about tapped out. Who in their right mind would throw some change his way?
Of course Obama still has public sector union muscle volunteering to get out the vote.
I take a few night classes at our local university branch here in OH. Most of the instructors are big libs, but what is interesting is that in one of my classes, the instructor was doing her usual Dems good - Reps bad routine. Then she had the nerve to ask who was D and who was R. Before anyone raised a hand, I blurted out - I’m in between. (hahahaha, so I fibbed).
Anyway, when she asked the question again - no one and I mean no one raised a hand. She then asked how many were in between, and the entire classed raised hands. I out smarted her, and helped some of the younger ones feel more comfortable because I know they are going to vote for Romney, but didn’t want their grade affected. (it happens you know).
What is also eerie is that in ‘08, every where you looked on campus was an O sign or car sticker. I haven’t seen one - not one this year.
However, my county is heavily Republican anyway, but just saying..... there isn’t a huge support for the liar-in-chief this go around.
Comes down to a strategy that we learned on our silly little swim team many years ago.
Swim steady for 75% of the race then sprint at the end.
I thought that’s what he might be doing, even all summer.
It’s such a simple strategy and it fires up morale & productivity among staffers.
BO couldn’t know it because he’s one of those give him a ribbon, I got him to the game, whaddya want? kids with no more sense than Clinton has about playing games with the fellas, as he never did.
Romney’s early voting strategy, encouraging the low-intensity (less-likely-to-vote) people first, is really interesting. At first, it feels like it goes against the common sense (remember when we took tests, they always told us to do the easy ones first?). But, unlike tests, they actually have quite a lot of time to work on these low-intensity people since the ‘easy ones’ are guaranteed to be there on Tuesday. If it’s working, and Gallup says it is, the payoffs will be bigger than the traditional strategy (encouraging the die-hard fans first), I think, as it’ll generate more voters for RR.
Everything in a campaign should be "cash on-hand". Barrack runs his campaign and the DNC just like government, with no sense of debt or any intension to repay the loan.
This year, NOTHING!
in the FACULTY parking low, there are as many Romney stickers as Zero!!
Same with me at my University in a neighboring state.
The ultra-libs on campus are crowing about Obama’s coming landslide, but no one is actually saying anything positive about him. No bumper stickers. No yard signs around town. Nothing.
Four years ago, there were all kinds of rallies and get out the vote drives for the Kenyan. This year there was one voter registration event, and it was very poorly attended.
The low intensity voters might also be the wishy washy ones who might change their minds.
Sandy changes ALL of this. Obama will simply stop campaigning until Nov. 6th, and Romney will be attacked by the media if he runs a single attack ad against him. Mitt needs to ignore this and continue pummeling the Usurper. Screw the food drives and Red Cross nonsense. NO ONE will be talking about Sandy six months from now, but if Obama wins America will be crippled for generations. Don’t get soft now, Mitt!
I haven’t visited the local colleges and my area is heavily Republican but last year I saw several Obama signs and not many McCain. TN still went GOP because McCain was better than O. This year the Romney/Ryan signs are everywhere. I have only seen three or four Obama signs and they were all in the Black section of town.
The thing that is really tickling my funny bone is all of the pizza delivery drivers that have Romney/Ryan stickers on their cars. I’m proud that the pizza places are allowing it even though the cars are owned by the individual drivers. Obviously they think R&R is a much better choice for their businesses than Zero is.
But, but, he borrowed $15M from Bank of America...he should be set! /s
Please see post #2. How can Mitt expanding the map to Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota be seen as going soft??
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