Free Republic

Tom Hauser @5hauser DEVELOPING: Senior Romney national campaign official tells MN GOP a visit to MN by Romney and/or Ryan for campaign rallies being considered.— Tom Hauser (@5hauser) October 28, 2012

The last time Minnesota cast its electoral votes for a Republican running for President was 1972. Even Ronald Reagan failed to win the state in both back-to-back landslide elections. It has elected Republicans to the occasional state-wide office, but for President, it is a deep indigo blue. Except, perhaps, this year. A new poll released this morning by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune finds the race essentially tied. Obama holds a slim 3-point lead but, at 47% support, is below the critical 50% threshold.  To be fair, Minnesota wasn't really part of Obama's firewall for his reelection hopes. It was more of...

Still think @barackobama's MSP ad buy is just for WI?Poll out tomorrow has MN within the margin: bit.ly/TN8AM4 #gameon— Ryan Mahoney (@rcmahoney) October 28, 2012

On Wednesday October 24th and Thursday October 25, 2012, The Hoffman Research Group surveyed a cross section of Oregon voters to ascertain voter preferences in the 2012 Presidential election. The resulting data found President Barack Obama currently leading Governor Mitt Romney by a 47% to 42% margin. When pushed, undecided voters broke toward Mitt Romney almost 2 to 1. The random sample of 615 Oregon voters surveyed 42% Democrats, 34% Republicans and 24% Unaffiliated voters. The statistical margin of error for this survey is plus or minus 3.9%. Attention was given to Oregon’s rural or urban divide and maintained appropriate...

Voters in the District and Maryland overwhelmed election officials at several polling places Saturday when larger than expected crowds turned out on the first day of early voting to cast ballots. Officials said thousands showed up at voting sites, spurred on by President’s Obama plea to vote early — and concern about the threat posed by Hurricane Sandy. Several polling officials found themselves in a midday scramble to install more voting machines. Long lines and lengthy waits were reported at polling places in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, as well as in several of the District’s wards. Some voters, frustrated...

I just finished slogging through a 69 page PDF by the State Budget Crisis Task Force outlining the dire state of affairs in Illinois. I knew in advance that pension funding is the biggest issue facing Illinois. The task force shows exactly that. Here is a summary. Pension Funding Levels Teachers Retirement System (TRS) - 46.1%State University Employees Retirement System (SURS) - 45.3%State Employees Retirement System (SERS) - 34.9%General Assembly Retirement System (GARS) - 20.2%Judicial Retirement System (JRS) - 31.0% Those funding levels assume 8% returns going forward, something that is not going to happen. So as bad as the...

Even in vividly blue California, President Obama's luster has faded since his historic victory here in 2008, a new poll has found. Despite his sizable lead over Mitt Romney, the president is unlikely to repeat his historic 2008 margin of victory here because of his diminished power to pull in people who don't traditionally support Democrats, according to the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll. The drop in appeal across party and demographic lines has translated, at this point, to a 14-point edge over the Republican nominee among likely voters — well below Obama's 24-point victory in 2008, the biggest margin...

About 10 percent of the vote in Bernalillo County – based on 2008 voter turnout – has already been cast for the Nov. 6 election, according to the county clerk’s office. And so far, Democrats are leading in numbers. More than 53 percent of the early vote and absentee ballots have been cast by Democrats, although the party represents 46 percent of Bernalillo County’s registered voters. Setting aside absentee ballots, Democrats’ share of the early vote increases to nearly 56 percent of the vote so far. Political analyst Brian Sanderoff said that early Democratic advantage in the county’s ballot totals...

Hawaii had the lowest voter turnout rate in the United States in 2008, with fewer than half of the eligible population casting ballots. When I traveled to the state to find out why, I thought most of the problem might be apathy. The surfer thing, you know? That is part of it, to be sure. But there are many reasons America's 50th state doesn't vote as much as the other 49, plenty of them specific to Hawaii. Here's a bite-sized look at eight. If you want to be part of the solution, help us change the list by convincing these...

For some months, I have been predicting that Romney would not only win but win big. I have a number of lunches and other small wagers riding on the outcome, so I have been cheered by Team Romney’s meteoric rise in the polls recently. I understand the wisdom of Yogi Berra’s observation that it’s not over till it’s over. Harold Wilson was surely right that a week is a long time in politics. Still, while not exactly counting the chickens before they hatch, I am drawing up a menu that features poulet for the main course. I think there will...

Some polls are showing Romney with a strong surge and within striking distance of winning Minnesota and some pundits are saying that will happen. There is clear evidence of strong support and this big sign in a front yard in Stillwater, Minnesota shows that.

Even more encouraging than the new Gallup numbers, I think, and circumstantial evidence that maybe Major Garrett was right yesterday about Team O preparing to pull back from some swing states. The catch with Gallup's tracker is that it's the only national pollster showing anything close to a seven-point lead right now; doesn't mean they're wrong, but allegedly even GOP pollsters aren't picking up a lead like that in their internal numbers. To get a better sense of Romney's surge, says election guru Sean Trende, follow the (campaign) money: "Simply put, if Romney were up 7, he'd be advertising in...

Democratic President Barack Obama’s lead over Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is growing in Massachusetts, and is now up to 30 points, according to a new poll conducted by the Western New England University Polling Institute for The Republican and MassLive.com. The poll, conducted Sept. 28 - Oct. 4, finds Obama getting support from 63 percent of likely Massachusetts voters compared to 33 percent for Romney, with 3 percent undecided. The poll does not take into account the impact of the first presidential debate - in which Romney was widely viewed as the winner - since only one night of...

Once again, the campaign for US President is a horse race in the battleground state of Michigan! The momentum has now shifted to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney because of his winning performance in the first of three scheduled debates against President Barack Obama. In September, the momentum was behind the President after he received a big boost from the Democratic National Convention. In a new and exclusive poll for WXYZ, the Detroit Free Press, and our statewide media partners, 48 percent say they would vote for Democrat Obama if the election were held today. Forty-five percent of the 600...

Due to high taxes, burdensome regulations, lack of public sector reforms, and a lackluster job climate, more people have left California than come to the state since 2005, according to a comprehensive study by the Manhattan Institute released on Tuesday, suggesting California is no longer “perceived by most Americans as the land where dreams come true.” In the report, titled “The Great California Exodus: A Closer Look," Tom Gray and Robert Scardamalia found Californians have fled to states like Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, and Georgia because those states have a better economic climate with less taxes and...

President Obama has established a substantial lead against Republican challenger Mitt Romney in Minnesota but remains under the critical 50 percent mark and trails Romney among independent voters... The poll shows Obama drawing 48 percent of likely voters to Romney's 40 percent. Part of Obama's advantage comes from a yawning gender gap in his favor. Romney has a slight edge among men, but the president leads among women voters by more than 20 percentage points.... Janet Schneider, a St. Paul Democrat, is one of those worried about jobs and health care. She's 69 and is looking for a part-time job...

A century ago, nine out of ten black Americans lived in the South, primarily in formerly Confederate states where segregation reigned. Then, in the 1920s, blacks began heading north, both to escape the racism of Jim Crow and to seek work as southern agriculture grew increasingly mechanized. “From World War I to the 1970s, some six million black Americans fled the American South for an uncertain existence in the urban North and West,” writes journalist Isabel Wilkerson, the author of The Warmth of Other Suns. Principal destinations in the Great Migration, as the exodus came to be called, included...

OR poll---no details on "likely/registered" I could find---maybe you can. Obama up 50-41. No breakdown on D/R splits but this has to be horrible news for ZEro. Folks, I'll say this again: if he is barely polling 50% in places like CT and OR, he's toast.

A new statewide poll commissioned by The Albuquerque Journal shows President Barack Obama with a relatively small lead over Republican challenger Mitt Romney and 8 percent of voters still undecided. The poll suggests that New Mexico's presidential race may be more competitive than national pundits and polls have previously suggested. The Journal poll (http://bit.ly/U2Jeuq ) published Sunday in a copyright story shows 45 percent of those surveyed backed Obama and 40 percent supported Romney. Another 7 percent backed the Libertarian candidate for president, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson.

What's the fiercest rivalry in American politics today? There's Obama-Romney, of course, but try O'Malley-McDonnell—neighboring governors battling across the Potomac River over how best to resuscitate a moribund economy. Martin O'Malley, Maryland's liberal Democratic governor, is competing for jobs, businesses and tax dollars with Bob McDonnell, Virginia's conservative Republican chief executive. Both are rising stars considered potential presidential hopefuls in 2016. Both are Irish Catholics—Mr. McDonnell playfully calls Mr. O'Malley "the big Irishman to our north"—and each leads his party's association of governors. The two regularly spar on the Sunday talk shows, on the pages of Washington-area newspapers, and over...