I am curious but does anyone know the percentage of early voters? 54% to 41% is good but may not be overwhelming enough to counter election day turnout. Also does Ohio still have absentee voting? My feeling right now is that Ohio will be within 5%.
It has certainly declined from where it was earlier this month, but it has held steady the last couple of weeks. With 2 weeks to go, it is anybody's game, which surprises me. Romney is peaking. He just needs one good blow to Obama before the election to actually pull this off.
The early voting polling answers don't jive with what the data the Ohio SoS is reporting. http://www.sos.state.oh.us/SOS/mediaCenter/2012/2012-10-23.aspx I've been doing my own tracking of absentee ballot requests in Ohio http://tinyurl.com/cyogpnx http://tinyurl.com/98krp7l
At this point the only possible blow that could change things is the jobs numbers that come out on the Friday before the election and even then it might be too close to the election to really change anything. Romney very well could still win but I don't think game changers are very likely this close to the election.
Since my facebook is getting crowded with political stuff here is my Facebook endorsement. With two weeks to go until the election and with Facebook flush with political posts I am letting people know why I am voting for Obama. Looking over the Obama’s record I don’t think he has done a great job but given the challenges that we have faced as a country and that he has faced as a president I think he has done a good job. Regarding the economy it is true that it is not where most people would want it to be but if you consider where we were headed in early 2009 it is much better. To the question of “are you better than you were four years ago?” for me as a small business owner the answer to that question is “YES”. 2012 has been a very busy year for my business and for us the recession appears over. More important than where we are at the moment is if we consider what happened during the past four years when most of the little work that we had had some element related to government spending so from my angle the Obama strategy worked. The strategy put forward by Romney of cutting federal taxes has had little bearing on the success and failure of my own business as we already pay low taxes since our revenue have been low already. While lower taxes might encourage potential clients to spend more the biggest impediment towards them spending more also doesn’t seem to be taxes but difficulty with getting financing. That is an issue though that has been addressed by restoring more faith in our banking system. That said there is no way to judge the success of a nationwide policy based upon any single business and there is no denying it still isn’t for many. The unfortunate truth is that PRESIDENTS DO NOT HAVE THAT MUCH INFLUENCE ON THE ECONOMY. Neither Romney nor Obama will be able to directly get banks to loan more, companies to hire more or consumers to spend more. Most importantly neither of them will be able to fix the problems with Europe which is the biggest drag on the economy. There is no practical reason to vote for Romney because he will create 12 million jobs when even as he admits government doesn’t create jobs, especially when he calling for a smaller government. The next issue is foreign policy and national security. As the debate last night shows is that there really isn’t much difference between their policies. Romney has outlined some problems with the Obama Administration’s handling of things but hasn’t really put forward a policy that is substantially different. The only real difference is that Romney would increase defense spending but the problem with that is how will that be paid for? Further this is a solution for a problem that largely doesn’t exist. Our military is already much larger than any other military and given the economic interdependence between us, China and Russia it is doubtful that any major country will risk their economy in an outright military confrontation. The other big issue is repealing the ACA (Obamacare). While ACA is far far from perfect you have to consider the implications of repealing it. Now that the federal government, most state governments, the insurance industry and medical industry have geared themselves up to deal with ACA repeal of it will be very costly. The other issue is if we went back to the situation prior to ACA. While people complain about health care cost rising prior to ACA they were already rising much faster than inflation while at the same time more and more people were going uninsured. The status quo prior to ACA was unsustainable and needed to be reformed. While Romney has promised to keep the popular proposals of ACA, allowing children to stay on parent’s coverage until 26, no-discrimination for pre-existing conditions, what he hasn't answered is how the insurance companies are going to pay for that without the mandate in ACA. Romney himself knows this which is why the Mass law has a mandate because there is no way it is feasible for the private insurance industry to give those benefits without greatly expanding the insurance pool. The bottom line is that prior to ACA the health insurance system was a failure at containing costs and expanding coverage and going back to that will be disastrous. The final reason and most important reason though why I am voting for Obama is that I really don’t know what Mitt Romney we will get. While I firmly believe Romney is a good man with strong personal values when it comes to politics he is UNPRINCIPLED. On positions the Mitt Romney that governed Massachusetts is very different than the Mitt Romney that ran in the Republican primaries, who is in turn different from the Mitt Romney that is now running in the general election. Romney is correct that he was able to work with an 87% Democratic majority in Mass. because he governed like a Democrat contrast that to the “severely conservative” Mitt Romney of the Republican primaries and this is a man that will essentially jettison core principles if it furthers him politically. Obama too hasn’t been the paragon of political consistency and has often appeared weak in the face of opposition but he has stuck to certain core principles. The biggest example is health care reform which he easily could’ve dropped but kept with it even when opinion was strongly against it. It is very questionable though what political core principles Romney has and whether you are a conservative, liberal, or moderate I wouldn’t count on him to be advance your principles. Looking at both candidates as a whole what this comes down to is that while Obama hasn’t been great he has been good, on the other hand I really don’t know what I am going to get with Romney. At this time that is just not a risk I am willing to take.
Jobs numbers. Romney wants to see 8%+. Another incident like what happened in Libya. He doesn't need a huge boost. Just that final edge.
If the unemployment number is 8.0 or 8.1% I doubt it makes much of a difference. If it is 8.5% that might but a tenth or two here isn't goign to matter especially that close to the date. If a Libya like situation happens I think that is less likely to affect the outcome than the jobs number because both Romney and Obama are going to be very careful how they respond to it. While Romney has gotten some benefit out of the confusion about when Obama called it a terrorists attack or not he was hurt early on by rushing to judgement. Neither candidate is going to want to risk appearing to make a rash statement this close. If another Benghazi happened this week I am guessing you will see both making very very measured statements with the full facts not coming out until after the election.
He had 3 debates and couldn't close the deal. It was a good try but there really is no other opportunity for Romney to gain ground
8.5% would be impossible. Even during the recession we never had a jump that high. At best (worst) it goes to 8.3%, and I think that would be a knife to Obama. 8% I think we will be sitting in front of our TVs in doubt. 7.5% and Romney would stand no chance. The full facts don't need to come out. The incident itself is a blow to the current administration. We aren't talking about necessarily well-reasoned people. Hopefully we don't see anything negative occur, but where as a month ago Romney needed a miracle to make a race, he now needs some dominos to fall the right way.
...among the undecided voter who votes fractional changes in the headline unemployment number on the weekend prior to election day. Hint: that person doesn't exist.
completely agreed...i doubt seriously that the number of people waiting for that last job figure to be announced before they choose who they'll vote for is even in the realm of statistically significant.
Hey, they like to play the winner, so they can brag to all their friends. T-shirt unemployment fans, all of 'em.
Bold move on Romney's part. I guess he's realized it's not worth it and won't do any good. No more Romney interviews? The Romney campaign is not committing to granting any network interviews in the final two weeks of the campaign.
Oh I don't know...that small little fact THAT HE'S RUNNING FOR ****ING PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES?
