Fresh worries for Obama in North Carolina, Wisconsin

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
5/29/2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Recent encouraging economic news may fall away come election time, analysts say

Not everything is a given in the 2012 Presidential Race. President Barack Obama received warning signs in a once-promising Southern state and typically Democratic-voting Midwestern states. Recent, encouraging economic news may be swept away in the roughly five months before the election, analysts say.

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LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Obama's new worries about North Carolina and Wisconsin provide fresh opportunities for Republican Mitt Romney. The apparent Republican candidate must peel off states Obama won in 2008 if he's to gather the 270 electoral votes needed to oust the incumbent in November.

Iowa is now expected to be tight to the finish, while the previously pivotal New Mexico seems to be drifting into Democratic territory.

According to an Associated Press analysis of recent polls, if the election were held today, Obama would likely win 247 electoral votes to Romney's 206. These results were obtained through campaign spending and key developments in states, along with interviews with more than a dozen Republican and Democratic strategists both inside and outside of the two campaigns.

Seven states, offering a combined 85 electoral votes, are viewed as "too close" to give either candidate a meaningful advantage: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio and Virginia.

"As of today, the advantage still lies with the president, but there is a long and hard road ahead in this election," Tad Devine, the top strategist to Democratic presidential candidates Al Gore and John Kerry says. Devine isn't directly involved in this year's race.

If Romney wins all the states Republican John McCain carried in 2008 plus North Carolina, as recent trends suggest, he would still need 64 electoral votes to hit the magic number, requiring him to win a majority of the states that are up for grabs.

Obama faces the costly and labor-intensive challenge of defending those states in a much different environment than the one of four years ago.

Big-spending, pro-Romney political committees are certain to be a factor, and already are running television ads in states where Obama is vulnerable, such as Florida.

Obama's early spending, with more than $30 million on advertising before Memorial Day and new glimmers of economic hope across the battleground states demonstrate the size of Romney's challenge.

The past six weeks have been volatile, the race is expected to be close.

� 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

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Keywords: President Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, presdiential election, political campaigns

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1 - 2 of 2 Comments

mvymvy
11 months ago
Presidential elections don't have to be this way.

The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps. There would no longer be a handful of 'battleground' states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in more than 3/4ths of the states that now are just 'spectators' and ignored after the primaries.

When the bill is enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes– enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the electoral votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC.

The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for President. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action.

In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in virtually every state surveyed in recent polls in closely divided Battleground states: CO – 68%, FL – 78%, IA 75%, MI – 73%, MO – 70%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM– 76%, NC – 74%, OH – 70%, PA – 78%, VA – 74%, and WI – 71%; in Small states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK – 70%, DC – 76%, DE – 75%, ID – 77%, ME – 77%, MT – 72%, NE 74%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM – 76%, OK – 81%, RI – 74%, SD – 71%, UT – 70%, VT – 75%, WV – 81%, and WY – 69%; in Southern and Border states: AR – 80%,, KY- 80%, MS – 77%, MO – 70%, NC – 74%, OK – 81%, SC – 71%, TN – 83%, VA – 74%, and WV – 81%; and in other states polled: AZ – 67%, CA – 70%, CT – 74%, MA – 73%, MN – 75%, NY – 79%, OR – 76%, and WA – 77%. Americans believe that the candidate who receives the most votes should win.

The bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers in 21 states. The bill has been enacted by 9 jurisdictions possessing 132 electoral votes - 49% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.

NationalPopularVote
Follow National Popular Vote on Facebook via NationalPopularVoteInc
Rob
11 months ago
Seems to me that the more the Ryan budget that Romney endorses is talked about, the worse that will play for Romney in the coming months. Will be curious to see how that plays out.

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