Mitt Romney’s Path To Victory: Incredibly Narrow, And Perhaps Impossible To Navigate
As the final stretch of the campaign begins in earnest, Mitt Romney faces a very difficult task.
Shortly after President Obama’s acceptance speech ended Thursday night, the Romney campaign announced an ambitious ad campaign targeted at a group of swing states,signaling that the post-Convention phase of the campaign has officially begun:
Mitt Romney’s campaign is gearing up for its first major television offensive since the Republican National Convention, laying down heavy-duty ad reservations in eight swing states, according to media-buying sources.
Romney’s campaign is buying time in Nevada, Ohio, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Virginia and Massachusetts — the last of those representing the Boston TV market, which covers much of New Hampshire.
Right now, the flights cover just four days: Friday, Sept. 7, through Monday, Sept. 10. But that’s unlikely to be the full extent of Romney’s advertising next week.
Romney’s ads are the first major use of the general-election money that his campaign and the RNC raised, and that Romney was unable to use before his formal nomination in Tampa last week.
The ad buy went into effect fairly quickly, as I saw my first run of the Virginia-focused ad while watching Morning Joe Friday morning. I’m sure that won’t be the first iteration of that particular ad that I will see no matter how much I try to avoid it. You can see the ads themselves on Romney’s YouTube Channel, but here’s the Virginia ad just as an example of what they’re gearing up for in the first round of ad buys:
It’s a fairly well done ad, and the mention of the cuts to military spending are likely to resonate with defense workers and military families in Northern Virginia and the Tidewater area, which are likely to be the two areas of Virginia that decide the outcome of the election here. The ads for the other states are also fairly well done and, one presumes, likely to be followed up with sequels in the weeks to come.
What’s interesting about the ad buy, though, isn’t the quality of the ads but the states that they are running in. All of them are generally recognized as battleground states this election cycle, but, as Jonathan Chait points out, the ad buy itself seems to be a reflection of how Mitt Romney’s path to victory has become even narrower:
Romney is targeting eight states: Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and New Hampshire. No Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania. This is surely not because Romney is husbanding scarce cash. Campaign aides also told Fox News yesterday that they basically have so much money they have to come up with ways to get it out the door, Brewster’s Millions-style, before election day. (“We have $100 million we’ve just raised. If you look at our burn rate to date and our cash on hand, there’s not much more we can spend on infrastructure. So we’ve got to start spending our general election funds in a big way, because you know what the value of that money is on the day after the election? Zero.”) And it’s probably not because they want outside super-PACs to spend in those states, either — they can’t legally coordinate, and the super-PACs will take their cues from the Romney campaign about where to fight. (The GOP super-PACs have already pulled outof Michigan and Pennsylvania.)
The reason this looks worrisome for Romney is that he’s pursuing an electoral-college strategy that requires him nearly to run the table of competitive states. The states where Romney is not competing (and which aren’t obviously Republican, either) add up to 247 electoral votes. The eight states where Romney is competing add up to a neat 100 electoral votes, of which Romney needs 79 and Obama just 23. If you play with the electoral possibilities, you can see that this would mean Obama could win with Florida alone or Ohio plus a small state or Virginia plus a couple small states, and so on.
Unless I’m missing something badly here, Romney needs either a significant national shift his way — possibly from the debates or some other news event — or else to hope that his advertising advantage is potent enough to move the dial in almost every swing state in which he’s competing.
I’ve made note of the differences between Romney’s path to victory and Obama’s several times before. As I noted back in April when the race between Obama and Romney was just beginning, President Obama’s Electoral College advantage at the time was so significant that he could afford to lose several states that he won in 2008, including such important states as Florida and Virginia, and still win the election. Romney, on the other hand, was in a position where he could not afford to lose many of the battleground states, and certainly would be required to win two out of three out of Ohio, Virginia, and Florida. By May, it was appearing as if Romney would have to win all three of those states in order to get to the magic number of 270 in the Electoral College based on the way the swing state polling was going at the time. Considering that he was, and still is, polling behind Obama in at least two of those three states, that was a tall order indeed in a race where neither candidate was making a breakthrough. The situation wasn’t much better for Romney when I looked at in July and, by the time that we found ourselves on the eve of the party conventions just two weeks ago, I noted this:
The real takeaway here, though, isn’t who might win or lose based on the information available today, but how narrow Mitt Romney’s path to victory remains. As noted above, he would need to win more than 80% of the outstanding toss-up Electoral Votes. That leaves almost no margin for error on the part of a campaign that has made several errors this summer. By contrast, President Obama only has to win about 23% of the toss-up EVs, and there are plenty of paths to victory that would allow him to do that. Obviously, there are many things that could happen between now and Election Day that could completely change the road map to victory for both candidates, starting with the conventions that start Monday.
Things don’t look much better for Romney today than they did when I wrote that, as this RealClearPolitics Electoral College projection shows:
There have been some changes since the last time I posted this map. The number of toss-up states has increased from six to eleven, and much of that has come from President Obama’s side of the column with states like Michigan and Wisconsin being put in the toss up column largely due to recent polls that seemed to suggest they were, in fact, toss up states. The caveat there is that there are significant doubts about whether that will last very long. As I noted just yesterday, the Romney campaign and pro-Romney SuperPAC are not running any ads in Michigan at all, and the ad buy that started today doesn’t include either Michigan or Wisconsin despite the polls showing a tighter than expected race. This suggests that the Romney campaign has internal numbers indicating that those states are not as tight as recent public polling indicates, and not worth spending this early money on. Of course, given the amount of money the Romney camp has and the need to spend it all before Election Day, they may end up putting ads up in those states just to see if they move the polls at all. For the moment, though, the Romney camp seems to be conceding that the upper Midwest is not nearly as winnable as they might have hoped.
Even assuming that this RCP map is accurate about what states are toss-ups, though, Romney is still in a difficult position. Based on these numbers, Obama would need to win just under 39% of the outstanding toss-up Electoral Votes. Romney, on the other hand, would need to win nearly 63% of the outstanding Electoral Votes in order to win, and right now, it’s fairly clear to me that he’s far behind in that task. Just look, for one example, at the fact that he remains in a fight with Obama in North Carolina. This is a state that pretty much everyone assumed would be safely in the Republican column this year for a lot of reasons, but it isn’t. Every dollar that the Romney campaign spends in North Carolina is one that they cannot spend in another state that may arguably be more important and, if it turns out that Romney does not win the Tarheel State in November, then he can likely begin working on his concession speech.
This is the reason that, for the moment at least, I see the race like this:
In order to reverse this, Romney would need to flip 35 Electoral Votes from Obama’s column to his. He would do that if he won Ohio and Virginia and picked up New Hampshire, but that would give him the narrowest of Electoral College victories, 270 to 268. Despite the optimistic projections of many conservatives, I see no prospect of a Romney landslide this year absent a serious economic downturn or serious mistake by the Obama campaign, and the Obama campaign hasn’t been making very many mistakes lately. As I’ve said before, though, Mitt Romney is in a situation where he has to run a nearly flawless campaign. So far, we haven’t seen much evidence of flawless coming out of Romney headquarters in Boston.
An insane strategy. However, as the RNC just demonstrated, this is a party, a campaign team, and a candidate who are incapable of planning.
Well, it seems Romney narrowed the Ohio margin by lying about Obama and welfare. The more he can pander to white racism, the better a shot he’s got there and in Virginia.
And just like that, the Romney gaffe machine gets back to work/
In response to a softball question from Fox News about why he didn’t mention the troops in his convention speech, Romney says:
“When you give a speech you don’t go through a laundry list, you talk about the things you think are important”
So much for that so-called effective ad you posted above. Vets will be hearing about this quote for the next two months.
Not fighting in PA and MI is a tactical mistake IMO.
Yeah, they may not win those states…..but you have to make Obama at least spend some cash in there. I remember Chuck Todd saying the other day how Team Obama was so confident in keeping MI and PA that they are moving resources into Ohio, VA, and FL.
Agreed, JR. They have a cash advantage, right? You make that work by spreading the other guy thin. Did these people never play Risk?
Great scene in the movie American President,
“This is a time for serious people, Bob, and your fifteen minutes are up. My name is Andrew Shepherd, and I *am* the President.”
Last night President Obama declared,
“I *am* the president.”
And put Mr. Romney on notice:
Mr. Romney, your fifteen minutes are up.
Romney’s path is narrow, yet he definitely can get there in the swing states. He’s got the money, now he has to play error free ball the rest of the way.
I see the advantage as 60/40 Obama.
So Romney/Ryan have more money than their campaign knows what to do with, and they still aren’t don’t see MI / PA as worthwhile? To me that says a lot about where the election is.
Romney today when asked by Fox’s Brett Baier about why he didn’t speak about the War in Afghanistan in his RNC speech…
BAIER: To hear several speakers in Charlotte … they were essentially saying that you don’t care about the U.S. military because you didn’t mention U.S. troops and the war in Afghanistan in your nomination acceptance speech. … Do you regret opening up this line of attack, now a recurring attack, by leaving out that issue in the speech.
ROMNEY: I only regret you’re repeating it day in and day out. When you give a speech you don’t go through a laundry list, you talk about the things that you think are important and I described in my speech, my commitment to a strong military unlike the president’s decision to cut our military. And I didn’t use the word troops, I used the word military. I think they refer to the same thing.
Answer: Military Troops.
Question: What’s the next group of voters that Mitt and the GOP are going to piss off?
It’s already going viral.
I can’t wait for the debates…
It’s a good thing Romney controls the voting machines.
That aside, I’m not sure that Romney’s path to the Electoral College is “perhaps impossible to navigate.” Methinks that undersells Romney’s chances.
The McCain states from ’08 (a given) + IN and NC (a given) + Fla., OH and VA (a tall order but certainly doable) + one other state, doesn’t matter which one, thereby would = the presidency. And if Romney wins the W. Bush states from ’04 he’s in with room to spare.
Yeah, granted, any such scenario would be met by an orgy of derangement from the media, the chattering classes, the academe, and the other fever swamps. But it’s really not all that far fetched.
Did you check out the details of today’s job market report? U-6 unemployment is at 14.7%, the labor force is disintegrating as we speak, wages actually declined last month in nominal much less in real terms, and net job growth is less than anemic, it’s abysmal. Shit, by any historical precedents we should be measuring the drapes for Romney, shouldn’t we?
But politics out there in Zombieland has degenerated into a cesspool of demographic-based identities, not issue-based critical thinking, ergo past performances truly are no guarantees of future results. So we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. Could be quite entertaining.
@DGarr:
That was my favorite part of the speech. I thought back to The American President also.
@Tsar Nicholas:
For political junkies and economists, that matters. For everyone else, they see that the unemployment number went from 8.3 to 8.1 and that we gained jobs for the 30-something month in a row.
That’s the reality.
@al-Ameda: Ad spending doesn’t mean much at this stage of the game.
If Romney tips FL OH VA then he can win, sure (tho not if Obama picks up the other swing states), but that would require such an overall deterioration in Obama’s position that Romney would win several other close states as well.
I keep thinking of 1948:
The key states in the 1948 election were Ohio, California, and Illinois. Truman narrowly won all three states by a margin of less than one percentage point apiece. These three states had a combined total of 78 electoral votes. Had Dewey carried all three states by the same narrow margins, he would have won the election in the Electoral College while still losing the popular vote.
Truman won Ohio by 0.24% of the votes cast.
@Tsar Nicholas:
I predict that Akin on the ballot will move MO back to toss-up and the post-convention bounce could move NC there as well.
But let say I’m wrong and Romney carries all the McCain states, plus IN & NC, plus the amazing trifecta of OH, FL and VA.
He’s still 5 short.
And NH only has 4.
@Tsar Nicholas:
The U-6 unemployment is trending down. Chart here.
@Me Me Me: MO is a lost cause, Team Obama isn’t going to waste their money there, that state is the Dems version of PA. NC is still lean Romney, but he should spend there.
But let say I’m wrong and Romney carries all the McCain states, plus IN & NC, plus the amazing trifecta of OH, FL and VA.
True, but I can’t imagine Obama’s losing that trifecta and still holding on in IA.
Romney’s still got to spend $$$$$ and do well in the debates, barring an October surprise, to have a serious chance. As someone put it, the voters’ dilemma is:
(1) The economy sucks; and
(2) Romney sucks.
@Anderson: This sounds correct and salient. Dewey was still remembered as an honored public servant when I was growing up in NYC in the 70s. To this day IMO he deserves praise for his disdain of the politicking gladhanding games that made his road a lot longer. A good man. Saliency maybe in a few campaign tactics cribbed from ’48?
I doubt Romney’s getting NC after Amendment One galvanized the liberals there.
@Anderson:
Well, sucks and sucks. That graph I used above is neat because it shows a few things superimposed.
Hmm. now that I get on a real computer though I notice that it looked better on a phone.
Ah well, if you can expand or squint you can see that the recession officially ended in early 2009 but unemployment did not peak until later that year. Since then, for the last two years, unemployment has been in a bumpy decline. Month to month twists have canceled out, making for remarkably linear progress.
I think that means the economy “sucks” in terms of being not good, but not in the sense of being scary with impending doom. That is an improvement. Which brings us to:
If he had a strong, forceful, and effective way to break that new stability, you’d think he’d name it. At least his proxies should be out there blue-skying it.
Sounds like they have the capability to lock up every bit of air and cable-wave media advertizing in the states they need, and they only need to swing 4-5% of the vote in those places to win them.
He’s got a heck of a shot.
Well that probably would be the only way he could win…
It’s good to know that when the President wins re-election that you and people like you will have a handy list of scapegoats to explain his win…
@john personna:
That graph you used sucks because it’s only 300 pixels wide and too tiny to read.
@Stormy Dragon:
I did scan for another, but didn’t find one with both recession start-end dates and rate-of-change beside the raw u6/u3 data.
the debates will shake things up, pre-planned speeches in front of favorable crowds only go so far. still, the electoral map is pretty blue- either way you look at it.
If Romney is a strong debater, it is a well kept secret. Meanwhile, his unforced errors continue to mount up, and he is a candidate that can’t afford mistakes.
@Dazedandconfused:
But what is the message they are going to convey that is going to swing 4-5% of the vote in those places?
Debates are popularity contests unless someone just self-immolates. Mr. Obama is very careful, the odds of something self-immolating are low. The odds are much better for Mr. Romney saying something stupid.
But again, it doesn’t matter as much as rapport with the audience. Al Gore kicked George W. Bush’s butt and lost the debate solely by virtue of being Al Gore. Same with John Kerry. Same with Mike Dukakis. The win goes to the guy who is more relatable, whose narrative you get at an emotional level. That ain’t gonna be Mitt Romney.
At this point I think it’s Obama’s to lose, and if he loses it’ll likely be to outside events.
“2016” movie
Mrs. Romney also gave an interview today that shredded my last nerve. She refused to answer a whole string of questions, for example:
“Anchor David Nelson: “Do you believe that employer-provided health insurance should be required to cover birth control?”
Ann Romney: “Again, you’re asking me questions that are not about what this election is going to be about. This election is going to be about the economy and jobs.”
Anchor David Nelson: “Well, a Pew Research poll shows those issues are very important to women, ranking them either “important” or “very important.”
Ann Romney: “You know, but I personally believe, and this is what I’m hearing from women all across the country that they are going to look for the guy that’s going to pull them out of the weeds and get them job security and a brighter future for their children. That’s the message.”
Does she seriously think that the women she hears from are a random sample of all the women in the country? I doubt she has been within 500 yards of anyone who isn’t a Republican in the last ten months, if not longer. He could have asked her if the sky was blue or orange and she would have said that it doesn’t matter because of the economy. Ugh.
Why do so many of the commentariat think debates have any effect on the election?
How many voters can there be who are not very partisan, relatively undecided, and persuadable?
@michael reynolds:
Ya know, I’ve suggested that Romney is micro-managing and mismanaging his own campaign. (Since my early call we’ve had Clint and the empty chair as further evidence.) If Romney just runs the clock and loses in the current manner, I predict that will be the post-election finger pointing.
Surely though campaign professionals must be searching for some kind of game change. To me that means that he has to announce some plan, any plan.
@john personna:
I agree. I have been amazed (and encouraged) by the incompetence of Mr. Romney’s campaign. People were under the impression that he ran a good primary campaign, but look who he beat. Perry, Daniels and Pawlenty beat themselves. Romney only beat Gingrich and Santorum, and seriously, who couldn’t beat those guys with a 10 to 1 money advantage? Or without it for that matter.
Up against Obama it’s been one misstep after another. And this is the Great Businessman, the Almighty Manager? So far all he can do is raise money. His convention was C- work and Obama’s was A+.
War vets? Men actually getting shot at right now in Afghanistan? They’re on his “laundry list.” Good grief.
If Romney weren’t a droid and had something more than Bush policies on steroids to offer the election would be his to lose. But he’s Romney and seems to think us little people should be rushing to coronate him.
As a North Carolina resident, I think I’ll be turning the TV off this weekend (or at least avoiding any channel that runs commercials). Romney had plenty of money during the primaries but it still took him several months to beat down the rest of the Republi-clowns, so I’m not sure how much impact his ad barrage will have. I’m also not so sure I’d put NC in his column yet. The polls are pretty tight and my understanding is that Obama has a far better ground game.
Anyone who pays the least bit of attention to politics know that Romney has no chance of winning. That Republicans are having to work to win in North Carolina and Virginia are clear enough signs that Romeny (or any Republican candidate would win).
What is also idiotic are the moderate Republicans who believe that if they nominate some big government, cheap labor, open border nominee while Jon Huntsman or Jeb Bush that the Republicans will be any more competitive in Wisconsin or Michigan.
I doubt that doubling the income taxes while raising social security and Medicare taxes high enough to fund all of the entitlement spending that the Democrats will cause enough voters to stop automatically voting for Republicans.
What people like Doug have to realize is that conservative politics is over in the U.S. and politics is not about elections or idea but about entitlements and who pays.
@anjin-san: well, if he just brings up the obvious;
– the economy….no need to elaborate as it sucks by anyone’s measure- even in here aside from joe personna.
– but if we do we can just reminisce to obamas unkempt promises, no empty chair is necessary.
1) ‘i will cut the deficit by half by the end of my term” . true, his “term’s” up in January but i don’t see it happening
2) “obamacare” debates will be held on CSPAN. (that was when he was still hammering the dreaded “transparency” theme….that was scuttled soon after the inauguration.
3) “Gitmo will be closed within a year”, he actually said that shortly after the inauguration. (this is one promise i’m glad he didn’t keep as NYC would have to bear the brunt of the courtroom theatrics).
4) ‘transparency” (see #2)
there’s more stuff about keeping taxes in check for those who make less than $250k, but you get the gist.
@superdestroyer:
Conservative politics are over in this country? Tell that to Scott Walker and Marco Rubio. I agree that on the national level the libs have the game down, but if conservative politics were really over in this country you wouldn’t have candidates for Senate like Ted Cruz and Mia Love.
Well now, Romney “served his church” – or so he told the gay Vietnam vet who he pretty much told to piss off the other day. Mitt knew real hardship in France, I think he deserves our respect and sympathy.
I actually want to touch on “served my church” a bit more. If someone wants to do some sort of missionary work, that is fine. But it’s a personal choice. It does not necessarily mean that anyone has to respect you for it, or that you are off the hook for being yet another rich kid that managed to avoid getting his ass shot off in Indochina.
It takes a certain amount of brass for this plutocrat to try and equate spending time in France with serving one’s country in ‘Nam.
@bill:
1) pretty sure the cut the deficit in half was before it ballooned in Bush’s last year
2) really?
3) held up by Congress
4) really?
@Beth:
Since the Repubilcans are irrelevant at the national level, how long to you think that they can remain relevant at the state level? Does it really matter how the Republicans send to DC when those Republicans in DC are incapable of affecting policy or governance while in DC?
There will be fewer Cruz;’s in the future when every ambitious person realizes that there is no point in running for office as a Republican because Republicans have no effect on governance.
@bill:
For what it’s worth, what really drew me to add a chart to this thread was this, from the tsar:
That ” labor force is disintegrating as we speak” stuff is more over the top than I’ve ever been.
And in “suck and sucks” I agreed that the economy “sucks” in terms of being not good, but not in the sense of being scary with impending doom. Not “disintegrating as we speak.”
@David M:
really, all campaign promises or actual quotes while in office! maybe he didn’t realize he’d actually have to work with other branches of the gov’t prior to ascending to the throne?
@bill:
I suggest spending some time on the Politi-fact “Promise Tracker” … Obama is far from perfect, but within his top 25 and his total list of over 500 campaign promises from 2008, he has a lot more in the “Kept” than in the “Broken” Category… and that’s without even tallying the compromises (which include partial successes).
Total record:
Promise Kept 190 (37%)
Compromise 72 (14%) (note: tally the first two together and you end up with 51%)
Promise Broken 83 (16%)
Stalled 49 (10%)
In the Works 112 (22%)
Not yet rated 2 (0%)
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/
Top 25 (15 Kept, 3 Compromised, 1 in the works, 6 Broken)
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/subjects/politifacts-top-promises/?page=1
@Anderson:
The analogies to 1948 are becoming more and more apparent to me. Indeed, I’ve started reading a book on the 48 election that I hope to finish in the coming weeks.
michael:
Yes, and I think it’s also good to remember who has beaten him. In 2008 McCain beat Mitt, and then Obama beat McCain. So Obama is now running against a guy who got beaten by a guy who got beaten by Obama.