Mitt Romney to be elected President in 2012

[Townsend]

Are you serious T? That's what you're reducing this to?

Even just thinking about Fox news temporarily drops a conversation to their level.

I'll defer to their preferred candidates doing things legitimately to our government.

[Townsend]

Quinnipiac: Obama Leads in Ohio, Pennsylvania Is Obama's

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2012/10/31/quinnipiac_obama_leads_in_ohio_pennsylvania_is_obama_s.html?tid=sm_tw_button_toolbar

Ohio is where Mittmentum goes to curl up and die. It was true two weeks ago. It was a true one week ago. It's true now, as the new Quinnipiac poll gives Barack Obama a 50-45 lead in the state, unchanged from the week before. Since Mitt Romney's surge after the first presidential debate, only one poll—Rasmussen—has given him a lead in Ohio.

Into the internals we go!

- Romney's only winning Ohio whites by a 50-45 margin In 2008, McCain won Ohio whites 52-46.

- Obama's lead with with women is 17 points; Romney's lead with men is 5 points.

- By a 10-point margin, voters say the national economy is improving. By a 35-point margin they say the same of Ohio's economy. And 63 percent give "a lot" or "some" credit to the Obama administration.*

- Sen. Sherrod Brown leads Republican Josh Mandel by 9 points. If this race is the "control," then Quinnipiac is better for Democrats than most other surveys—most of which find Brown leading but Mandel within 5.
It's worse for Obama in two other swing states. Quinnipiac was a bit of an outlier in Florida, seeing a 9-point Obama lead before the debates; it's down to 1. Virginia has moved from a 5-point race to a 2-point race. But if Obama wins either one of those, and no blue state falls away, he wins the election. And Quinnipiac doesn't see any historical blue state slipping away.

"We haven't bothered with Pennsylvania in these last polls," says Maurice Carroll, director of the polling institute. "It's in the bag for Obama."

That's a somewhat bold position, given that Quinnipiac's last Pennsylvania survey gave Obama only a 4-point lead. But nonpartisan polling groups have found basically the same story—Mitt Romney has not gained the territory he needs in eastern Pennsylvania in order to win the election. He goes on the air today in Philly, just as Barack Obama takes over the news cycle there with a visit to New Jersey's storm-battered towns.

[guido911]

How bad is it? Even an Obama surrogate goes into Wisconsin and gives the bad news:

enver Mayor Michael Hancock has been busy pushing for President Obama's re-election — appearing on stage Tuesday before former President Bill Clinton's speech and even heading to Milwaukee on Sunday to push for the Badger State's vote.


Hancock even broke news on that Wisconsin trip, telling voters if the election were to be held right now the president would lose Wisconsin and its coveted 10 electoral votes.

http://blogs.denverpost.com/thespot/2012/10/31/denver-mayor-michael-hancock-stumps-obama-wisconsin-early-voting-favor-president/85190/

[nathanm]

That's an odd assertion. Romney hasn't led in any poll in Wisconsin since the middle of August. You'd think that he would have at least tied in even one poll during his post-first-debate peak if he were going to win.

[guido911]

Just freakin ignore that Denver guy. I am completely convinced no one knows what the hell is going on in these states.

[guido911]

Just look at what NPR has done!!!

[guido911]

Well, neutral minded Karl Rove has weighed in. And he takes on T's quoted poll as well.

Desperate Democrats are now hanging their hopes on a new Quinnipiac University/New York Times/CBS News poll showing the president with a five-point Ohio lead. But that survey gives Democrats a +8 advantage in turnout, the same advantage Democrats had in 2008. That assumption is, to put it gently, absurd.

In addition to the data, the anecdotal and intangible evidence—from crowd sizes to each side's closing arguments—give the sense that the odds favor Mr. Romney. They do. My prediction: Sometime after the cock crows on the morning of Nov. 7, Mitt Romney will be declared America's 45th president. Let's call it 51%-48%, with Mr. Romney carrying at least 279 Electoral College votes, probably more.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204846304578090820229096046.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_opinion

Please allow me to interject and say this to all the pundits out there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-8dytUtjlQ

[Ed W]

Nate Silver pointed out a basic flaw in most polls.  They rely on reaching prospective voters via landlines and do not include a significant population sample from cell phone users.  This is important because a large portion of the population no longer uses landlines, relying on cell phones exclusively.  Pollsters cannot robo dial cell phones.  Its currently illegal. (Look for that to change if the polls are way, way off this election cycle) It's also time consuming and expensive to dial cell phones by hand, so the pollsters avoid it.

Yet despite all that, Silver's 538 blog is showing an increasing divide between the candidates, with President Obama having a 77% chance of winning this election.

And always remember, anecdotes are not data.

[guido911]

Nate Silver pointed out a basic flaw in most polls.  They rely on reaching prospective voters via landlines and do not include a significant population sample from cell phone users.  This is important because a large portion of the population no longer uses landlines, relying on cell phones exclusively.  Pollsters cannot robo dial cell phones.  Its currently illegal. (Look for that to change if the polls are way, way off this election cycle) It's also time consuming and expensive to dial cell phones by hand, so the pollsters avoid it.

Yet despite all that, Silver's 538 blog is showing an increasing divide between the candidates, with President Obama having a 77% chance of winning this election.

And always remember, anecdotes are not data.

And if Nate is wrong and Romney wins, he can say "Well, I guessed that right too since I gave him a 23% of winning".

[nathanm]

Rove is clearly the desperate one. 31 polls in October had Obama in the lead in Ohio. Since the 14th, Obama has led in 22 polls. Romney has led in 6 in the past month and all of two since the 14th. There have also been 6 ties since the 14th. Assuming quite generously that ties were actually Romney leads, that's 31-12 all month and 22-8 in the past two weeks. Taking ties as ties, that's 31-6 or 22-2.

In the past week, it's even worse for Romney, 13-1 in favor of Obama, with no ties.

That's quite some Romentum he's got there. The problem for Romney is that it's in the wrong direction.

If I'm bored enough later, I'll go through and kick out the robopollers and see what difference that makes.

If you take The Ohio Poll at face value, Gary Johnson is going to cost Romney the election, and that's with it arguably oversampling Republicans at the expense of Independents.

[TulsaRufnex]

I think Chris Christie is trying to prove Ann Coulter prophetic by throwing Romney under the bus....
http://theweek.com/article/index/235619/hurricane-sandy-is-chris-christie-throwing-mitt-romney-under-a-bus

http://www.therightscoop.com/coulter-run-chris-christie-or-well-lose-in-2012/

A $5,000 Shopping Run to Walmart Turned Romney's Campaign Stop into a 'Relief Event'
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/10/5000-shopping-run-walmart-turned-romneys-campaign-stop-relief-event/58529/

[heironymouspasparagus]

Woke up early enough to catch the sunrise this morning.  Gorgeous!

Today (and the last few weeks) are the kind of days that make the rest of the year in Oklahoma worth putting up with it!!  (115 degrees...really??  No excuse for that nonsense.)

[Townsend]

Just look at what NPR has done!!!

Even the small children are more intelligent.

[Townsend]

Storm of anti-Obama text messages linked to Virginia firm

http://news.yahoo.com/storm-anti-obama-text-messages-linked-virginia-firm-210509103.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A controversial Virginia marketing and polling firm appears to have used a legal loophole to bombard scores of Americans with unsolicited text messages berating President Barack Obama less than a week before Election Day.

More than a dozen different messages landed on the screens of phone users late on Tuesday, originating from mysterious websites instead of phone numbers. They attacked Obama and Democrats on a variety of issues such as abortion, foreign policy, same-sex marriage and taxation.

The domain names of those websites had been registered with GoDaddy.com through a firm that masks original owners.

On Wednesday, Reuters compiled a list of at least nine websites gathered from reporters who received the political text messages. A review of websites that track domain name registrations revealed that three of the nine websites that sent the messages were registered by Jason Flanary. Those sites had been suspended for spam and abuse.

An email for Jason Flanary indicated he works for ccAdvertising, a division of FreeEats.com Inc. Neither Flanary or the firm returned requests for comment.

CcAdvertising's website says: "All ccAdvertising services are compliant with all Do Not Call regulations and exceptions."

Based in Centreville, Virginia, ccAdvertising is a firm that has represented Republican candidates. It has been fined, sued and pursued for aggressive political pushes that state authorities and private parties have argued violate laws against robo-calls and other types of automated phone contact.

It remains unclear who may have paid for the latest wave of messages and how many people received them.

"If re-elected, Obama will use taxpayer money to fund abortion. Don't let this happen," read one of the messages, which were sent out on Tuesday. "Medicare goes bankrupt in 4000 days while Obama plays politics with senior health," read another.

In 2011, Flanary unsuccessfully ran as a Republican for state Senate in Virginia, and his company was sued in Fairfax County, for allegedly unleashing thousands of spam texts in the last days of campaigning.

Federal law generally prohibits sending text messages to phone users who did not give prior consent, but does not specifically address non-commercial messages that originate as email, which includes political ones.

That is how ccAdvertising appears to get around the law: Each phone number by default has an attached email address. The spammer can spray emails to those addresses through trial and error. That way the message goes through as an email but appears to the receiver as a text message and, in fact, can cost consumers money if they do not have unlimited data plans.

ccAdvertising and its work are used as an example in a petition to the Federal Communications Commission to specify a ban on spam email-to-text messages, filed earlier this year by Democratic firm Revolution Messaging.

"The FCC makes exemptions for people to be able to send email for political causes, but let's be honest, just because you're adding an email extension and using an email gateway, you still have to find a phone number," said Scott Goodstein, who runs Revolution Messaging.

Goodstein believes that ccAdvertising has been behind political text spam waves in several states this year.

ccAdvertising lists a variety of political and corporate clients on its website, including Americans for Tax Reform, a non-profit run by anti-tax Republican Grover Norquist.

"Americans for Tax Reform has never done this type of unsolicited text messaging with ccAdvertising or any other vendor, and we never will," said spokesman John Kartch, adding that the group has not done business with ccAdvertising "for more than a year" and, in fact, actively opposed Flanary in his state Senate bid.

The FCC and major phone carriers including Verizon and T-Mobile have encouraged users to report spam messages, which can be done by forwarding them to a short phone number 7726 (spells "SPAM").

[Townsend]

U.S. Economy Added 158,000 Private-Sector Jobs in October, According to ADP National Employment Report

http://www.adpemploymentreport.com/NER-November2012.aspx?cid=soc_twt_NovNER_20121101