Wednesday, October 24, 2012

No One Is Pulling Out Anywhere

One of the more foolish things I've seen lately is a trend of pundits drawing conclusions about whether campaigns think they can win various states, and therefore whether they have a chance to win, based on whether they've abandoned a state or not.

This was probably never as true as all that. But everyone should know: we're in a new world. The campaigns have plenty of resources. And, meanwhile, there just aren't a lot of states which are going to be competitive in a reasonably close race. At the moment, Pollster rates seven states as toss-ups, another two as leaning to Obama, and that's it. Nine competitive states. The campaigns have the money to contest all nine. And the total swing in them, from four point Obama leads in Wisconsin and Nevada to a two point Romney lead in North Carolina, just aren't all that far apart that it makes sense for either campaign to abandon one in order to play for a longshot. And, indeed, John Sides reports that the candidates are at least running ads in each of these states and a few others, too.

So as far as talk about pulling out of states is concerned...just ignore it. It's all bluff. Both campaigns have the money to compete in all the swing states. End of story.

16 comments:

  1. How about those stories pushed by the Romney campaign that they might go into Pennsylvania or Maine? More bluffing?

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    1. If Boston gets that chilling feeling about Ohio from their internal polling, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see them go up in Penn. The Maine district is a longshot to matter, and it matters mostly in getting Romney from 269 to 270, and Romney figures to win a tie in the House of Representatives.

      The reason PA is so attractive is that there is no early voting, and even absentee voting is discouraged without voters giving a 'valid reason'. This gives a campaign a punchers' chance of a late surge, and is partially why McCain spent much of the waning days of the '08 campaign trying to contest the state.

      McCain went into PA because he couldn't hold the Bush states, and needed something else. If Romney sees Ohio slipping, that means Obama can win with just Nevada and Wisconsin. (Or Colorado in place of Wisconsin.)

      Romney has a glimmer of a path without Ohio, but based on state polling it doesn't work. If there is a national shift of Romney +2 from here, that 'rising tide' would possibly be enough to take Ohio and the election - but otherwise he's either going to have to beat the Obama ground game, or find a way to turn a seemingly 'safe' blue state.

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    2. " partially why McCain spent much of the waning days of the '08 campaign trying to contest the state."

      How'd that work out for him?

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    3. It got McCain to 44-54, suggesting that even if Obama is in a dead heat compared to +7 in '08, it's still a big lift for Romney to finish closing the gap. In theory, McCain's work in PA made it closer than it would have been.

      I'm not saying it's a great option, just that since there is very little vote banking in the state, and if Romney's campaign comes to the conclusion that they're toast in Ohio..

      Pennsylvania is the best long-shot 'off the board' option for a Blue-to-Red pick-up.

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    4. It got McCain to 44-54

      You don't really know that, but in any case, so what? Jumping off a cliff because you're (McCain) is on fire is not a survivable proposition.

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    5. Actually, we do know the results of the 2008 Presidential Election in Pennsylvania.

      Obama 54%
      McCain 44%

      You can look it up and everything.

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  2. @Unknown Well that depends by what do you mean by "go into." If you mean sending staff, the candidate or ad money there well they could of course do these things but it doesn't mean a whole lot. Both campaigns have tons of money and every possible swing state has been so blanketed with ads (from campaigns and supper pacs) that more spending money, money that kinda has to be spent in 13 days anyways, in more TV buys is unlikely to have a big affect. So I'd ignore ad buys as proving states are "in play." They could send staff, this happens a lot in presidential primaries, if you are losing and have to do well in the next primary to stay alive campaigns will sometimes send in all there staff from other states to try and secure a "must win." That might work in a low turn out primary with little "on the ground" resources from any campaign but not in a presidential race. For some perspective OFA has had staff in PA for well over a year at this point. It is probably into hundreds of paid staff, thousands of interns and other unpaid campaign people and tens of thousands of volunteers at this point. Finally they could send the candidates for events or local media interviews, but that's just foolish strategy in a state they probably aren't going to win anyway. Republicans can win the White House without PA but not without OH, so why go to Pittsburgh instead of Akron?

    So Romney could "go into" PA or MA, the same way he could "go into" California if he really wanted to, but it probably doesn't mean anything and might hurt him in places he has to win like VA or OH. These types of meme's are more evidence of pack journalism and some political journalists not knowing much about how campaigns work more than anything else.

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    1. Well, Pittsburgh wouldn't be insane, in that some Pittsburgh media will make its way into SE Ohio, and provided that, while there, you would also pop over to Youngstown or Akron. (These east coast states are SO TINY!)

      However, Philadelphia? That'd just be a total waste of time, and LWDL's point stands.

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    2. I don't watch much tv, but I've seen some Romney ads here in Detroit. I'm sure that some Detroit media spills into Toledo, and our tv market extends to the border between Michigan and Ohio. If you need Ohio to win and you have the money you might as well spend it, right?

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    3. I just want to point out that if it makes sense to advertise in Pittsburgh but not in Philadelphia, that's evidence that Pennsylvania is not tiny.

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    4. Of course, net of all the abstract science, as I understand it either the Euro forecast model or the US GFS model predicts a near-historic disaster in Philly/E Pa in early Nov due to Hurricane Sandy, while things will be quite bad (but comparatively manageable) in the western part of the state.

      Based solely on the possibility of that scenario, if I'm Team Romney I'm all over PA - I suppose central and Western PA in particular - like white on rice.

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    5. Actually, in the spirit of anonymous-guy-on-internet-has-more-upside-than-downside-saying-something-crazy, Romney's currently on pace to lose NY state by about 2 million votes. Sandy is quite possibly currently on pace to render NYC uninhabitable for 2 million Obama voters in early November.

      Since money is not a constraint, if I'm Romney I'm going on air in Buffalo/Rochester/Syracuse stat.

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  3. They are limited by candidate time, however. Romney and Obama (and the VPs) can't be everywhere at once.

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  4. I just read Ryan Lizza's New Yorker article on the Obama campaign's ground game operation. One point that it (and many other articles) haven't clearly addressed is this: is the great ground game realistically supposed to (a) allow Obama to match the vote share predicted for him by polling (because otherwise Democrats are hard to get to the voting booth) or (b) exceed the polling (because they'll actually turn out an above average number of people)? In other words, if one is convinced that the Obama ground game is solid to very impressive, should one build in an extra 0.5 to 1.5 points of support into the polling, or should one simply be secure in the knowledge that Obama will meet polling expectations?

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  5. Uh, RCP average in North Carolina is Romney +5.6. If the Obama campaign is spending real money there...

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    1. The RCP averages are okay, but hardly the last word. Pollster has a 2.3% lead for Romney in NC; Nate Silver has a raw polling average lead for Romney of 1.9% and an adjusted lead of 3.3%.

      But I certainly agree that NC is extremely unlikely to be necessary for a win. The question is whether Team Obama could use NC resources elsewhere. And what I'm saying is that they have so much money that the answer is mostly no.

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