Jim Messina's State of the Race: "The president will win re-election if ...

Obama campaign manager Jim Messina discusses some of the metrics on the election especially those related to early voting.

The campaign is outdoing what it did in 2008 and is well ahead of the Romney campaign in most early voting and registration stats. The lead is particularly important in the battleground states. For example, in Colorado, Democrats have a bigger lead in new voter registration compared to November 2008. Same thing in Nevada.

In most battleground states, early in-person voting will end this weekend either on Nov. 2 or Nov. 3.   Additionally, it's near the deadline to mail absentee/mail-in ballots.  Otherwise, voters will have to deliver the ballots to the registrar's office or to another acceptable location.

In order to find an early voting location, the Obama campaign has set up a special tool at http://barackobama.com/lookup.  Eventually, this tool should also work for Election Day voting locations.  It provides the street address along with a driving map.

Hurricane Sandy and voter turnout

The devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy and the ongoing "Superstorm" Sandy could have an impact on voter turnout since it is shutting down early voting days in some battleground states. 

In some of these states, they have already announced plans to compensate for Sandy through measures like extending early voting hours and days.  Virginia and Pennsylvania, so far, appear to be the main swing states that could suffer from Sandy's impact.  Pennsylvania, though, has not in-person early voting.

The storm is also hammering states like Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin although the impact should be far less that what occurred on the East Coast.

President Barack Obama canceled campaign events at least until Wednesday in order to oversee the federal emergency response to the hurricane. 

Some political observers are speculating over whether Hurricane Sandy may benefit either candidate in the presidential race.  In terms of turnout, it possibly could favor Mitt Romney although this is far from clear.  It really depends on which areas are hardest hit by the storm. 

Some commentators believe the president could benefit since Americans tend to rally around their leader during periods of national distress.  The disaster is also highlighting Romney's previous statements that emergency response should be the responsibility of the states with privatized agencies.

Colin Powell's endorsement and the reaction

Gen. Colin Powell's endorsement of President Barack Obama sparked a top surrogate of Republican nominee Mitt Romney. Former senator John Sununu claimed that Powell endorsed Obama simply the president if black.

Powell endorsed Obama in the 2008 race and many analysts believe his support helped Obama then and will help him again in this election.  For many years, Powell was either the most popular or one of the most popular prominent Republicans.

Neo-conservatives used goodwill harbored for Powell to sell the Iraq War to the public.  Powell, himself, claims that the administration duped him into arguing for a war based on made-up evidence.

Of course, Powell is not the only prominent Republican to endorse Obama.  Former Florida governor Charlie Crist is another GOP leader who endorsed the president.  Also, from Florida, there was the recent case of the "bear-hugging" Republican pizza parlor owner who threw his support behind Obama.

Suggesting that Powell endorsed Obama simply because both are black is part of a pattern used by the Tea Party and other right-wing opponents of the president.  They consistently attempt to racialize the contest in order to stir up the worst sentiments among their supporters.


In endorsing Obama, Powell said:  "When he took over, the country was in very, very difficult straits, we were in one of the worst recessions we had seen in recent times, close to a depression ... we were in real trouble.

 "I think generally we've come out of the dive and starting to gain altitude," he said. "I see that we are starting to rise up,"  he said.  On foreign policy, Powell noted: "I'm not quite sure which Governor Romney we'd be getting with respect to foreign policy," and he also called Romney's foreign policy plan "a moving target."

On the GOP nominee's budget proposal, he said, "It's essentially, let's cut taxes and compensate for that with other things, but that compensation does not cover all the cuts intended or the expenses associated with defense."

Come to Florida - OFA Florida

While most attention right now is focused on Ohio, the state of Florida is still a very big prize up for grabs. In an earlier post, it was shown that Romney cannot win the electoral vote without winning Florida.


That was true taking into consideration the battleground state map at the time. Now, most analysts have narrowed down the number of battleground states even further. For example, NBC places North Carolina in Romney's corner while Nevada is now an Obama state.


If Romney loses Florida, he could win all the other current battleground states including Ohio and still lose. In order to win, he would have to win all those states and also steal either Pennsylvania or two other "lean Obama" states, so long as there are no surprises in the "solid" states.


Another reason to look at Florida very seriously is that Romney may have a weakness here on the issue of women's reproductive rights.


Ohio is also a good issue state for the Obama team due to Romney's stance on letting the auto industry go bankrupt.  Union workers in the state are also suspicious of Romney due to his ties with job outsourcing to China.

Motivating unlikely voters to vote

Since most of the recent polls are sampling likely voters, the impact of turning out unlikely voters looms large.  The fact that the Obama campaign was able to convince many unlikely voters to participate in the 2008 election makes turnout even more important.

Generally, in recent elections, the presidential candidate that turns out the most members from their own party wins, as the following table demonstrates.

Year	Republicans	Democrats	Advantage	Total voters	Percent of voting age population
1992	39%	40%	D +1	104,405,155	55.23%
1996	35%	39%	D +4	96,456,345	49.08%
2000	35%	39%	D +4	105,586,274	51.30%
2004	37%	37%	Even	122,295,345	55.27%
2008	32%	39%	D +7	132,645,504	57.48%

The table shows that the exception to this rule in recent presidential elections was in 2000 when George W. Bush scored a controversial victory over Al Gore.  In that election, hanging chads in Florida enabled Bush to barely win the contest.


Bush also won in 2004, a year in which Republicans came out in equal numbers to Democrats.  President Barack Obama won by a landslide in 2008, a year that witnessed the highest voter turnout since 1968.


Obama leads among all registered voters
In almost all polls that take into account all registered voters, Obama leads and often by a significant margin.  The trend is particularly strong in the battleground states.  The polls that are making headlines now are mostly surveying likely voters. Some only show opinions for those who say they are certain to vote.


What we know from 2008 is that the Obama team is capable of registering new voters and of turning out irregular older voters.  They do this using a massive ground army combined with excellent planning and organization. 


If we look at the available metrics, Obama is doing as good or better as in 2008, and he is beating out the current GOP opposition in 2012:

• Campaign field offices -- Obama has more than twice as many field offices and the disparity is even wider in some important swing states, For example, the Obama team has more than three times as many field offices in Ohio than does the Romney camp.
• Voter registration -- Obama has beat out their highly successful 2008 registration drive even as some states are still accepting new registration forms.  Compared to the Republicans in 2012, Democrats lead in voter registration so far in the battlegrounds states of Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania.  Republicans lead only in Colorado and New Hampshire.  Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin do not register according to party.
• Non-midterm voters -- In nine battleground states, Democrats exceed Republicans in early votes cast by people who did not vote in the 2010 election.  The current lead is 19.7 percentage points. 
• Overall early vote -- Among all voters, the Democrats currently maintain a 10.7 point lead.  Republicans lead in only two battleground states -- Florida and Colorado -- but those leads should vanish once in-person early voting gets rolling in both states. Additionally, Democrats are doing a better job in beating out Republicans as compared to the statistics from 2008, especially when it comes to absentee/mail ballot requests.
• Crowd size -- Obama still looks to be drawing the larger crowds at rallies although Romney is doing better than he was previously. For example, after the last debate, both candidates appeared in Denver with Obama drawing 16,000 supporters compared to 12,000 for Romney.
• Social media and Internet activity -- Obama is still way ahead in terms of official website activity.  In social media, Obama is also well out in front although Romney's team is trying hard to catch up.  An ongoing paid ad campaign by Romney on Facebook is beefing up the number of subscribers to his page.

Managing Election Day and long lines

While early voting can account for more than 50 percent of voting in states like Florida, in most areas, Election Day still garners the bulk of total votes.

The Obama campaign must deal with strong official and volunteer efforts to suppress voting in areas that favor the president.  Unfortunately, many people procrastinate and wait until after work on Election Day to vote.  Lines can get very long in some areas. 

According to surveys, about 20 percent of registered people who do not vote claim long lines as their excuse. 

The Obama team can try to convince more of these people to vote early or to, at least, vote in the morning or during the lunch break on Election Day.  Otherwise, they need to organize at the polling places to make sure that things run smoothly. 

Rapid response teams can go to precincts with very long lines and provide relief, entertainment and snacks along with running interference if any "truthers" show up.

Pres. Obama prepares for final foreign policy debate

The debate tonight should highlight one of GOP nominee Mitt Romney's weak points:  foreign policy.

At the very least, President Barack Obama has the advantage in this area since he is a known quantity.  People have been able to see him act in the international arena now for almost four years.  With Romney, they really cannot be sure what to expect.

The GOP candidate's unknown factor is not only related to his inexperience in foreign policy, but also to the fact that Romney simply is a very hard person to figure out in terms of policy, period.  Not only does he keep specific hidden, as with his tax deduction plan, but he often "flip-flops" from one position to another.  Even his fellow Republicans view him a flip-flopper.

Additionally, VP candidate Paul Ryan has much less foreign policy experience as compared to VP Joe Biden who is a former Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

Romney's well-publicized foreign policy trip during the London Olympics was a huge disaster.  Everyone from the London mayor to the UK prime minister voiced concerns over Romney's statements while he was visiting the country.

An excellent analysis on CNN last night showed that on important international security issues, Romney is significantly more hawkish than Obama. For example, while the president says his administration will not tolerate an Iranian nuclear weapons program, Romney's stance is that he will not allow for even the capability of starting up such a program.

What that means, basically, is that Romney could go to war even if Iran is simply generating nuclear energy, since the radioactive waste from such activity is convertible into weapons grade fissile or "dirty bomb" material.

President Obama can direct the flow of the debate to focus in on Romney's lack of experience and his dangerous hawkish stances that could end up entangling a war-weary nation in an unnecessary armed conflict.

 Romney will try to draw attention, instead, on the recent attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi and on the general stability issues plaguing the Middle East especially with regard to Syria.  However, the Benghazi line of attack is weak since it involves an issue that is still very much investigation. Romney is basically reaching here making assumptions on the actions of various actors in the Obama administration.

On the wider perspective of Middle East stability, the president can portray Romney as someone who is more likely to inflame rather settle the situation.  Or in the worst case, the GOP challenger could end up involving the country, eventually, in direct military action.

In general, Romney tends to make many blunders when talking about foreign policy, so the president can exploit this by asking for specifics and testing his opponent's knowledge of facts and the overall situation depending on the particular issue under discussion.