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Can Romney still win?
It is the key question. The answer is yes. But then I could win €200m on the Euromillions, you could marry a billionaire and your local bishop could become pope. The question in reality is not whether something could theoretically happen but what are the odds of it happening?
It is there that Romney's problem becomes obvious. Big swings do occur in elections sometimes. But usually they occur in elections where there have been dramatic swings already. This campaign is remarkable for the lack of swings. For months both candidates have been in the same ballpark. Even the conventions didn't produce major swings. The '47%' gaffe produced a moderate swing by campaign standards, but one which damaged Romney.
If a campaign has no history of significant swings by now they rarely produce them later. Nixon led Humphrey by 15 points at this time in 1968. It dropped to 8, then 2, before he won by half a point. That was a race marked by major swings.
In campaigns, where things stay steady for a long spell, experienced campaigners know it is very very hard to make even minimal headway. It pretty much indicates that most voters have made their minds up about the candidates and it would take an earthquake to shift them. (Numerous campaigns have the 'been there, done that' teeshirt re those campaigns. You try everything, absolutely everything, but the voters aren't biting. They stay stubbornly with the same numbers as before.)
Even worse for Romney, the only real evidence of shifts where they have occurred have worked against him. He no longer has a whopping great lead in the category of who would do a better job on the economy. His lead among seniors is falling. That suggests that if any move occurred, it is more likely to go against Romney than for Romney, because some of his appeal is obviously waning but he is not increasingly noticeably in other categories to counteract the loss among seniors and on the economy.
By now he should at least be ahead in half of the key swing states. In practice he is either tied or behind in almost all and has been consistently so.
He hopes to achieve a killer blow in the debates. History there is against it. It is decades since debates delivered a killer blow. There was only 1 debate in 1980 at the very end of October. That won Reagan the election. Romney is no Reagan in terms of communication skills. Obama is a far better debater than Carter was, and there are three debates this time, all earlier in the campaign.
Three debates tends to make debates less impactful. Even if someone does badly in one they can stage a comeback in the others. Plus by spreading the debate the effect of any one debate is minimised. In addition the debates are now earlier than they were in say 1980.
Even many republican pollsters dismiss the Republican claims that the polls are biased. The sheer number of polls overwhelmingly agreeing on who is in the lead and what trends are. When some GOP members are reduced to accusing Fox of being part of a liberal conspiracy because its polls say Obama is leading you know they are clutching at straws.
Originally Posted by TommyO'Brien
