Visual source: Newseum
Obama leads Romney 54-38 in Michigan, up from only a 4-7 pt lead in our 2011 polling:
http://t.co/...
— @ppppolls via web
AP:
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is wooing tea partyers in his home state of Michigan with a potentially risky strategy: blasting the auto industry bailout that many people credit with saving the state's most vital industry.
Nate Silver:
Given Mr. Obama’s current approval ratings and consensus forecasts on the economy, he rates as about a 60 percent favorite to win the popular vote against Mitt Romney, with somewhat higher chances against any of the other Republicans running for the nomination. By contrast, in the November version of the model, Mr. Obama was an underdog to Mr. Romney, with a 40 percent chance of winning; the president’s approval ratings were about 6 points lower then and economic forecasts were somewhat more pessimistic.
More details in the NY Times Sunday Magazine piece,
same author:
So let’s conduct a thought experiment. Suppose that against Romney, Obama does 10 points better among white voters whose households make less than $50,000 per year. The trade-off is that he does 10 points worse among whites making $100,000 or more and 15 points worse among whites making at least $200,000.
In terms of the popular vote, this would almost exactly balance out. The effect would be more substantial, however, in individual states.
Steve Kornacki:
After his defeat, Dole was known to lament that the election had come two years too late. Obama’s recent gains are tenuous, but it seems a lot more likely now than it did a few months ago that the 2012 Republican nominee will end up saying the same thing.
Harold Meyerson:
According to data compiled by the Wall Street Journal, in all the states that have voted thus far, Mitt Romney has won 46 percent of the counties with incomes higher than the statewide median, and just 15 percent of those with incomes beneath the statewide median. Rick Santorum, by contrast, has won 39 percent of the counties with higher income, and 46 percent of those with lower income.
Ross Douthat:
Instead, the argument needs to be that Santorum was too improvident, too trusting, too utopian and too naïve: Not a bad actor, but a decent guy in way over his head, and thus not chief executive material.
This strategy, though, will require a kind of finesse that Romney’s campaign hasn’t demonstrated to date. The howitzer worked to dispatch Gingrich, but it won’t work a second time. Instead, to beat Santorum and close out the nomination contest, Romney will need to learn how to campaign with a stiletto.
We'll see in MI if his campaign is really that capable.
Bloomberg:
For Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, Michigan may be their political Gettysburg. If Romney loses in his native state, where his father was governor, it would be a defeat from which he might not recover.
The makeup of the Republican electorate, which is likely to be one-third Catholic and opposed to abortion, will help Santorum offset the allegiance Romney draws from supporters who delivered his 2008 presidential primary win over John McCain.
I figured Florida (not IA or NH) as the big deal state. But Michigan? As much as we talked about this being a long-haul campaign, seeing it is something else.
Jonathan Bernstein:
So while it’s an exaggeration to say that Michigan is make-or-break, it’s critical to how the nomination process out, and perhaps even to what happens in November.