Romney going for broke

“In this election, the number of genuine, middle-of-the-road swing voters is very small. For both candidates, this puts a premium not only on high turnout among party base groups but also on very large victory margins within them. McInturff thinks we may be moving from an electoral model based on swing or undecided voters to a world of what he calls “committed versus elastic” voter groups.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ej-dionne-mitt-romney-and-the-go-for-broke-election/2012/07/29/gJQAG3m6IX_story.html?hpid=z3

Undecided voters

“As coveted as they are, truly undecided voters … are increasingly rare, said David J. Dent, a professor at New York University who has studied the 272 counties in the United States that voted for Bush twice and then went Democratic, switching to Obama in 2008. It is here that voters are most conflicted. “People do not feel like [Obama] has lived up to those very high expectations,” Dent said. “But, on the other hand . . . a lot of people feel that Romney has not provided a strong-enough alternative.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/as-presidential-campaign-heads-into-final-100-days-undecided-voters-still-struggle/2012/07/28/gJQA5zkwGX_story.html

Romney reduces ad spending in Pennsylvania
“As you can see, people have mostly made up their minds by this point, and there isn’t a whole lot more that spending on persuasion can do, which is probably why Mitt’s been pulling back ad spending.

PA is a turnout battle state. There aren’t a whole lot of swing voters, rather the party bases are pretty evenly matched and the swing state status is more about who actually shows up to vote. The Romney campaign’s best hope is that the voter ID law is upheld, which would basically do all the work for them, suppressing Democratic turnout in the big population centers, and leaving Romney to focus on turning out Republican voters in the T and Republican-leaning suburbs.”

http://www.keystonepolitics.com/2012/08/why-romneys-pulling-back-pa-ad-spending/


More on Pennsylvania

“ … even if Mr. Romney’s campaign has reason to believe that Pennsylvania is not quite at the electoral tipping point, that does not necessarily mean that they should pull out of it. Expending some resources there would force Mr. Obama’s campaign to do the same. The state is certainly close enough — and it has been important enough historically — that neither campaign can really afford to call the other’s bluff.”

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/31/pennsylvania-flaunts-its-importance/