GAHANNA, Ohio — By the time Mitt Romney took the stage Monday
night for his next-to-last Ohio “Victory Rally” at the Columbus
airport hangar of Landmark Aviation, thousands were already lining
up to see him 750 miles east in New Hampshire, where the Republican
presidential candidate was scheduled for a rally three hours later.
Romney’s campaign speech was nothing new, the text having scarcely
changed in the past week, but what was newsworthy were the crowds
— large and enthusiastic or, as Barack Obama often said during his
historic 2008 campaign, “fired up and ready to go.”
If Americans want to know whether Romney has the executive skill
needed to deliver on his promises to revive the U.S. economy and
restore the nation’s morale, let them look no further than the
brilliant campaign the former Massachusetts governor and his staff
have run. Against all odds, and despite the enormous challenges of
taking on an incumbent Democrat adored by the media elite, Romney
has brought the GOP to Election Day with a real hope of
victory.
A win by Romney will be difficult, but it is clearly a real
possibility. Monday was a big day for predictions.
Several bloggers offered their own Electoral College maps, with
many predicting that Romney would win with more than 300 Electoral
College votes (ECVs), but anything more than 270 ECVs is a victory,
and Republicans will be celebrating even if Mitt squeaks by with
the narrowest of margins.
Predictions are above my pay-grade — let the “experts” handle
that — but describing contingencies is certainly within
my capacity, and there are three such “if/then” scenarios that
would take Romney to victory by the most direct path:
Contingency One: Virginia. Polls close at 7
p.m. ET in the Old Dominion, the earliest of any major battleground
state. The key question here — the big “if” — is whether the
actual votes for Romney exceed his numbers in opinion polls. Nearly
every recent poll shows Virginia a virtual tie, with President
Obama holding less than a one-percent advantage in the
Real Clear Politics average of polls for the state. But folks
on the ground in Virginia report high levels of Republican
enthusiasm, and there are indications from early voting that Obama
will fall well short of the numbers that made him the first
Democrat to win Virginia since 1964. Watch as the results Virginia
come in tonight: If Mitt establishes a steady lead of five or six
points (52 or 53 percent) as the night goes on, this will mean that
the polls (which show Romney at about 48 percent) have
substantially underestimated GOP strength. Therefore, if the actual
Republican vote exceeds the poll predictions in Virginia, then the
same is likely true elsewhere. On the other hand, if Romney doesn’t
win Virginia — perish the thought! — his road to 270 ECVs becomes
nearly impossible. Keep an eye on Loudoun County, which George W.
Bush won with 56 percent of the vote in 2004, but Obama won with 54
percent in 2008. Should this affluent Northern Virginia county tip
back toward the GOP column, it would not only likely mean a Romney
win in Virginia, but could be a bellwether of results in other
similar upscale suburban communities that shifted from Republican
to Democrat four years ago.
Contingency Two: Florida. Polls in the Sunshine
State have gyrated wildly in the past two weeks. By mid-October, it
seemed Romney had such a solid advantage in Florida that there were
rumors that the Obama campaign had scratched the state off its map.
However, when subsequent polls showed Obama recovering in Florida
— including a
Marist survey that put the Democrat ahead by 2 points — the
Romney campaign was compelled to schedule extra visits there. Like
Virginia, Florida is a must-win in any realistic Electoral College
map for Romney. The bellwether in Florida is Hillsborough County,
which Bush won with 53 percent in 2004, but Obama won by the same
margin in 2008. Whoever wins Hillsborough will likely win the whole
state.
Contingency Three: Ohio. If
Romney loses either Virginia or Florida, he’s toast, but Republican
operatives I trust assure me that both of those states look like
winners for the GOP. Therefore, the crucial vote will probably come
in the Buckeye State. Should Mitt add Ohio’s 18 ECVs to his column,
Obama’s hopes for re-election will be desperately endangered. And
as I’ve been telling people for the past week, the key to Romney’s
hopes in Ohio is Butler
County. The Cincinnati suburb is the largest repository of
Republican votes in this state. As the results begin coming in from
Ohio tonight, I’ll be keeping an eye on Butler County: If Romney’s
totals there look like Bush’s 66 percent in 2004, then you can
probably start calling him “President-elect” Romney. If, however,
Romney’s results in Butler County are closer to the 61 percent that
John McCain got in 2008 …
Perish the thought. There are alternative scenarios whereby
Romney could lose Ohio and still get to the 270 ECVs needed for
election, but none of them are very likely. If Romney loses Ohio,
he is unlikely to win any of the states that figure into the
alternatives — Wisconsin, Iowa, New Hampshire or Pennsylvania. In
all likelihood, it’s Ohio or bust for Mitt, but the hopeful news is
that the Buckeye State is clearly winnable for the Republican. The
margin of victory may be largely due to an unprecedented
get-out-the-vote effort by the GOP here.
There has been endless talk, much of it speculative in nature,
about which party was doing better among early voters, but the
ultimate Republican edge could come down to the old-fashioned
Election Day turnout. Yesterday, Republican National Committee
political director
Rick Wiley sent out a memo bragging that Republicans “are
poised to blow the Obama campaign out on Election Day thanks to a
superior GOTV program and a historical GOP Election Day
advantage.”
Is that a mere boast? It’s hard to tell, but the smile on the
face of RNC chairman Reince Priebus seemed entirely genuine last
night when he appeared on Fox News and told Greta Van Susteren:
“We’ve got all the energy on the ground and the Democrats
don’t.”
