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[palsch]

CNN is declaring North Carolina a toss up.

If CNN is at all right about this, then it's a big problem for Romney. He can't win without NC. Getting the entire South doesn't even guarantee him a win, so losing any one state from it would be devastating.

Hmm.

My read on this is CNN had already wanted to shift the state based on previous polling and simply waited for their own poll to act as the trigger. These numbers are exactly in line with the current trend in NC; an average <1% lead with the last SurveyUSA showed a 43/43 tie changed from a +5 Romney lead previously - a much clearer trigger for the change. Given that the CNN poll doesn't have any (recent) pass numbers to directly compare it with (no site I can find shows a comparable previous poll, going back about three months on most) you can't really say much about the trend from their new numbers, only that their numbers roughly agree with the current polling average.

Obama took NC by 0.3 points. He is unlikely to get the same national vote percentage he got in '08, and the demographics of NC strongly favour Romney. He would need a very strong and consistent local effect to win the state. I'd expect a strong local bump from the convention and convention activity, but whether that will persist is another question.

I'd say it's a winnable state, but as Nate suggested three weeks ago (when he had the percentage odds as 67-33 Romney, and they haven't moved much) it's more about spending resources.

There are also some tactical aspects of campaign strategy, however, which complicate the analysis some. If Mr. Romney pulled out of North Carolina, while Mr. Obama continued to run ads there, it probably would move some toward Mr. Obama relative to the national average, and its importance would increase. Or if Mr. Obama ceased to run ads there, Mr. Romney would presumably no longer feel any temptation to call his bluff, and his campaign could deploy its $19 million elsewhere.

Still, even with all the money these campaigns have, they are probably going to narrow down their list of battlegrounds some as we get closer to Nov. 6. We aren’t likely to see either campaign pull out of the state before the Democratic convention in early September — but unless the polls in North Carolina begin to show leads for Mr. Obama on a more consistent basis, it will probably be among the first on the chopping block.

Given the convention bump, Obama can force Romney to burn more resources than him in NC for at least a little while. He can then see how the polling shakes out and whether it's worth making a stronger stand there or not.

[Sheb]

RedKing told us there was some anti-GOP sentiment in NC after they elected douchebags in 2010. This could be the local factor.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You could say that, yeah. NC is one of those places where the political divide is very sharp and clear: High-populace, strongly liberal cities and low-populace, strongly conservative everywhere else. One triumphing over the other takes effort, and NC's liberals are unhappy with the current state government, to say the least. It helps that the lame-duck Democrat governor of NC has pretty much entirely stepped out of the spotlight, so she isn't hurting Obama's chances. Meanwhile, the GOP state Congress is doing all kinds of crazy shit like putting into law that climate change can't happen and putting fracking operations in people's watertables. They have a supermajority so the Governor's opinion doesn't matter, which is ironically what is going to end up hurting them.

[palsch]

RedKing told us there was some anti-GOP sentiment in NC after they elected douchebags in 2010. This could be the local factor.

Just to be clear on this, it would need to be very strong.

Using the numbers from 538, Nate has NC as a Romney +5.2 lead in state fundamentals. Obama's projected national lead is about 2.4%, ish. That means, if there were absolutely no extra local factors, Obama would be expected to lose NC by ~2.8%. Right now there appears to be an extra 2-2.5% Democratic effect on the local level, pulling Obama back to only a 0.3% on the straight average of polls.

The thing is, that's a pretty substantial local effect already, taking into account demographics and national lead. One thing worth watching will be whether that local effect increases much more than the national support levels during the convention bump, and more importantly how much of the local support sticks around as that bump fades. Nate's maths actually suggest that this figure isn't especially accurate and largely removes the entire local effect, which is worrying.

As far as general anti-Republican sentiment in NC I'd need to see a serious shift in the local numbers. This PPP poll (democratic leaning group) suggested that both state Republicans and Democrats had roughly equal disapproval ratings (-15% each) but with the Democratic governor really getting it in the neck (-29%). That despite that poll having a 44/36/20 Dem/Rep/Ind split, and exactly equal Obama/Romney voters.

Those are a month old now (15th July), so for that to be the local effect we are seeing in Obama's numbers this month we would need to see some strong shifts in those figures.

[Sheb]

Welcome to the GOP convention!

Spoiler: Huge Pic (click to show/hide)

http://tnypic.net/b8b13.png

[Zangi]

All paid for by the Floridian taxpayers?

[kaijyuu]

They expecting a riot or something?

[darkrider2]

Theres like... no one in the street... but maybe the picture taker was standing at the front of a crowd?

[Sheb]

Just stnadard measure apparently, you don't want these pesky protesters getting in front of the cameras and ruining the multimillion PR ops.

[SalmonGod]

They expecting a riot or something?

I've seen a couple notices that Occupy is going to be putting in a major effort there, but I'm not expecting it to be that large.  I know several hundred locals have pledged attendance, who have said they're not worried about the storm.  There are supposed to be thousands more shuttling in from around the country, and I expect the storm to whittle away at those numbers.

Just stnadard measure apparently, you don't want these pesky protesters getting in front of the cameras and ruining the multimillion PR ops.

But yeah, both national conventions are always heavily militarized.  The DNC isn't any better.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Sheb]

Was that the Chicago police T-shirt?

[SalmonGod]

Was that the Chicago police T-shirt?

Denver

[Zangi]

Romney has no Foreign Policy

So... does anyone remember or know of Romney actually having something other then the opposite of what Obama has done?  Or can that be considered a coherent foreign policy?

[mainiac]

Naturally, those union members who vote are more likely to vote Democratic, but compare the percentage of Democratic voting union members compared to, say the number of Democratic voting blacks or Republican voting millionaires and you'd find that union members obviously aren't as radical as you think.

Uh, wow, way to put words in my mouth man.  What I was doing was correcting the factually incorrect statement:

no more likely to vote Democratic than anyone else.

At no point did I say that union members were radical or that they were as likely to vote democratic as blacks or anything else that you might have tried to build me up as saying so that you would have a strawman to attack.  I was simply correcting a simple statement from you...

no more likely to vote Democratic than anyone else.

That was factually incorrect.

As for what you said about the final paragraph in Nate Silver's piece... this really goes to show why people have been questioning your reading comprehension skills in the past.  Nate Silver is in no way contradicting the argument that union members vote demographic.  That's an argument he himself made in this same article.  He was just writing what is called a "summery" that illustrates some of the diverse demographic factors that come into play.

[GreatJustice]

Uh, wow, way to put words in my mouth man.  What I was doing was correcting the factually incorrect statement:

If you didn't cherry pick, you would note this is preceded by

Most union workers (especially in non-RtW states)

as opposed to "all union workers". You also discount union workers who don't vote at all, which would be the very definition of "apathetic".

As for what you said about the final paragraph in Nate Silver's piece... this really goes to show why people have been questioning your reading comprehension skills in the past.  Nate Silver is in no way contradicting the argument that union members vote demographic.  That's an argument he himself made in this same article.  He was just writing what is called a "summery" that illustrates some of the diverse demographic factors that come into play.

Did you read it? It sure doesn't seem like that's the case, since he rather clearly says that being in a union is far less significant than other factors.

Also, I'm not sure what a "summery" has to do with anything, considering that that's an adjective, not a noun.