{"id":40802235999,"date":"2012-10-18T15:03:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-18T19:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2012\/10\/18\/will-the-sun-shine-for-mitt-romney\/"},"modified":"2021-01-25T11:22:05","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T16:22:05","slug":"will-the-sun-shine-for-mitt-romney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2012\/10\/18\/will-the-sun-shine-for-mitt-romney\/","title":{"rendered":"Will the Sun Shine for Mitt Romney?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at\u00a0PolitickerNJ<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Which state is the must-watch harbinger for this year\u2019s election?\u00a0 Is it Ohio, or Iowa, or even Wisconsin?\u00a0 All of those states are keys to victory in one way or another.\u00a0 But the make or break state this year is Florida.<\/p>\n

This is not the same situation as the nail-biter in 2000.\u00a0 It is unlikely that Florida\u2019s 29 electoral votes will ultimately be responsible for putting either candidate over the top in this year\u2019s Electoral College count.\u00a0 Florida, though, will determine whether Mitt Romney can win.<\/p>\n

Political pundits of the bean counter ilk have come up with a variety of Electoral College scenarios that would put Mitt Romney in the White House (a good one is here<\/a>).\u00a0 But it\u2019s important to note that all of these scenarios hinge on the assumption that Romney takes Florida.<\/p>\n

A win in Florida does not guarantee a Mitt Romney victory, but a Sunshine State loss almost certainly hands Barack Obama another term.<\/p>\n

With little more than three weeks to go before Election Day, eight states are currently considered to be the battlegrounds based on polling and where the candidates are spending their resources.\u00a0 These are New Hampshire, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, and Nevada.\u00a0 Among this group, Florida is probably the most likely to go for Romney based on recent electoral performance.<\/p>\n

In 2008, John McCain lost Florida by less than 3 percentage points.\u00a0 He lost Ohio by 4, Virginia by 6 and each of the remaining 2012 toss-up states by 9 points or more.\u00a0 In 2004, George W. Bush won Florida by 5 points, second only to his 8 point margin in Virginia among these eight states.\u00a0 Bush won Colorado by just under 5 points, Ohio and Nevada by about 2 points each, and Iowa by 1 point.\u00a0 He narrowly lost Wisconsin and New Hampshire to John Kerry.<\/p>\n

In other words, if Mitt Romney loses Florida, he is unlikely to have an edge in any other battleground state.\u00a0 In fact, if he loses Florida, he would have to run the table in those seven other states in order to be elected.\u00a0 Highly improbable.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, if Romney does take Florida, his path to victory is a little easier than it appeared just two weeks ago.\u00a0 For instance, he could sweep the five smallest states (NH, WI, IA, CO, and NV).\u00a0 Or swap out Iowa and Nevada for Virginia and Romney would still win.\u00a0 All without Ohio!\u00a0 Based on recent polling, this is not outside the realm of possibility.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll find out \u2013 hopefully \u2013 on November 6th<\/sup>.\u00a0 As Bette Davis once said, \u201cFasten your seatbelts.\u00a0 It\u2019s going to be a bumpy night.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at\u00a0PolitickerNJ Which state is the must-watch harbinger for this year\u2019s election?\u00a0 Is it Ohio, or Iowa, or even Wisconsin?\u00a0 All of those states are keys to victory in one way or another.\u00a0 But the make or break state this year is Florida. This is not the same situation as the nail-biter in 2000.\u00a0 It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":939,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40802235999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802235999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/939"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40802235999"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802235999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802244153,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802235999\/revisions\/40802244153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802235999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802235999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802235999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}