By Mark Berniker, Executive Producer of “The War Room with Jennifer Granholm”
In fewer than six months America will have voted for their next president, and in the intervening less than 200 days the real battle will be fought for a relatively small swath of voters.
A new POLITICO/George Washington University poll out today says the Presidential race is a “dead heat.” In fact, the poll reveals a wafer thin lead for Mitt Romney 48% to President Obama’s 47% among likely voters. That puts the race well within the margin of error. The poll also shows that Romney is opening up a 10 percent lead among independents. There is no question this election will be won or lost with independent voters in the key swing states of Ohio, Florida, Virginia and several others. The news of the indy’s swinging to the right has to have the Obama 2012 concerned, and we’ll address that very question tonight on “The War Room,” when Celinda Lake, president of Lake Research Partners joins us for her demographic and geographic analysis of the campaign. Her firm was directly involved in the actual polling of the POLITICO/GWU poll.
It should be pointed out this is just one poll and we’ll get hundreds, if not thousands of polls over the next six months. In the end, this election will be won or lost on electoral math. Last week, we talked about Virginia being the key “must-win” state for Romney. Without Virginia, Romney would have to make up a lot of ground elsewhere.
While Florida and Ohio are looking to be major challenges for the President, there are a number of Western states that have been swinging from red to blue. Namely, if the President were to take Colorado, New Mexico and Iowa, and also Virginia, the electoral math for Romney starts getting very difficult. The electoral math scenarios are mapped out in the Obama and Romney war rooms, and the sands will shift on a daily basis.
But the main point here is a lot will happen between now and the election, so it’s not even close to being over. In fact, it’s barely even started. Issues will emerge in the war on women, national security, foreign policy, abortion, states rights, the budget, gay rights, the environment and twenty other issues I haven’t even thought of and every word, every ad, every speech will be dissected in exhaustive detail.
The fun’s just starting, and if you are political junkie who needs a fix of the latest grist on the campaign trail, tune into “The War Room with Jennifer Granholm,” only on Current TV. We go live at 9pm Eastern/6pm Pacific, and we hope you’ll join us tonight and every night for the latest political news analysis with a progressive perspective.
