Election Not Shifting Towards Romney

A Presidential election is often decided based on the trajectory of the campaign. There is no doubt that after the first debate the trajectory favored Romney. He went from being down 3-4 points in most of the national polls before the debates to being up 1-3 points today. In the swing states he has been able to shift the polls several points. Today North Carolina and Florida appear to be solidly in his camp whereas they were even or slightly Obama before the debates. Unfortunately the race isn’t going to be decided in North Carolina and Florida.

Those of us who support Romney need to stop deluding ourselves about this election. We cannot pretend that Romney is winning, we cannot rely on the Dick Morris theory of undecided voters. In Ohio RCP shows Romney down 2.3 points. In Nevada Romney is down 2.5 points. In Wisconsin Romney is down 2.3 points. In Pennsylvania Romney is down 4.8 points. In Michigan Romney is down 4 points. Take a look at all of these states, what trend do you see in all of them? Romney isn’t up in a single poll in any of these swing states. It only gets worse for Romney, Colorado has gone from being a 1-2 point lead to tied this week.

Romney hasn’t been able to pull any closer to Obama in states like Ohio. Sure, there are a couple polls that show a tie. We can always discount some of the absurd polls that are conducted with a D+9 model. But the fact remains that even at the reputable polling outfits like Rasmussen, Romney isn’t ahead. Worse for Romney, he hasn’t gotten any closer in any of these states over the last week. The trajectory of the race isn’t shifting towards Romney, at best it’s become stagnate. A stagnate trajectory at this point is a victory for Obama.

We’re now only ten day before the election. Romney is losing at this point. We have to trust that Romney has some sort of ground game in the swing states that can remotely compare with Obama’s. We have to trust that spending $150 million on ads in swing states the next ten days will put Romney over the top. Some of these swing states, Ohio in particular, may be immune to ads at this point. These poor people have been bombarded with ads for the better part of the year. Do we really think a barrage of Romney ads is going to sway people in Ohio in the next ten days? Maybe in Wisconsin it could work since they haven’t been subjected to a year of Presidential ads but not in Ohio.

Unless these state polls begin to shift next week in the same manner as the national polls we’re looking at an easy Obama victory. We can no longer hang our hat on Obama being under 50% in polls or on a history of undecided voters breaking against the incumbent. It’s easy to justify faith in a Romney victory based on those points during the summer. But we’re ten days before the election, at this point these polls really do matter. They represent votes and right now Romney doesn’t have the votes to win. What can he possibly do to change that ten days out?