Are you getting the feeling this election is "breaking good?" Moving in our way in so many little ways it is hard to keep them all added up? Here's another clue from Chris Cilizza, of the Washington Post, who reports Nevada moves to “lean Obama” and out of the plausible reach of the Romney campaign based largely on improvements in the estimates of the Hispanic vote, and aggressive efforts from organized labor.
Something most of us here have already done in our minds, but it is still encouraging to see the lagging parts of the bell curve coming across. This article falls short in not also mentioning and crediting the entire superb OFA, and Democratic GOTV efforts and volunteers, but is boosting my confidence and helping me manage my own anxiety without those "harsh chemically-based, and artificial supplements" so I thought you might enjoy it anyway, as well.
The problem for Romney in Nevada is — and always has been — the Hispanic vote. According to the 2010 Census, roughly three in ten (27 percent) residents of Nevada are Hispanic and President Obama is winning them with massive majorities. (A Nevada poll conducted by Latino Decisions last month showed Obama winning Hispanic voters 78 percent to 17 percent.)
The strength of organized labor — particularly the Culinary Workers Union — in Las Vegas (Clark County) also works heavily in Obama’s favor. As Jon Ralston, the top political reporter and analyst in the state, notes that Democrats have a 70,000 early vote edge in the county.
Writes Ralston: “The credible polls on both sides would have to be wrong — i.e. Romney would have to win independents by a large margin — for him to win Nevada.”
With Nevada now leaning toward Obama, the President has 243 electoral votes leaning or solidly on his side while Romney has 206 electoral votes solid or leaning his way. Seven states — with 89 electoral votes — are in the “tossup” category
This development, and the many other similar ones that will soon follow, may also explain some of the curious nature of the earlier release of internal campaign polls from Team Romney "admitting" that Super Storm Sandy had "broken their momentum" to the extent that Nevada was out of their reach, which I reported in Romney's Internal Polls Concede Super Storm Sandy Undercut Their Momentum in Key Swing States. Wisconsin will probably be next, based on polls I'm seeing.
Dozens of commenters expressed the opinion this weird Romney Nevada anonymous release was just more desperate spin to try to blame Super Storm Sandy, and trying to deflect the meme of a losing campaign imploding as voters reject their clearly stated right-wing ideological zealotry mixed in with such a enormous number of flip-flops as to defy my vocabulary to describe.
But then came something very big: a natural disaster that left a path of death and destruction on the East Coast. Suddenly, there was little talk about small things.
Those leads in Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and Iowa still hold in the internal polls, campaign sources say, but Romney's movement flattened out or, as the campaign likes to say, "paused." Nevada is now off the table, and those neck-and-neck swing states are even tighter.
How they spin it may not be as important as us helping to highlight and spread the meme that even the Romney campaign is looking for rationalizations to explain their imploding campaign and the late breaking momentum for President Obama and all the down ballot Democrats.
Perhaps, it is too early to hope for such a landslide that we retake the House, but it is certainly not premature to suggest we help spread the message to hard-core conservatives that their cause is sufficiently lost that they can make a stronger statement for their cause to write in a vote for a real conservative, or vote for a libertarian to spread a message that this principal free flip flopper Mitt Romney doesn't truly represent their thinking. And, take down and "discredit" "real conservatives" with his embarrassing last minute spasms of desperation.
Mark Blumenthal's nightly state level battleground summary is also encouraging showing improvements in nearly all battleground states with all of our firewall states looking stronger, improvements to our small, but growing leads in CO, VA, and NH, and now a tie in FL which is steady improvement from the last few days.
5:47 PM PT: From Mark Blumenthal's