Undeterred by Charlie Cook’s skepticism about electoral college speculation, Veteran political analyst Albert R. Hunt crunches some numbers and takes a crack at it in his New York Times ‘Page two’ blog: “Under the scenario above Romney would have to win 80 of these electors while Obama would need to capture 52. If Romney carried Florida and Ohio, and North Carolina, he still would need to win 18 more electoral votes. If Obama wins two of the big three — Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio — he’s almost home..”
Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake have a post at The Fix arguing that Dems have a 50-50 chance of holding the Senate in the November elections, which is a lot better than the common wisdom pundits shared a year or so ago. “No matter what happens,” say Cillizza and Blake, “it’s a near-certainty that it will be a thin majority for either side in 2013…”
Jennifer Skalka Tulumello has a long post up at The Monitor, “Polling: a look inside the machinery of public opinion surveys,” with a lot of inside skinny on the inner workings of Gallup that should be of interest to poll-watchers.
Nathaniel Persily has a worrisome post, “Meet the hanging chad of 2012” at The New York Daily News about the new problems with absentee ballots under the current wave of voter suppression laws.
As if we didn’t have enough to worry about with the GOP’s all-out voter suppression campaign, Democraticunderground.com has an interesting article on “Stealing Elections through Manipulation of County Central Tabulators.”
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) is mobilizing to turn out at least 12 million of America’s 22 million eligible Latino voters, many of whom will be voting in ‘battleground states.’ More on LULAC’s plans here and here.
Lois Romano of Politico has an encouraging profile of Obama’s “messenger in chief,” “top strategist and crisis manager,” Stephanie Cutter.
Paul Waldman’s American Prospect post “Mitt Goes into the Fog” shares an insight on Romney’s strategy: “When it became clear that Romney would indeed be the Republican nominee, people began speculating about how he would execute the “move to the center” that every nominee must undertake…Mitt hasn’t moved to the center, but he hasn’t stayed on the right, either. Instead, he’s just moved into the fog. You see, you can’t call Romney a flip-flopper if you can’t tell what he thinks about anything…If the economy continues to sputter, he might be able to win without saying much of anything about the country’s critical issues. But that in itself is a pretty risky chance to take.”
The best quote for Monday readers comes from Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, quoted from his appearance on ABC This Week yesterday, via Ben Jacobs Washington Monthly post “Unseemly and Disgusting“: “I’ve never known of a Swiss bank account to build an American bridge, a Swiss bank account to create American jobs, or Swiss bank accounts to rebuild the levies to protect the people of New Orleans.”