State of the Race – October 31 (The More Important Race: Control of the Senate)

With the Northeast in the process of cleaning up after Hurricane Sandy, the number of polls being done has actually slowed down. As a result, there has not been much movement in the presidential race since my report on Saturday. So I thought I would dedicate this post to the control of the Senate. While there has been a lot of focus on the presidential race, it could very easily be argued that the more important race is being conducted in 33 states where the control of the Senate will be decided. More on that below.

For those of you who are political novices, US Senators are elected to a six-year term and since federal elections are conducted every two years, one third of the Senate is up for election every two years. Of the 33 Senate races this year, 21 of the seats are currently held by a Democrat, 10 seats are held by a Republican and 2 seats are held by independents who caucus with the Democrats (Joe Lieberman, CT and Bernie Sanders, VT). Senator Lieberman is retiring, so I will count that as a seat currently held by the Democrats and since Senator Sanders has been a reliable ally for the Democrats, I will count him as a Democrat as well for the purposes of my analysis which means that there are 23 seats which the Democrats are trying to hold and only 10 seats which the Republicans are trying to hold.

Presently, the Democrats hold a majority in the Senate by a 53-47 margin. This means that if the Republicans want to take control of the Senate they will need a net gain of four seats to take out right control or a net gain of three seats to arrive at a 50-50 tie which they would have control of, if Governor Romney is elected and Paul Ryan becomes Vice President who would then have the tie-breaking vote as President of the Senate. With that in mind, let's look at the 33 states that have senatorial elections this year:

Democrats: California*, Connecticut, Delaware*, Florida*, Hawaii, Maryland*, Michigan*, Minnesota*, Missouri*, Montana*, Nebraska, New Jersey*, New Mexico, New York*, North Dakota, Ohio*, Pennsylvania*, Rhode Island*, Vermont*, Virginia, Washington*, West Virginia* & Wisconsin

Republicans: Arizona, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts*, Mississippi*, Nevada*, Tennessee*, Texas, Utah* & Wyoming*

Of those states listed, the asterix indicates that it is a state where an incumbent is running for reelection. Using the same categories I am using for the presidential race, here's where I see the Senate races (blue represents a seat currently controlled by the Democrats and red represents a seat currently controlled by the Republicans):

	Safe	Likely	Lean
Democrat	CA*, DE*, MD*, MN*, NJ*, NY*, RI*, VT*, WA*, WV*	FL*, HI, MI*, NM, OH*, PA*,	CT, MA*, MO*
Republican	MS*, TN*, TX, UT*, WY*	NE, ND	AZ, IN, NV*
Independent		ME
Tossup	MT*, VA, WI

In terms of the total seats control by both parties, the breakdown is as follows: for seats not up for election or considered safe, the Republicans have an advantage of 42-40. If you add in the seats I've identified as “Likely” for a given party, the Democrats hold the advantage 46-44-1. If you add in the “Lean” seats, the Democrat's advantage is 49-47-1. Finally, there are also three states which I have identified as “Tossup” seats.

Based on this, I have a couple of observations. First, it is readily apparent that whichever party controls the Senate, it will likely be by a very narrow margin. Secondly, the Senate race in Maine may take on a lot more importance after the election if former Maine Governor Angus King is elected as an independent and the Senate party breakdown is 50-49. King holds a significant lead in the polls in Maine and I contemplated putting it in the “Safe” category, but decided not to as he is an independent, yet not an incumbent. At this point, it is unknown which party King would caucus with and many believe that he would caucus with the Democrats, but there is an argument to be made that he could caucus with the Republicans, especially if they will be in the majority.

My final observation regarding the Senate map is that, much like the presidential race, it seems to favor the Democrats. For instance, if you look at the 3 “Tossup” states, two of them were won by President Obama in 2008 and he is competitive in both of them this year as well. Also, states that the Republicans would have liked to be more competitive in appear to be slipping away, such as Florida and Ohio and other states that you would have thought would have been relatively safe for the Republicans have been closer than expected, such as Arizona and Indiana. While the Republicans will probably pick up two of the seats control by the Democrats, this very well may get wiped out with the Democratic win in Massachusetts and an Independent win in Maine. Once again, like the presidential race, the Republicans look like they need to sweep the tossup states in order to win and that would only put them at a 50-50 tie meaning they would need to pick off one of the "Lean" Democrat states to get to a clear majority of 51.

As I said above, the race for the Senate is arguably more important than the presidential race in that control of the Senate may very well determine where things go for the next two years even more than who is sitting in the White House. If Obama is reelected but the Republicans control both the House and the Senate, he may have a difficult time getting much of his agenda passed. However, if the Democrats retain control the Senate, the legislative battles will be waged on the Hill much like the last two years, but a Republican controlled House would have to recognize that there's nothing they can do without the President's approval and they will no longer be able to wait for his electoral defeat. This may make them more willing to negotiate and work with the Senate Democrats. On the other hand, if Romney wins the presidency, but the Democrats retain control of Senate, it will probably severely limit how much Romney is able to accomplish towards his stated goals. For instance, I find it highly unlikely that a Democratic-controlled Senate would pass a bill that repeals Obama-care which Governor Romney has promised to do. However, if Romney is elected with a Republican-controlled House and Senate, the Democrats will be limited to trying to filibuster things in the Senate, but much of what Romney would want to accomplish will probably get done. In other words, while both parties are hoping that they win the presidential race, it is the race for control of Senate which has turned into their backup plan to disrupt or support the agenda of whoever wins the presidency.

Later this week, I will post my prediction for the presidential race and I will provide the breakdown of where I think these Senate races will go as well. In the meantime, do not ignore the Senate races as they are just as much a factor in what happens the next 2 to 4 years as does the race to be the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

State of the Race – October 27 (T-Minus 10 Days & Counting…)

We are now just 10 days from the election, and this week there was a flurry of new polls conduct-ed. Since last week's report, there have been 77 polls done in 26 states; including 53 polls in the 11 battleground states I have identified (CO, FL, IA, MI, NV, NH, NC, 0H, PA, VA & WI). So with a week and a half until Election Day, here's where we stand:

	Safe	Likely	Lean	Total
Obama	172	65	40	277
Romney	143	48	44	235
Tossup				26

If you want to see how I arrived at these categories, I would encourage you to review the first “State of the Race” post I did on August 11 which can be found here. The photo above gives a visual breakdown of which side each states fall on. For a list of which states fall in which categories, I provide the following chart:

	Safe	Likely	Lean
Obama	CA, DE, DC, HI, IL, ME, MD, MA, NJ, NY, RI, VT, WA	CT, MI, MN, NM, OR, PA	IA, NV, OH, WI
Romney	AL, AK, AR, ID, KS, KY, LA, MS, MT, NE, ND, OK, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, WV, WY	AZ, GA, IN, MO	FL, NC
Tossup	CO, NH, VA

Here are the changes from last week: New Jersey and Washington moved from “Likely” Obama to “Safe” Obama; Pennsylvania from “Lean” Obama to “Likely” Obama; Nevada from “Tossup” to “Lean” Obama; and Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee from “Likely” Romney to “Safe” Romney.

Most of these changes are insignificant and represent a return of some states to categories they were in the previous week – such as states on both sides of the margins moving from “Likely” back to “Safe.” At this point, I think the map has pretty much taken shape and I do not expect any more major changes as we get closer to Election Day unless there is some late “October Surprise,” but I don't even think anything major in this final week would be reflected accurately in any more polling that is done due to the time it takes to conduct the state-by-state polls.

As for the final debate, I thought it was clear that President Obama won the debate as it ended up playing much like the first debate except in reverse. President Obama was the one who was being aggressive and engaging his opponent and his positions, while Governor Romney was sitting back and playing it safe. However, the major difference with the first debate was that the third debate was not nearly as lopsided as the first. Additionally, since the debate focused on foreign-policy, it was largely expected that President Obama would have the advantage.

As we exit the debates, I believe the tally on who won the three debates was Obama 2, Romney 1. However, this is not like a baseball playoff series where it is a best-of-three. In fact, all the debates are NOT created equal – the first one is clearly the most important and the winner of that debate is generally seen to have won the debate series unless something extraordinary happens in the last two debates. This is especially true in this instance when Governor Romney won the first debate so convincingly. The final reason that this debate was less significant was due to the fact that it was also the least watched. The debate occurred on a Monday night opposite Monday Night Football and Game 7 of the NLCS baseball playoffs. While it still drew more viewers than the two sporting events, it was still watched less than either of the first two debates.

As for the debate itself, I think that Governor Romney's strategy to play it safe was an interesting one when considering what was on the line. Since I have been doing this analysis, Romney has consistently trailed in the Electoral College math and while his first debate win helped close this gap, the president has consistently remained in the lead. Also, except for one week immediately after the first debate, President Obama has remained above the magic number of 270. If Romney had a good final debate and was able to beat the President on foreign-policy, it very well could have tipped the scales in Romney's favor. It makes me wonder if the ending of the second debate made Governor Romney a little gun shy about attacking the President on foreign-policy. You might remember towards the end of the second debate a question came up about Libya. I believe that President Obama’s response was one of the strongest from either candidate in all three of the debates as he looked at Governor Romney in the eyes and said he took it personal when people he asked to serve were killed and that he found it offensive when people used those events for political gain. It seemed like Romney backed down a bit and became less aggressive in that second debate after that exchange. There may have been a carryover effect into the third debate as Governor Romney tried to avoid a similar situation by not attacking the president and his foreign policies.

Now we enter the final 10 days of the campaign as both candidates attempt to finish strong. I will try and do a midweek report this week and in doing so, I'll also take a look at the status of the Senate races and which party has the upper hand in controlling the upper chamber. Finally, look for my report next Saturday as I will be giving my prediction on both the presidential race and the Senate races.

State of the Race – October 20 (Why a Close Election May Mean an Obama Loss)

Last week we saw that the first debate yielded Governor Romney a large boost as he was able to cut dramatic-ally into President Obama's lead in the Electoral College vote. Since then, we have had another presidential debate, although much of the state polling that was done may not yet reflect any effects that the second debate will have. Since last week's report, there have been 87 polls done in 31 states; including 48 polls in the 11 battleground states I have identified (CO, FL, IA, MI, NV, NH, NC, 0H, PA, VA & WI). With only 2 1/2 weeks to Election Day, here's where we stand:

	Safe	Likely	Lean	Total
Obama	146	71	54	271
Romney	115	76	44	235
Tossup				32

If you want to see how I arrived at these categories, I would encourage you to review the first “State of the Race” post I did on August 11 which can be found here. The photo above gives a visual breakdown of which side each states fall on. For a list of which states fall in which categories, I provide the following chart:

	Safe	Likely	Lean
Obama	CA, DE, DC, HI, IL, ME, MD, MA, NY, RI, VT	CT, MI, MN, NJ, NM, OR, WA	IA, OH, PA, WI
Romney	AL, AK, AR, ID, KS, KY, LA, MS, MT, ND, OK, TX, UT, WV, WY	AZ, GA, IN, MO, NE, SC, SD, TN	FL, NC
Tossup	CO, NV, NH, VA

Here are the changes from last week: Connecticut, New Jersey and Washington moved from “Safe” Obama to “Likely” Obama; Pennsylvania from “Likely” Obama to “Lean” Obama; Ohio from “Tossup” to “Lean” Obama; New Hampshire from “Lean” Obama to “Tossup”; and Georgia and South Dakota from “Safe” Romney to “Likely” Romney. Ironically, all of the movement this week except for Ohio was towards the middle which suggests that this race continues to tighten. However, Ohio moving from “Tossup” to “Lean” Obama does put the president back above the magic number of 270.

All in all, these results seem to indicate that President Obama has stopped Governor Romney's momentum and the close race I expected is getting ready to go down to the wire. Last week, I wrote about the inherent advantage that the president has with the electoral map, but this week I want to point out why a close election may point to a loss for the incumbent president. The reason why the map actually could cause the Obama campaign some concern is the fact that he is trying to do what has only been done one other time: win reelection with fewer electoral votes than he received in his first election.

In 2008, President Obama received 365 electoral votes. In doing so, he won some states that had been considered safely Republican over the last several presidential elections, including Indiana, North Carolina and Virginia. He also was able to pick up one electoral vote from Nebraska due to the apportionment system that they use. Except for North Carolina in 1976, none of these states had voted for a Democrat in a presidential election since Lyndon Johnson's landslide victory in 1964. Since the 2008 election, it has become apparent that Virginia and to a lesser degree, North Carolina have become swing states that the Democrats can compete in, but Indiana has gone back to being the red state it was prior to Obama's victory in 2008. Additionally, President Obama has been unable to put any states he lost in 2008 into play. Previously, the states that had been identified where he had lost, but might have been able to put in play were states like Arizona and Missouri. While this was discussed in theory, it appears the Obama campaign never tried seriously to go after these states and they remain safely in Romney's column.

That brings me to the history of President Obama is trying to make. There was only one occasion in US history where an incumbent president running for reelection for a second term ended up winning his reelection bid but received fewer electoral votes in his reelection than he did in his initial election and that instance deserves a large asterix. The occasion was 1916 when Woodrow Wilson was reelected with 277 electoral votes after receiving 435 electoral votes in his initial election in 1912. (It should be noted that FDR received fewer electoral votes in his third and fourth reelection, but that was obviously a unique circumstance and FDR did receive more electoral votes in his second election than in his first.) Wilson's reelection also has a major caveat to it as well. The circumstances that Wilson was facing for his reelection were very different than what he had faced in his first election in 1912. That's because in 1912 former president Teddy Roosevelt decided to run as a third-party candidate against the incumbent Republican president, William Howard Taft. This resulted in the Republican vote being widely split between Roosevelt and Taft and allowing Wilson to cruise to an easy Electoral College victory despite the fact that combined Roosevelt and Taft received more popular votes than Wilson did.

An argument could be made that President Obama's victory in 2008 should come with an asterix as well. This is due to the fact that the Obama/McCain race was an anomaly because Obama had foregone public financing while McCain accepted it. It was well documented in 2008 that Obama made his choice because he knew he would be able to out raise Senator McCain and therefore had a significant advantage in his campaign war chest and he used that advantage to advertise and campaign in many more states. As a result, McCain was unable to keep up and Obama was able to put states in play that he might not have been able to had the campaigns been evenly funded.

Whatever the reason for the size of Obama's victory in 2008, it's clear as we are this close to the election that he will be unable to repeat that number of electoral votes in 2012. As a result, President Obama is trying to do what has only happened once in our history – win a reelection with fewer electoral votes than he had previously. While this may seem like a rare occurrence that makes reelection for the president difficult, I'm reminded that just 12 years ago we all thought that we would never see an election again where one candidate won the popular vote but the other won the vote in the Electoral College. As such, just because it is a rare occurrence historically, doesn't mean it can't happen again.

Finally, I wanted to share my thoughts regarding the second presidential debate which occurred this week. Last week, I wrote “The pseudo-town hall format that will be used will not allow for the same kind of aggressive style that was used so effectively by Governor Romney in the first debate, so it will be interesting to watch and see how both candidates adjust as I think both will want to be aggressive, but they won't want to come off as attacking the citizens that are chosen to ask the questions.” Boy was I wrong! In many ways, both were overly aggressive and I agree with many commentators I heard afterwards who suggested that this style probably actually hurt both of them with undecided voters and it may point to a reason why the race continues to tighten. Clearly, the president was trying to overcompensate for his lackluster performance in the first debate and was very aggressive in going after Governor Romney, and when met with this aggression, Romney showed that he was not going to back down. As a result, I viewed it as a draw with possibly a slight edge going towards President Obama. I know there were many who thought the president won the debate, and while I don't necessarily disagree, I viewed it as a draw because I don't think either candidate did a good job of trying to appeal to any undecided voters.

This Monday night is the third and final debate and the focus is to be on foreign-policy. For those of you who know my thoughts on presidential elections, foreign-policy in my opinion is always the most important. While some people will look at the economy when deciding who to vote for and others may look to a variety of social issues, I simply remind you that foreign-policy is the one area where the Constitution gives primary authority to the executive branch. A president has limited say on economic issues and social issues, as he is bound to Congress and its whims. However, with foreign-policy the president is both the chief diplomat for our country and its Commander-in-Chief. As such, it is the area he can have the greatest influence on. So if for some reason you are still undecided, I would strongly urge you to watch this debate. Since the debate does occur at the beginning of the week, I'm hopeful that the state polls will be up-to-date next week and will include any effect that the third and final debate has.

State of the Race – October 13 (Debate Impact = Game Changer)

As I stated last week, the effects of the debate last Wednes-day would not be felt in the state-by-state polling until my report this week. It was obvious to all observers that Governor Romney had won the debate, but it remained to be seen if it would alter the track of the race which had been trending towards President Obama. Since my post last week, there were 63 polls conducted in 24 states, including 45 polls in the 11 battleground states that I have previously identified. After those polls, here is where the race stands currently:

	Safe	Likely	Lean	Total
Obama	179	58	20	257
Romney	134	57	44	235
Tossup				46

If you want to see how I arrived at these categories, I would encourage you to review the first “State of the Race” post I did on August 11 which can be found here. The photo above gives a visual breakdown of which side each states fall on. For a list of which states fall in which categories, I provide the following chart:

	Safe	Likely	Lean
Obama	CA, CT, DE, DC, HI, IL, ME, MD, MA, NJ, NY, RI, VT, WA	MI, MN, NM, OR, PA	IA, NH, WI
Romney	AL, AK, AR, GA, ID, KS, KY, LA, MS, MT, ND, OK, SD, TX, UT, WV, WY	AZ, IN, MO, NE, SC, TN	FL, NC
Tossup	CO, NV, OH, VA

To put it mildly, the debate clearly was the game changer that Governor Romney needed. From last week to this week, the following states changed categories: Wisconsin from “Likely” Obama to “Lean” Obama; Ohio from “Likely” Obama to “Tossup”; Colorado, Nevada and Virginia from “Lean” Obama to “Tossup”; Florida and North Carolina from “Tossup” to “Lean” Romney; and Montana from “Likely” Romney to “Safe” Romney. That is a total of eight states that moved in the direction from Obama's column towards Romney's column and these eight states total 103 electoral votes. Even if you take the red state of Montana out of the equation, it still totals 100 electoral votes. THAT is a game changer.

As for the electoral vote totals, I would point out that this is the first time that President Obama has been below the magic number of 270 in my analysis. All this points to the fact that this is a brand new race. I've read some commentators who have suggested that all the debate did was returned the race to the preconvention status. In other words, the debate wiped out the bump that the President got out of the DNC. I disagree. It seems clear to me that this has tightened the race much more dramatically, and not to toot my own horn, but it was what I had expected and predicted when I first started doing this analysis in August.

Obviously, looking at the changes from last week to this week, the biggest changes were Florida and Ohio. With Florida moving to “Lean” Romney, it represents the first time in my analysis that a state which had been in one candidate's column earlier in the cycle, moved to another candidate's column. In the case of Ohio, it had been in the “Likely” Obama category and skipped right over “Lean” Obama to “Tossup.” This is very significant for Romney because I still believe that these are the two states that hold the key to him winning the election. While it is technically feasible for Romney to win without these states, it would be very improbable for him to do so. In other words, Romney needs to win both of these states if he wants to win the election.

This leads me to my next point that despite the fact that Governor Romney had some success in moving states away from President Obama’s column, the one thing he has not done is put any new states in play. For instance, Michigan and Pennsylvania still remain in the “Likely” Obama category. In addition, if you look at where the advertising dollars have been spent, it almost seems that Romney's campaign has not made a push for Michigan and Pennsylvania. (In fact, as I've traveled back to Pennsylvania the last six weeks, I found it curious how there was a lack of commercials for the presidential campaign on television; while in the DC market, we are inundated with them as we are so close to Virginia.) If his campaign is conceding Michigan and Pennsylvania, this means that Governor Romney's path to victory remains very narrow, and is why Florida and Ohio become must wins for him. Look at it this way: with Michigan and Pennsylvania in President Obama's column, he stands at 237 electoral votes or 33 electoral votes short of 270. Florida alone has 29 electoral votes, meaning that the President could win reelection by winning Florida and only one other swing state, including New Hampshire's 4 electoral votes. In the case of Ohio, it has 18 electoral votes meaning if the president wins Ohio, he would only need a combination of two or three other states to win, such as Virginia (13 EV) and New Hampshire (4 EV). As we are now three and a half weeks from the election, it will be very interesting to see how the campaigns react to the electoral map and where they put their resources both in terms of advertising dollars and visits from the candidates.

A few final notes on the remaining debates: you will note that I did not mention the vice presidential debate at all. That is due to the fact that I did not watch it because I view them as largely unimportant in the broader context campaign. On Thursday night, I made a joke on Facebook about the fact that I wasn't watching it, but rather was watching something more civilized in football. I then followed up with a further football analogy likening the vice presidential debate to preseason football in that both are meaningless. However, that is not the case with this Tuesday's second presidential debate. Most people view the first debate as being the most important and I would tend to agree with them, but that does not mean that there is no significance to the remaining debates. Both candidates clearly have clear goals with this second debate as Governor Romney will want to continue the momentum he got during the first debate, while President Obama will want to thwart that momentum. The pseudo-town hall format that will be used will not allow for the same kind of aggressive style that was used so effectively by Governor Romney in the first debate, so it will be interesting to watch and see how both candidates adjust as I think both will want to be aggressive, but they won't want to come off as attacking the citizens that are chosen to ask the questions. Once again, we'll see how the candidates fare and I will report back with my analysis next week.

State of the Race – October 6 (Debate Recap)

I want to start this post off with a large disclaimer - while the first president-ial debate was held Wednes-day night, the results of the debate and any impact on polling will not show up until next week due to the lag time of when polls are conducted and when they are reported. With that in mind, let's look at this week's polling. There have been 49 polls done in 23 different states, including 29 polls done in 10 of the 11 battleground states that I've identified previously (PA is the only battleground without new data). With the new polling, here's the current breakdown:

	Safe	Likely	Lean	Total
Obama	179	86	38	303
Romney	131	60	0	191
Tossup				44

If you want to see how I arrived at these categories, I would encourage you to review the first “State of the Race” post I did on August 11 which can be found here. The photo above gives a visual breakdown of which side each states fall on. For a list of which states fall in which categories, I provide the following chart:

	Safe	Likely	Lean
Obama	CA, CT, DE, DC, HI, IL, ME, MD, MA, NJ, NY, RI, VT, WA	MI, MN, NM, OH, OR, PA, WI	CO, IA, NV, NH, VA
Romney	AL, AK, AR, GA, ID, KS, KY, LA, MS, ND, OK, SD, TX, UT, WV, WY	AZ, IN, MO, MT, NE, SC, TN
Tossup	FL, NC

Here are the changes from last week: NONE!!

That's right, there have been no changes in where states fall over the past seven days. There are many pundits who have suggested that even before the conventions, the polling in this race was already very rigid and this pointed to an electorate which had already made up its mind. The lack of any movement in the polls from last week to this week seems to support this theory. However, this will get tested as we look at the polls at this time next week to see if Wednesday night's presidential debate dramatically changes the status of the race.

This brings us to the debate itself. It was clear to me that Mitt Romney won the night. He was aggressive and went after the President and critiqued President Obama's record, while the President was not sharp in his responses. While the President did critique Governor Romney's plans, when Romney defended them, the President did not hold him to the specifics of the plan that he has previously laid out. All this made it look like Obama was trying to avoid his opponent and it seemed like he was trying to play things too safe. Afterwards, I used the analogy of basketball when one team has a lead and tries running out the clock while the other employs pressure to try and catch up. As the polls were clearly in the President's favor going into the debate, he just didn't want to do anything that would surrender that lead which resulted in him appearing like he was running out the clock and playing it safe. In the meantime, Governor Romney knew he was behind and employed a full-court press to try and score some points. Whether these strategies work will only be known once we see polling done after the debate.

Even though President Obama did poorly in the debate, I would once again point to the 2004 election as a way to alleviate any fears of the Democrats. As I pointed out last week, in 2004 the first debate set up very similarly as President Bush enjoyed a lead in the polls going into the first debate. However, when he met Senator Kerry in the first debate, it was clear that Kerry won the debate and in fact, President Bush came across as being annoyed that he even had to be there. In other words, I think this continues to feed my theory that this election is 2004 all over again. In that case, Bush had the opportunity to put Kerry away in the first debate and failed. As a result, the election was very close, but President Bush did narrowly win his second term. As I've said since I began doing this analysis, I fully expect this race to get a lot closer, but if I had to guess, I would still lean towards President Obama winning a second term.

How Wednesday night's debate changes the trajectory of this race remains to be seen, but tune in next week to find out if it has.

State of the Race – September 29 (2004 Déjà Vu & a Debate Preview)

This week there was another round of state-by-state polling and while I did not get a full count, I did count 26 different states where polling was conducted, including all 11 battleground states that I've identified previously. So as we end the month of September, here's where we stand:

	Safe	Likely	Lean	Total
Obama	179	86	38	303
Romney	131	60	0	191
Tossup				44

If you want to see how I arrived at these categories, I would encourage you to review the first “State of the Race” post I did on August 11 which can be found here. The photo above gives a visual breakdown of which side each states fall on. I'm still unable to use the app that allowed me to create the maps with the degrees of where states fell, so for a list of which states fall in which categories, I provide the following chart:

	Safe	Likely	Lean
Obama	CA, CT, DE, DC, HI, IL, ME, MD, MA, NJ, NY, RI, VT, WA	MI, MN, NM, OH, OR, PA, WI	CO, IA, NV, NH, VA
Romney	AL, AK, AR, GA, ID, KS, KY, LA, MS, ND, OK, SD, TX, UT, WV, WY	AZ, IN, MO, MT, NE, SC, TN
Tossup	FL, NC

Here are the changes from last week: The most obvious change is Florida and North Carolina moving back into the “Tossup” category. Last week, Florida was in the “Lean” Obama category and North Carolina was in the “Lean” Romney category. In addition, Ohio and Wisconsin moved from “Lean” Obama to “Likely” Obama. On the Romney side of the ledger, the only changes were Nebraska and South Dakota essentially switching spots with Nebraska going from “Safe” Romney to “Likely” Romney and South Dakota moving from “Likely” Romney to “Safe” Romney.

All in all, this race still remains very static as there have not been many changes since I started this tracking a month and a half ago. However, the race still has moved in favor of President Obama as he now has 265 electoral votes in either the “Safe” or “Likely” categories. This leaves him only five electoral votes away from the magic number of 270. In other words, Governor Romney needs to do something to change the direction of this race or the President will be reelected.

That brings me to my thoughts for this week and how this race compares to another one in recent history. I have said repeatedly to those that have asked that I feel that this race has many similarities to 2004. I created the following chart to show some of the parallels.

	2004	2012
Incumbent president with average approval ratings and despised by the opposition party	George W. Bush	Barack Obama
Issue that the American public was hopeful the incumbent president would have success with, but has now grown impatient with	Iraq War	Economic Recovery
Challenger who is nominated because the opposition party believes he gives the best chance of winning, but is not loved by the party	John Kerry	Mitt Romney
Quote by the Challenger that dogs him through the campaign because it feeds a pre-existing belief about the candidate	I voted for the war before I vote against it	47% of Americans are victims and dependent on the government
Perceived strength of the Challenger that gets used against him	Vietnam service	Bain Capital
Incumbent vice president who is seen as a senior party leader, but is held in contempt by the opposition	Dick Cheney	Joe Biden
Youthful vice presidential candidate for the Challenger	John Edwards	Paul Ryan
Politically motivated moviemaker who makes a smear piece attacking the incumbent president	Michael Moore	Dinesh D'Souza
The politically charged movie attacking the incumbent president	Fahrenheit 9/11	2016: Obama's America

All of this brings us to the debates. Clearly, Romney needs a game changing moment and I believe he can also take some solace from 2004. Going into those debates, President Bush had opened up a lead in the polls and the conventional wisdom for the debates was that he could put the race away if he was able to win the debates or even if they were considered a draw. However, most people felt that Senator Kerry won the debates and the polls supported this belief as things tightened dramatically and President Bush was reelected by a much slimmer margin and his Electoral College win was very close when you consider that if Ohio had switched to Kerry, the Massachusetts senator would have won. In other words, Romney can make this campaign a lot more competitive if he is able to engage the president in the debates and be perceived as the winner.

As a result, I expect Governor Romney to attack the president and his policies and define President Obama by his failures. However, just pointing out the President's failures will not be sufficient. He must also offer the American people an alternative that they can see and accept. This is where making the personal connection is so critical for a challenger. If you look at recent history and when a challenger has beaten the incumbent president, the challenger was always able to make a personal connection to the voters so that they believed that he would be able to fix the problems. It was this connection that helped elect both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton when they ran against incumbents. However, if we look back at 2004, I think we can see a clear case of when the challenger, John Kerry, was not able to make that connection and as a result, failed in his attempt to unseat the sitting president even when Bush was considered vulnerable. That is why I think it is critical for Romney to be able to get beyond his 47% quote and look the American people in the eye and make that connection. Since he was unable to do that at the Republican convention, his next chance will be at Wednesday night's first debate. I'll be watching and will report in next week to let you know if I think he succeeded.