Is Obama's electoral firewall crumbling?

President Obama's small but consistent leads in key swing states have long been viewed as his key to victory — even if Romney narrowly wins the popular vote

President Obama
(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Statisticians have said for weeks that President Obama is the overwhelming favorite to win Tuesday's election, even though polls say he's in a dead heat with Mitt Romney nationally. The reason: Obama has narrow but significant leads in most of the swing states that will likely cast the deciding votes in the Electoral College. But now, some analysts are moving all-powerful Ohio, which has steadily leaned Obama, into the "toss up" column, saying the race there has tightened. Republicans have accused statisticians of pro-Obama bias, and Romney political director Rich Beeson says all signs indicate that Obama's electoral firewall "is burning." Predictably, Team Obama disagrees, insisting it's clearly holding. Are Republicans fooling themselves, or is Obama's swing-state firewall really breaking apart?

The firewall is crumbling: Obama's famous get-out-the-vote machine was a key building block in his "impregnable firewall," says Jim Geraghty at National Review. The idea was that Obama would build up such an advantage in early voting that Romney wouldn't be able to catch up on election day. Early voting figures, however, suggest that Obama's ground game isn't expanding his share of the vote in crucial states such as Ohio, and he's behind his 2008 pace in Virginia, too. Ouch.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up