Why Republicans Will Keep the House

At Politico, Alex Isenstadt explains why Republicans will keep their majority in the House -- and even have an outside chance to enlarge it.

• Obama: "Unlike in 2008, when Barack Obama’s national numbers helped lift up Democratic congressional candidates across the map, the president has had far less impact this time around. And for the Democrats in conservative districts in the South and Rust Belt, Obama’s presence on the ballot has been more hurt than help."
• Money: "Between July 1 and Oct. 31, the NRCC and allied outside groups outspent their Democratic counterparts $168 million to $131 million."
• Medicare: "Democrats credit Republicans — some of whom had been initially concerned about Ryan’s impact on down-ballot candidates — with launching a vigorous pushback on the issue, accusing Obama of including cuts to Medicare in his health care bill. By the time October was up, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found Mitt Romney leading Obama on the question of who’s more likely to protect Medicare."
• Redistricting:  "That wide-ranging power allowed Republicans to strengthen districts for their majority. When the redistricting dust settled, 109 Republican seats were made safer, compared with 67 Democratic seats. Once-vulnerable Republicans like Pennsylvania Reps. Jim Gerlach and Patrick Meehan found themselves in easier districts."
• Retirements: "Throughout 2011, and into the opening months of 2012, Democrats watched in horror as 27 incumbents announced they were calling it quits."
• Map Shrinkage: "Democrats essentially ceded the South and only succeeded in competing in a smattering of seats in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In other words, the party gave up on a pretty big swath of the country."
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The Crossroads Groups

At The Huffington Post, Paul Blumenthal writes that the Crossroads groups are the biggest outside force in the campaign.

Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio told The Huffington Post that the groups will succeed in their $300 million effort.

"The Crossroads groups will meet their goal of raising $300m for the 2011-12 cycle because there is a great desire to change the direction of the country and donors see Crossroads as an effective and efficient platform for effecting change," he wrote in an email.

The organizations have emerged from the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision to become the best-financed independent political groups in modern political history. They will surpass the combined spending of all independent groups in the 2010 election and have already put nearly $100 million more into the election than the liberal groups Americans Coming Together and the Media Fund did in 2004

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During the late spring and summer, Crossroads GPS pumped $50 million into a television and online advertising campaign with targeted messaging at disillusioned Obama supporters in swing states. The spending helped to fill the gap for Republican candidate Mitt Romney at a time when his campaign spent little on advertising and focused on raising money for the general election.

That spending has shifted in the last days of the campaign toward a strategy of "stretching the battlefield" to "make the Republican presidential candidate competitive in normally Democratic states—Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin," as a Republican consultant explained in a Wall Street Journal article late last year. American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS have recently placed advertising in the previously uncontested states of Pennsylvania and Michigan as well as in Minnesota. The groups also made a national advertising buy that will put their ads on the air across the country.

Collegio explained in an email how the Crossroads groups were able to help Romney in the television advertising race. "Amazingly, Barack Obama's campaign spent a billion dollars and outspent Romney on TV ads by more than $150m, yet he never achieved more than 48% support of the Americans he leads. Crossroads relentlessly kept America's attention focused on Obama's failed economic policies and his recovery -- the worst recovery in modern history."

The Medicare Dud

Reuters reports:

As early voting proceeds across the country ahead of Tuesday's presidential election, voters over 50 continue to be more likely than most to prefer Republican challenger Mitt Romney to President Barack Obama and to favor Romney's position on two issues that directly affect the elderly: healthcare and Medicare.

While Friday's Reuters/Ipsos national tracking poll saw the candidates at an effective dead heat among all likely voters, older likely voters preferred Romney 51 percent to 43 percent during the week ending November 4.

Asked who has the better plan on healthcare, all likely voters support Obama over Romney by 42 percent to 39 percent, while older voters choose Romney, 43 percent to 39 percent. The responses on the candidates' plans for Medicare show something similar: Obama leads among all likely voters, 42 percent to 35 percent, while Romney is ahead among older voters by 40 percent to 39 percent.

The Hill reports:

Attacking Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan — once seen as the most potent weapon in House Democrats’ campaign arsenal — is turning out to be a dud.

Democratic leaders have hit Medicare harder than any other issue for more than a year, even calling Ryan’s plan a “majority-maker.” But with Election Day just around the corner, Democrats are looking at pickups in the single digits — far short of the 25 seats they would need to retake the House.

Medicare simply hasn’t become the powerful tool that Democrats — and even many Republicans — expected.

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The National Republican Congressional Committee says it’s not surprised. It was prepared for the Medicare debate after a pair of special elections where Ryan’s budget was front and center.

“Everything they said, we knew they were going to say,” NRCC Political Director Mike Shields said. “The idea that putting Ryan on the ticket gave them this issue is absurd.”

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The NRCC’s playbook, like the Romney campaign’s, was clearly telegraphed: Change the subject and stay on offense. Rather than debating Ryan’s budget in specific detail, Republicans launched a Medicare attack of their own, accusing Democrats of “robbing” $716 billion from Medicare to pay for President Obama’s healthcare law.

The NRCC is running 20 ads that focus exclusively on healthcare. Only one makes even a vague reference to Ryan’s Medicare plan, while 18 of the ads accuse Democrats of supporting $716 billion in Medicare cuts.

The outside spending groups have also hammered the "robbing" angle. 

Crossroads GPS Up in Minnesota and New Mexico

CNN reports:

With just four days to go until Election Day, Republican-leaning super PAC American Crossroads and its affiliate Crossroads GPS announced a pair of ads Friday hitting President Barack Obama for the national debt and for lacking a good case for a second term.

CNN reported Tuesday that major Republican-leaning groups would spend almost $50 million in the final week before the election on ads, including $28 million in ad time from American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS.

The American Crossroads spot will hit all of the swings states in a $4.5 million national ad buy while the Crossroads GPS buy will total $1.4 million airing on local broadcast in Minnesota – a state thought to lean Democratic but recently Republicans have made a late campaign advertising push there.

Previous posts have mentioned the national ad, "Debate." Here is the Minnesota ad:

 

Crossroads GPS is up against Heinrich in New Mexico:

 

Crossroads GPS Attacks Obama in Spanish

Crossroads GPS is criticizing President Obama in Spanish.

This one focuses on Obamacare:

 

"Walk Away" accuses him of abandoning immigration reform.




Another ad goes after him on immigration.  It features the exact same setting (down to the coffee cup) as an English-language American Crossroads ad (albeit with a different script):

 

American Crossroads v. Obama on the China Issue

American Crossroads has an ad depicting the president as soft on trade with China.

 

A Tie in the Ground Game?

Previous posts have indicated that the Obama campaign has a big advantage in the ground game.  But does it? The Pew Research Center reports:

Just as the presidential race is deadlocked in the campaign’s final days, the candidates are also running about even when it comes to the ground game. Voters nationally, as well those in the closely contested battleground states, report being contacted at about the same rates by each of the campaigns. And with a fifth of likely voters reporting already having cast their ballots, neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney has a clear advantage among early voters. This is in sharp contrast to early voting at this point four years ago, which favored Obama by a wide margin.

Clearly, both campaigns are concentrating their efforts in the nine battleground states: Fully 78% of registered voters in those states say they have received something in the mail from one or more of the presidential candidates, while 60% have gotten pre-recorded calls about the campaign. Nationwide, 49% have received mail from the candidates and 42% have gotten campaign robocalls.

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Oct. 24-28 among 1,678 registered voters, including 1,495 likely voters, finds that about a third of all voters (32%) say they have been contacted by the Obama campaign (11%) or both campaigns (21%), while about as many (31%) say they have been contacted by the Romney campaign (10%) or both (21%). The survey was conducted before Hurricane Sandy hit the U.S.

Similarly, among voters in the nine battleground states, nearly identical percentages say they have been contacted by both campaigns (51% by Obama or both, 52% by Romney or both.)

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In the poll, conducted Oct. 24-28, 19% of likely voters say they have already voted; that is unchanged from the same week in the 2008 campaign (Oct. 23-26, 2008). Currently, Romney holds a seven-point edge among early voters (50% to 43%); because of the small sample, this lead is not statistically significant. At this point four years ago, Obama led John McCain by 19 points (53% to 34%) among early voters.

The Colorado Independent reports:

The latest early-vote tallies (pdf) released this afternoon by the Colorado secretary of state show Republican holding on to a steady lead. The Halloween release reported that registered Republicans have cast 38.2 percent of 1,150,698 votes collected so far in the state. Democrats have cast 35.2 percent and unaffiliated voters 25.6 percent. Today’s total percentages are roughly unchanged from Tuesday’s but, with less than a week to Election Day, less-partisan unaffiliated voters– the largest voting bloc in the state– seem to be beginning to turn out in greater numbers.
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Local Democrats, however, point out that Republicans here traditionally vote earlier than Democrats do and that most of the early voting in Colorado this year has so far come from mail-in ballots. Republicans, they say, enjoy an advantage on that score. A great deal of general-election Obama supporters failed to cast ballots in the 2010 Tea Party wave election and so fell into the “inactive voter” category and off the mail-in ballot rolls in the state. Like first-time voters, those Democrats will have to visit early voting stations or vote on Election Day.

Brian Hughes writes about Cleveland at The Washington Examiner:

The stakes for President Obama could not be higher in this liberal bastion, an economically hard-hit region in the nation's premier battleground where the incumbent needs a massive turnout to prevail on Nov. 6.

For Obama, this area is a firewall that could offset likely gains by Republican Mitt Romney throughout other stretches of Ohio -- but fault lines have emerged.

Early voting, touted as Obama's secret weapon in the Buckeye State, is down nearly 10 percent in Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, compared to the same time in 2008. Even before Hurricane Sandy ushered in nasty rain, early turnout was lagging behind the benchmark it set four years ago, local election figures show.

Politically speaking, the failure to turn out a vote in this Democratic fortress is almost as good as casting a vote for Romney. And even while the number of Democrats voting early is down, there are indications that some of those who are voting are crossing over to Romney instead.