Most of us have adapted to the fact that the media has a narrative this election season that requires all facts fit into the meme that the race is razor tight. We shake our heads in dismay that a "journalist" will state with a straight face that a six or seven point lead for the president is "a tie or deadheat", while flashing headlines insist that a one point difference favoring Romney is "a lead". However, Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post has jumped so far over the shark that he now occupies Jennifer Rubin--Baghdad Bob--everything is a win for John McCain territory (and that takes some doing). Follow me to the dark side of the orange swirly.
In between patients today, I searched my twitter feed only to see the that he is moving Ohio from lean Obama to toss up. The tweet linked to his column entitled Ohio moves back into the "toss up" category on Fix electoral map.
Upon what basis did he decide to make this change?
The simple fact is that Ohio has been too close for too long to expect that Obama would win it by five points or more. (Even the most optimistic pro-Obama types would have acknowledged that a month ago.)
In the four presidential elections prior to 2008, Democratic candidates got 9,060,521 total votes in Ohio, as compared to 8,965,170 for the Republican candidates, according to calculations made by the Cleveland Plain Dealer. In 2008, despite routing John McCain nationally, Obama carried the state by just 262,224 votes out of more than 5.6 million cast.
No one expects Romney to underperform McCain in the state — both because he is far better funded than the Arizona senator was and the incumbent is far less popular than he was in 2008.
After reviewing all of the available public polling data as well as talking to operatives in both parties about the private polls they are privy to, we are convinced that Ohio is a 1-3 point race in President Obama’s favor at the moment.
That — coupled with the state’s electoral history and the absolute necessity for Romney to win the state if he wants to be president — leads us to move it back to the “toss up” category.
So in summary, President Obama is leading in every poll
Latest Ohio polls: O+2, O+3, O+3, O+3, O+5, O+5, O+5. But Cilliza has spoken to Romney operatives and more importantly, the narrative must survive--so apparently,
"It's a tie".