The New Republic

2008 results:  Public domain   Electionate coverage: Romney Leads In North Carolina, But Demographics Keep Obama Competitive |10/20/2012 READ MORE >>

With just nine days to go until the presidential election, new data from the National Journal shows ad spending surging in the so-called “Firewall” states as the Romney campaign tries to find paths to 270 and Obama tries to guard against Romney’s increased spending. READ MORE >>

Virginia and Colorado have faded in importance as Ohio has reascended to its decisive role in teh Electoral College. But the two "new coalition" states of '08 remain competitive and yesterday's polls showed a tight race.   READ MORE >>

Americans love a good procedural, and the Jeffrey MacDonald murder case is right up there with O.J. Simpson in the true crime genre. Ever since MacDonald, a Green Beret doctor at Fort Bragg, was arrested for allegedly murdering his wife and two young daughters over 40 years ago, Americans have been captivated by the sordid tale, and bitterly divided over its meaning. READ MORE >>

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In 2008, Obama won a decisive national victory with a diverse coalition of young, minority, college educated, and non-southern white voters. Four years later, Obama’s once-broad coalition has collapsed—but his losses aren't spread equally across a diverse electorate. Obama continues to hold near ’08 levels of support among black and Hispanic voters, but trails Romney by a historic margin among white voters, and particularly white voters without a college degree. READ MORE >>

Last week, Gallup released a demographic breakdown of its likely voter survey, which at that time found Romney leading by 4 points, 50-46. But it found that Romney’s biggest gains were in just one region: the South, where Romney held a massive 22-point lead. Perhaps predictably, this aroused latent liberal suspicions that Obama’s deep weakness in the South was responsible for Romney’s strength in the national polls. But a closer look suggests that the gap between the national and state polls probably isn’t the result of deep weakness in the South. READ MORE >>

At first glance, North Carolina’s apparent competitiveness seems surprising. Even though Obama won North Carolina by just 14,000 votes in an election he won by more than 7 percent nationally, both campaigns treated North Carolina as a battleground state in 2012, an election which promises to be far closer than 2008. And despite a tied national race, Obama remains within striking distance in North Carolina, where post-debate polls show Romney leading by just 3 points. READ MORE >>

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ERSKINE BOWLES, best known as the Democratic co-chairman of the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission, is reported by The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post to be under consideration to succeed Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary in a second Obama term. He says he doesn’t want the job, but no matter who gets elected, Bowles is angling for some kind of prominent role in any future deal on spending and taxes. Let’s not give it to him. READ MORE >>