Ohio Obama +5
Florida Obama +1
Virginia Obama +2

If anyone wants to dig into crosstabs,
they are here

It's pretty obvious why Romney is throwing money at Pennsylvania and Minnesota. He's finding himself in an electoral nightmare in the states where he's been campaigning. A reverse momentum if you will.

2008 Obama voters just are not there this time. He has shed votes from all of his support groups- even blacks are not going to give him 97% support again, it's down to about 93% in the last poll I saw- I guess they are mad about SSM.  

He lost much of the extreme left by mis-handling Obamacare- who wanted a single payer, without gaining anything from the center, and it's had a measurable dampening on hiring.  They may be quieter about the war on terror, Gitmo, drones etc, but they are not pleased either.

He had a honest argument that he inherited a nasty economic situation- but the electorate has judged his handling of that situation to be amateurish and I think they have had enough. 2010 should have given him a clue to triangulate ala Clinton. Pending unemployment numbers will come in just prior to the election- (guessing 7.8% here) (and I hope they remember CA this time)

He's lost a lot of moderates who thought he was going to be post-racial, (whoopsie) and those voters who had only voted for him because it would prove America is not racist. Well we did that- now we can go back to electing based on experience and competence.

His campaign's core message has not been his record- but instead that Mitt is some Ayn Rand nut job who will give your wife cancer while he wheels g-ma off the cliff and sends jobs to Bolivia.  In the first debate, and in the TV ads America sees Mitt as a reasonable, moderate, competent manager who was elected Gov of Mass- how radical could the guy be and still get elected Gov of Kennedy country?

I'm a full supporter of everything you said- get out the vote, let your vote count, drag your neighbor to the polls etc. But there are just too many erosions from his previous voters- hard to find people who would be `new' Obama voters.

How does that happen?

Am I the only one who, on reflection, feels really angry that this is where we are, and that the best we can do is take one for the team?

I don't disagree that life under Romney and his ilk will be worse - it has more or less been ever thus when it comes to life under Republican rule - so why is it that we're approaching the 11th hour and this isn't just totally in the bag for Democrats?  Could it be four years of so much post-partisan contortion, blurring of the line that's supposed to define the differences, efforts to "get things done," and conceding and compromising and putting leadership in time-out, have given the American people the distinct impression that voting may matter, but not really that much, since there are oodles of areas where the parties agree?

So, okay - let's say that Obama manages to win this.  Then what?  Can't claim a mandate this time around, I don't think - all the talk will be of how he's going to have to govern from the mother-f-ing center, which is where he's been governing from all along. We've been treated to non-stop talk of deficits - that we already know don't matter - to the crackpot/devastating ideas of Bowles-Simpson over and over no matter how many times they've been rejected and no matter how many times their proposals have been trashed as bad for the economy, to the gob-smacking decision to let all the Bushies off the hook for their crimes, followed by carrying on in their image.

Does anyone believe that electing Obama is going to make all that go away or that he's going to  reverse course, when he's the one who made it all part and parcel of his current term?   Can we at least face the reality that it's here to stay and it's going to get worse?  Even if more slowly than with Romney/Ryan?

An Obama victory on election night will be a Pyrrhic one, in my estimation.  Sure, we'll all be relieved that Romney and Ryan have not been given the keys to the WH, and we'll never, ever regret that they lost.  I wouldn't regret for a moment if we never saw or heard from them again.  I guess I'm feeling like this is an election where, once again, we may come to regret that anyone won, because we've all lost in some way.

Sorry for the rant; I'm cranky for mostly Hurricane Sandy-related reasons, and I just don't have the tolerance today to contemplate where we are politically, and where we're going, even if Dems manage to squeak over the finish line ahead of Mr. Plastic Anything-But-Fantastic and his Boy Minion.

Although I do not diminish the importance of a single vote, the "closeness" of this race seems to me to be artificially stimulated by such discredited media as CNN - hoping that we will be tuning in and buying the merchandise that they want to sell us.