NEWS,06.11.2012

What to watch for on US election night

As Americans troop to the polls to decide between President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, here's a guide to what to watch for on election night:

Polls close:

The continental United States covers four times zones from east to west. The first polling stations close at 19:00 Eastern Time (00:00 GMT) in Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Vermont and Virginia. Polls close in California and several other western states at 23:00 Eastern Time (04:00 GMT). Everyone will be watching for early results in the battleground state of Virginia as a potential bellwether of the night ahead.At 19:30 pm Eastern Time (00:30 GMT) polls close in North Carolina and all-important Ohio. A win for Romney in North Carolina, one of the more conservative swing states, would keep his hopes alive. But no Republican has won the White House without taking Ohio, and a loss there would put Romney in a massive hole.Others will start to fall into place after 20:00 Eastern Time (01:00 GMT), when the most populous swing state, Florida, closes along with most eastern states. An Obama win in Florida would be monumental for his re-election hopes, as polls have shown the Sunshine State leaning to Romney in recent weeks.West Coast states generally close three hours later.

Results:

This year, the nation's broadcast networks ABC, CBS and NBC, plus cable giants CNN and FOX, are conducting exit polls of some 25 000 voters, mainly in key states. Those figures, together with telephone polls and vote counts from precincts, will be used in formulating state predictions, which are made only after polls close.Partial results will be posted by some states, and networks will show such results ahead of predicting the state's winner.

Key states:

A candidate must win 270 of 538 electoral votes to clinch the White House. Eleven states, collectively representing a jackpot of 146 electoral votes, are up for grabs, according to RealClearPolitics. As a measure of how tight the race is this year, Obama won every one of these states in 2008. Of the 11, Obama's campaign says traditional Democrat states Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are in his column. But Republicans have made late campaign moves there.

The Obama scenario:

Based on recent poll averages, Obama is a lock in 18 states totalling 201 electoral votes. He has notable leads in Michigan (16 electoral votes) Pennsylvania (20) and Wisconsin (10). If Obama holds those states, he needs just Ohio (18) and Iowa (6) to win re-election. Or just Florida (29).Look for Virginia (13) and North Carolina (15) as key early tests; if Obama wins one of them, it'll be a long night for Romney.

The Romney scenario:

The challenger's path to victory is narrower. He is assured 24 states representing 191 electoral votes, leaving him 79 short. If Obama holds Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Romney must win two of the three biggest toss-ups - Florida, Ohio and Virginia - as well as most of the other battlegrounds.Look for New Hampshire (4) as a key early test; it's small, but potentially indicative of how the night may turn for Romney.

Congress:

All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs, as are 33 seats in the Senate. Republicans are expected to hold the House. The Democrats' 53-47 majority in the Senate is more tenuous. A race to watch is the Massachusetts battle between Republican incumbent Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren. Other key Senate contests are in Indiana, Missouri and Virginia.

Early voting:

More than 30% of Americans are expected to vote before Tuesday - either absentee or in person.

Recount?

Each state has its own recount rules. In the 2000 election between George W Bush and Al Gore, some Florida counties launched recounts while others did not. With the prospect of very close results in some states, phalanxes of lawyers on each side are prepared to bring legal action, raising the potential for final result delays.

The Ohio question:

A nightmare scenario may be brewing in crucial Ohio, where authorities sent absentee ballot applications to every voter. People who applied for such ballots but then decide to vote in person will be required to cast provisional ballots that are sealed until it can be proven that they haven't already voted.Some 200 000 provisional ballots may be cast, and state law does not allow them to be opened until 17 November.Complicating the count are mail-in ballots, which can arrive as late as November 16 so long as they are post-marked by 5 November.And if the results are within 0.5 percentage points, an automatic recount of all ballots is triggered.

US: Voters now have centre stage

 

President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney have closed out their hard-fought and deeply negative battle for the White House, yielding centre stage to voters who face a stark choice on Election Day between fundamentally different visions for the country's future.After months of campaigning and billions of dollars spent in the battle for leadership of the world's most powerful country, Obama and Romney were in a virtual nationwide tie ahead of Tuesday's election, an overt symptom of the vast partisan divide separating Americans in the early years of the 21st century.Obama appeared to have a slight edge, however, in some of the key swing states such as Ohio that do not vote reliably Democratic or Republican. That gives him an easier path to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.
"I feel optimistic but only cautiously optimistic," Obama said on "The Steve Harvey Morning Show." ''Because until people actually show up at the polls and cast their ballot, the rest of this stuff is all just speculation."

Different American versions

Romney also reached out on Ohio drive-time radio, where he said told voters to remember as they go to the polls that the country is hurting financially under Obama's policies. "If it comes down to economics and jobs, this is an election I should win," Romney told Cleveland station WTAM.Under the US system, the winner of the presidential election is not determined by the nationwide popular vote but in state-by-state contests. The candidate who wins a state - with Maine and Nebraska the exceptions - is awarded all of that state's electoral votes, which are apportioned based on representation in Congress.Both sides cast the Election Day choice as one with far-reaching repercussions for a nation still recovering from the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression and at odds over how big a role government should play in solving the country's problems."It's a choice between two different visions for America," Obama declared Monday in Madison, Wisconsin, asking voters to let him complete work on the economic turnaround that began in his first term. "It's a choice between returning to the top-down policies that crashed our economy, or a future that's built on providing opportunity to everybody and growing a strong middle class."Romney argued that Obama had his chance and blew it."The president thinks more government is the answer," he said in Sanford, Florida. "No, Mr. President, more jobs, that's the answer for America."

Jobs on the line

It wasn't just the presidency at stake Tuesday: All 435 seats in the House of Representatives, a third of the 100 Senate seats, and 11 governorships were on the line, along with state ballot proposals on topics ranging from gay marriage to legalising marijuana. Democrats were expected to maintain their majority in the Senate, with Republicans doing likewise in the House, raising the prospect of continued partisan wrangling no matter who might be president.Obama's final campaign rally, Monday night in Des Moines, Iowa, was filled with nostalgia as he returned to the state which launched him on the road to the White House in 2008 with a victory in its lead-off caucuses over Hillary Rodham Clinton, now his secretaryof state. A single tear streamed down Obama's face during his remarks, though it was hard to tell whether it was from emotion or the bitter cold.

Changing times

There has been little of the euphoria that propelled Obama to the White House four years ago, America's first black president promising hope and renovation to a nation weighed down by war and a near financial meltdown.The economy has proven a huge drag on Obama's candidacy as he fought to turn it around after the deepest recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s, a downturn that was well under way when he replaced George W Bush in the White House on 20 January 2009.Unable to bridge America's fierce partisan divide, especially on taxes and debt, Obama was thwarted in his efforts to pass aggressive plans for jobs creation and deficit reduction.He ended the war in Iraq and the US intelligence and military tracked down and killed Osama bin Laden, but a new host of Middle East crises - especially the war in Syria and the deadly attack on the US Consulate in Libya - shadowed the last months of the campaign.Obama, making his last run for office at the still-young age of 51, urged voters in Iowa to help him finish what they started four years ago. The president credits his auto-industry bailout, stimulus plan and other policies for ending the recession. He points to recent positive economic reports and a slow but steady drop in the unemployment rate.
"I've come back to Iowa one more time to ask for your vote," Obama told 20 000 supporters at the outdoor rally."This is where our movement for change began."

Romney presidency

Romney, 65, assailed Obama's economic policies amid the recession, and promised to bring change that he asserted Obama had only talked about."Talk is cheap, but a record is real," Romney said before a crowd of about 10,000 in New Hampshire on Monday.If elected, Romney would be the first Mormon US president. At times, the former Massachusetts governor has struggled to connect with the protestant evangelicals who are a core constituency of the Republican Party, especially because of his shifting positions on some social issues such as abortion.Romney, the ultra-wealthy founder of a private equity firm, worked doggedly to keep the race instead focused on the economy, and polls suggest that he succeeded in persuading many Americans he has the right credentials to steer America to better times. His selection of the young Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate put Romney squarely on the side of the conservative Tea Party movement that has been a driving force of the Republican Party in recent years.

Debt, taxes

Obama and Romney have spent months highlighting their sharp divisions over the role of government in Americans' lives, in bringing down the stubbornly high unemployment rate, reducing the $1 trillion-plus federal budget deficit and reducing a national debt that has crept above $16 trillion.Obama insists there is no way reduce the staggering debt and safeguard crucial social programmes without asking the wealthy to pay their "fair share" in taxes. Romney, who claims his successful business background gives him the expertise to manage the economy, favours lowering taxes and easing regulations on businesses, saying this would spur job growth.The final Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll, released on Monday, showed Obama with support from 50% of likely voters to 47% for Romney. The poll had a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.More than 30 million absentee or early ballots have already been cast, including in excess of 3 million in Florida.

Battleground states

In surveys of the battleground states, Obama held small advantages in Nevada, Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin - enough to deliver a second term if they held up, but not so significant that they could withstand an Election Day surge by Romney supporters. Romney appears to be performing slightly better than Obama or has pulled even in North Carolina, Virginia and Florida.The biggest focus has been on Ohio, an industrial state that has gone with the winner of the last 12 presidential elections, which both candidates visited on Monday. No Republican has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio.Both campaigns say the winner will be determined by which campaign is better at getting its supporters to the polls. The president needs the overwhelming support of blacks and Hispanics to counter Romney's big lead among white males."I encourage you to stand in line as long as you have to," Vice President Joe Biden told television cameras at a polling place in his home state of Delaware, where he and his wife were among the first voters.Election Day turnout was heavy in several storm-ravaged areas in New York and New Jersey, with many voters expressing relief and even elation at being able to vote at all, considering the devastation from Superstorm Sandy.

Obama, Tearful, Finishes Campaign In Iowa, Where It Started

 

As sentimentality goes, President Barack Obama hosting the last campaign event of his political career in Des Moines, Iowa, is hard to top. The Hawkeye State launched the then-junior senator from Illinois to national prominence. And there is a movie script-like quality to having such a historic political trajectory emerge out of the frosty cornfields. Speaking just steps from his 2008 caucus headquarters on Monday evening, it seemed at times as if the magic hadn't faded. "I came back to ask you to help us finish what we started because this is where our movement for change began," Obama declared. "To all of you who’ve lived and breathed the hard work of change: I want to thank you. You took this campaign and made it your own ... starting a movement that spread across the country."When the cynics said we couldn't, you said yes we can. You said yes we can and we did. Against all odds, we did," he said.Wiping the occasional tear from his eye, and looking over a crowd of 20,000, Obama concluded with the same story that he told on the last day of his '08 campaign: about the origins of his signature "fired-up-ready-to-go" chant. The arc of his first term in office was seemingly complete. But if anything, the late night rally in Des Moines underscored how different Obama's first and second White House runs have been. For all its poignant undertones, Monday night marked the end of a campaign that had little of the emotional appeal of four years ago. There was no sweeping "hope" narrative, no history-making proposition, no shadows of the Bush years to escape. Instead there was a business-like approach to a daunting task: how to re-elect a president with a slate of accomplishments, but with reduced popularity, a poor economy and no novelty. "The biggest difference between 2008 and 2012 is that the sense of the mission changed," said one Obama campaign adviser who, like nearly everyone, would discuss the campaign's inner workings only on condition of anonymity. "In 2008, there was the sense of optimism and hope around the mission of changing the world. In 2012, the mission is as much the clear-eyed recognition of how important stopping the other side is. It is a grimmer, more realistic sense of mission."How Obama's aides traversed this path is a story that will be told in greater detail in the election post-mortems. But months of conversations and notes kept in documents and notepads tells part of the story. And it shows a team that, while lacking the heartstrings of 2008, stayed true to other guiding principles: data-driven decision-making and solid execution. "There has always been a laser-like focus on the part of the campaign on how to get where they need to be," explained Hari Sevugan, who served as a spokesman for the 2008 campaign. "It was about delegates in 2008 and pathways to 270 Electoral College votes in 2012. "The formula, then and now, was always inspiration and energy at 30,000 feet and a no-nonsense attitude toward numbers and mechanics on the ground."It started in the spring of 2011, when top advisers to the president conducted a series of focus groups to get a clear sense of what was in store. What they found was sobering. Voters were gloomy about their current situation. Worse, they assumed their kids would inherit poorer lots than their own. They didn't all blame the president. In fact, they still liked him. But they had to be convinced of two things: That their lives could get better and that Obama was the person who could affect that. To accomplish those two tasks, the president's aides made a series of decisions. The first was to chart specific maps to 270 electoral votes. The second was to figure how best to operate within the boundaries of that map. The third was to unearth ways to make their campaign cash go further than their opponent's. In December 2011, campaign manager Jim Messina unveiled five pathways to victory during a briefing with a group of reporters. Virtually every state he identified as critical has maintained that distinction, with the exception of Arizona (which, even then, was labeled a longshot). There were some miscalculations. Messina assumed that New Hampshire and Wisconsin would both remain solidly in Obama's camp. He also gave equal weight to paths involving North Carolina (now, a reach) as those involving Ohio (less so). But the paths have largely endured. Meanwhile, aides plotted a comprehensive messaging shift and a media campaign to complement it. In December 2011, the president delivered a speech in Kansas designed to break the conversation away from deficit reduction and the debt ceiling debacle and on to job creation and economic security. The campaign booked $25 million worth of ads for May 2012 alone to build off that message. Again, not everything was pitch-perfect. The first two ads focused on clean energy, which would diminish as an issue outside of a few critical states (Iowa and Colorado). But the groundwork was laid. "It's been a very disciplined campaign, incredibly focused," said former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, one of the campaign's top surrogates. "And they have followed their plan as far as I can tell, without any significant deviation." The campaign began to pinch pennies. Aides booked ad purchases in bulk, instead of week by week. They gave a public okay to super PACs, despite the president's previous opposition. And they decided, like in 2008, to hoard resources, rather than share with other Democratic campaign committees. There was one place they splurged. Aides bet big on a ground game, hoping that direct "persuasion" person-to-person contacts could move the dial a few, critical, notches. "We never set out to run the same campaign and the organizational stuff which the president has always strongly believed in -was born out of a necessity of knowing that these states were going to be one- to three-point races if we were lucky," said one top Obama campaign official. And like 2008, staff members had conviction in their strategy. In the early summer, when a lagging jobs market had top Democrats fretting that Romney could win an election focused on the economy, aides scoffed at the proposition. "They are operating under the Woody Allen theory that 90 percent of life is just showing up," one top campaign official said at the time. "But there is such intense scrutiny in candidates for president. If people don't feel comfortable with who you are, it is very tough. In a race that is all about economics, this guy's profile is not a great profile." The official was right. And yet, when the campaign did put a microscope to the Romney profile launching attacks on his private sector record there were howls again. Once more, the campaign didn't budge. "Predictable for our party," another aide said of the criticism over the Bain attacks, "but stupid and wrong." It was easy, of course, to ignore the second-guessing when the plan was proving fruitful. But after the first debate, the campaign's internal resolve was tested. Publicly, aides projected calm. Privately, some were stoked with anxiety over the president's performance. Internal discussions took place over whether to alter the map or message. They tinkered with the latter "they changed their emphasis," said one top consultant to the campaign, "not giving up on the Romney-extremism but focusing more on the shifting positions." But they struck with the former. "Same map, tighter race," is how the aforementioned Obama campaign adviser put the post-debate mindset. The next month was a dizzying scramble that saw the president restore some of what he gave up that night in Denver. But even after Obama gave one final slap of the lectern and wave to the Iowa crowd on Monday, the final verdict is out on whether the decisions he and his staff made were correct. The campaign is projecting confidence. Part of it is common pre-election preening. A lot of it is faith in numbers. But a good deal of it is because, while it may not have the same feel as 2008, they've been here before. "There is no doubt about it," top adviser David Axelrod told The Huffington Post, when asked whether he felt the campaign had a leg up because of experience. "The experience of having done it helps. The people who are running our operations are the people who have been with us for five years."