Friends,

A GOP apologist I am not. After the 2008 Presidential election I wrote a memo about the Republican Party's demographic predicament that was widely quoted in a David Broder Washington Post op-ed. This December I authored a Politico piece on the GOP brand problem, the...

By Steve Lombardo and Jackie Cooper

It was one month ago that President Obama defeated Mitt Romney, garnering nearly 51 percent of the vote and more than 330 electoral votes. While it wasn't a landslide, it was certainly a solid victory. To be sure, some of blame for the Republican...

There is an old political consultant adage: never run the same political campaign twice and expect the same outcome. The same should hold for prognosticators. Yesterday, for the most part, we got it wrong. We did so because I made some faulty assumptions. President Obama captured reelection by running an...

Later on tonight, Mitt Romney will string together a winning coalition with victories in states ranging from Virginia to Colorado, capturing the popular vote by nearly two points and a sizeable majority of electoral votes, making him the 45th President of the United States.

We make this projection with full...

Here's some of what's being said about this campaign -- from a public opinion perspective -- as we enter its final few days: Gallup leans too Republican. Ohio and Iowa polls have too many Democrats. Obama can't be winning if Independents are going with Romney by double digits. The national...

Friends,

Last night was a draw, plain and simple. Both candidates were quite good and neither made a glaring error. Obama needed to be more energetic and aggressive and appeal to his base. He did that. Romney needed to reassure swing voters that he had the temperament to be commander-in-chief....

Any serious observer of the presidential election has to be scratching his/her head. In mid-September Obama was on track for reelection because Romney, at that point, had been deemed unacceptable by a vast segment of the electorate. Now, in mid-October, the President is dazed, staggered by a near knockout in...

This morning, President Obama moved one step closer to reelection. The September jobs report showed 114,000 jobs added -- and unemployment dropped to 7.8 percent -- the lowest rate in four years. In addition, August jobs numbers were revised upwards. Yes, Governor Romney won the debate Wednesday night...

The Romney campaign appears to have righted itself in the last week, going on the offensive over Libya and working to reframe the race as a choice between two distinctly different governing philosophies. The president and his team are playing defense on Benghazi while continuing to assail the Governor's Massachusetts...

Sometimes looks can be deceiving; this is especially true of the 2012 electoral map. At first glance it looks pretty good for Governor Romney. There is an awful lot of red and quite a few toss-up states, and in a number of those toss-up states there are only a few...

We can talk about 47 percent, the Libya stumbles, the lack of message discipline and a weak convention, but the simple fact is that the president and his team have had a better strategy than Team Romney from Day 1 and they have executed it to perfection. The result? Governor...

Several national polls released this week show that President Obama received a small but meaningful bounce after the conventions. The bounce -- in the 3-5 point range -- is within the median for convention bounces since 1964. The problem for Republicans is that Romney got no bounce from his convention....

Although most pundits are talking about the fast start to last night's Democratic convention, we wanted to take a moment to focus your attention on a trend that most people have not yet flagged. In short, the Romney vote share has been quietly and slowly increasing for a month. This...

Friends,

The Obama team has a big problem this morning. They are in a box; it's not just that they fumbled this weekend's question over whether people are better off now than they were four years ago, it is that there is no real acceptable answer to the question. ...

Buried in most of the dissection of the Republican nominee's VP choice is one simple fact: Mitt Romney is losing this race. The Obama team's advertising assault that began in April has had an impact; Romney's favorability is underwater and he has lost ground in the head-to-head over the last...

If this election were a prize fight, we are four rounds in and team Obama has delivered haymaker-like blows to the head and body of Governor Romney for 3 months, but the presumptive nominee is still standing. In fact, the only thing that has changed in 90 days is that...

Today, Texas will put Romney over the top in terms of delegate count making him the unofficial Republican nominee. In response to the Bain attacks, team Romney has shot back with a countermove designed to put the president on the defensive. One thing is certain thus far in the election...

Friends,

In the last 10 days, team Obama has gone on the offensive, using a two-pronged issue strategy: one economic, and one social, that for about 48 hours put the Romney campaign on its heels. When a campaign moves this aggressively they are usually looking at polling that we don't...

Friends,

Mitt Romney may have rescued his fight for the nomination in Michigan with a narrow 3 point win on February 28th, but it was his nearly 12 point blow-out of Rick Santorum in Illinois on March 20th that probably ended the GOP nomination battle. What has gone unreported...

Friends,

In a year like this, when virtually every pundit and journalist has postulated that the GOP nomination process will drag on until mid-June, it makes perfect sense that the race effectively end tonight, March 6. That may in fact be the case, as Mitt Romney will likely win...