President Obama and Republican Mitt Romney entered the final days of the presidential race tied in a state that the campaigns only recently began contesting, a Tribune-Review poll shows.Right.
The poll showed the race for Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes locked up at 47 percent in its final week. Romney was scheduled to campaign in the Philadelphia area on Sunday, and former President Bill Clinton planned to stump for Obama on Monday. The campaigns have begun to saturate the airwaves with millions of dollars in presidential advertising.
“They’re both in here because of exactly what you’re seeing” in this poll, said Jim Lee, president of Susquehanna Polling & Research, which surveyed 800 likely voters Oct. 29-31. Most of the interviews occurred after Hurricane Sandy inundated Eastern and Central Pennsylvania. The poll’s error margin is 3.46 percentage points.
Nearly 60 percent of people say the country is on the wrong track, and economic concerns continue to dominate. Almost half of likely voters say economic issues are the primary driver of their choice for president.
“I’m concerned about all the young people graduating from college, whether they’re finding jobs,” said Pauline Hoxie, 84, a Republican from Jersey Shore in Lycoming County. Her grandson graduated with a degree in graphic design but works a manual labor job because he can’t find openings in his field, she said.
Democrats shrugged off the Romney campaign’s late play for Pennsylvania, sending emails to supporters and journalists showing past Republican presidential candidates doing the same thing. Pennsylvania hasn’t given its electoral votes to the Republican candidate since 1988.
Pennsylvania: Some major trending for the governor right now that is being totally under-reported by the media. Some counties looking like they will be upwards of 70% Romney. #s will be played tight via media reports during early hours of election night, but watch for a call by around 8:30 or so for the governor. And that my friend, is when the entire liberal establishment really starts to do the backside pucker.
CANTON, Ohio–The first words from Republican state Rep. Christina Hagan when she addressed the huge crowd braving a damp chill for a Mitt Romney rally here last Friday night might have sounded more natural coming from a pulpit than from a campaign podium.More at the link.
“God is pretty good, isn’t he?” Hagan called out to encouraging applause from the virtually all-white audience of nearly 10,000 sprawled across a high school baseball field. A few moments later, she added, “I am not looking for applause. Nor am I looking for a handout.” With those two pointed remarks, Hagan briskly encouraged her audience to see itself as a community whose shared values are under siege from others—unnamed, but not difficult to picture—who supposedly don’t share them. Earlier that afternoon, about 100 people gathered for an early-vote rally at the Friendly Inn Settlement House, a community center that provides family services to residents of the surrounding Carver Park public-housing project in Cleveland. In this room, almost everyone was African-American—and the sense of siege was powerful here, too.
Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, actor Jesse Williams, and local elected officials portrayed the election between Romney and President Obama as a critical turning point, particularly for the black community. Speakers denounced Romney’s secretly recorded comments about the “47 percent” as a signal of contempt for the people in the room. “How do you say you want to be president ... when you have disdain for 47 percent of the population?” asked fiery Democratic state Sen. Nina Turner. Anyone touring Ohio, the epicenter of Campaign 2012, is confronted not only with the visceral passion, but the cavernous divisions that this election has provoked. Here, and in all likelihood nationally, Obama and Romney are assembling coalitions that are inimical in their demography and priorities yet almost equal in size. Uniting Americans behind any common purpose after an election that appears certain to divide them that deeply and closely looms as a daunting, perhaps insurmountable, challenge for whichever man wins next week.
This year, Princeton, N.J., has hired sharpshooters to cull 250 deer from the town's herd of 550 over the winter. The cost: $58,700. Columbia, S.C., is spending $1 million to rid its drainage systems of beavers and their dams. The 2009 "miracle on the Hudson," when US Airways flight 1549 had to make an emergency landing after its engines ingested Canada geese, saved 155 passengers and crew, but the $60 million A320 Airbus was a complete loss. In the U.S., the total cost of wildlife damage to crops, landscaping and infrastructure now exceeds $28 billion a year ($1.5 billion from deer-vehicle crashes alone), according to Michael Conover of Utah State University, who monitors conflicts between people and wildlife.More at the link.
Those conflicts often pit neighbor against neighbor. After a small dog in Wheaton, Ill., was mauled by a coyote and had to be euthanized, officials hired a nuisance wildlife mitigation company. Its operator killed four coyotes and got voice-mail death threats. A brick was tossed through a city official's window, city-council members were peppered with threatening emails and letters, and the FBI was called in. After Princeton began culling deer 12 years ago, someone splattered the mayor's car with deer innards.
Welcome to the nature wars, in which Americans fight each other over too much of a good thing—expanding wildlife populations produced by our conservation and environmental successes. We now routinely encounter wild birds and animals that our parents and grandparents rarely saw. As their numbers have grown, wild creatures have spread far beyond their historic ranges into new habitats, including ours. It is very likely that in the eastern United States today more people live in closer proximity to more wildlife than anywhere on Earth at any time in history.
In a world full of eco-woes like species extinctions, this should be wonderful news—unless, perhaps, you are one of more than 4,000 drivers who will hit a deer today, or your child's soccer field is carpeted with goose droppings, or feral cats have turned your bird feeder into a fast-food outlet, or wild turkeys have eaten your newly planted seed corn, or beavers have flooded your driveway, or bears are looting your trash cans. And that's just the beginning.
MIDDLETOWN, Dauphin County —— When Mitt Romney suggested several weeks ago that he would win Pennsylvania, the challenge seemed almost insurmountable.Well, the GOP ticket's taking it to Obama in the Keystone State. It frankly doesn't look nearly as close as Ohio, but Team Romney's got information that I don't --- internal polling, especially --- so I'll just hang onto my seat like everyone else. Twenty electors is a huge prize, and a win in Pennsylvania would basically throw the map wide open for the GOP ticket. Penn and Ohio for Romney and I'd have to agree with Price Foley: kiss it goodbye for the Democrats. I'll have more on this later...
But when Paul Ryan asked a raucous Pennsylvania crowd of GOP faithful Saturday afternoon if they were ready to help the Republican ticket win the state, he was serious about the prospects.
"It feels really good to be standing in here with Pennsylvania today," the Republican vice presidential candidate said.
Throughout Ryan's 30-minute remarks inside a Harrisburg International Airport hangar, the crowd was deafening, at times chanting, "Three more days, Three more days."
A month ago, with President Barack Obama holding a 7- to 10-point lead over Romney in several Pennsylvania polls, the GOP likely did not expect to be having huge political rallies here with less than 72 hours until Election Day.
For most of the year, Pennsylvania was widely considered a sure thing for the Democrats. But in recent days, the Republicans have launched a concerted effort to win its 20 electoral votes. Democrats say the Republicans are looking to make up for shortcomings in other key states, but Republicans insist they see an opening in Pennsylvania.
Ryan's campaign stop touched off a whirlwind three days of political activity in Pennsylvania. Romney will headline a rally in Bucks County on Sunday. And former President Bill Clinton will hold three events across Pennsylvania on Monday to make the closing pitch for Obama.
When Romney was last in the state in September for a Philadelphia fundraiser and a rally in the suburbs, he said he'd win Pennsylvania. At that time, neither campaign and no super PAC was airing ads on Pennsylvania television. And Obama had a comfortable lead in the polls.
In the last week, both campaigns bought air time, as did a handful of GOP super PACs. And the most recent public poll showed Obama's lead in the state had narrowed to 4 points.
Pennsylvania has voted for the Democratic presidential nominee in every election for the last 20 years. Independent pollsters have called it the Republicans’ white whale. Indeed, polls show Mr. Obama ahead, albeit by a shrinking margin. And his senior political strategist, David Axelrod, even joked this week that he would shave off his mustache of 40 years if they lose here.That's the enthusiasm gap, and it could be decisive in Pennsylvania on Tuesday.
But there is a tangible sense — seen in Romney yard signs on the expansive lawns of homes in the well-heeled suburbs, and heard in the excited voices of Republican mothers who make phone calls to voters in their spare time — that the race is tilting toward Mr. Romney.
CINCINNATI — Johanson Perez, a 29-year-old night baker at Panera Bread who is not a fan of President Obama, had a "70-comment fight" on Facebook with a friend over Donald Trump's $5-million offer for the president's school and passport records.Continue reading.
"I'm sure we won't be as close after the election as we were before," said Perez, who'd stopped for lunch at Price Hill Chili, a neighborhood institution on the city's west side. "It's almost like he's in a cult."
At a nearby table, political independent Greg Littel, 20, a University of Cincinnati student who favors Obama, said he was dismayed by vandalism in his liberal neighborhood.
"The political conversations have been more hostile and people have been taking that physically out on each other," Littel said. "All the cars with Romney bumper stickers have been keyed."
Over a sandwich at the bar, Ed Miller, 79, a Republican real estate agent and former minor league shortstop, said one of his oldest friends, an Obama supporter, stopped speaking to him recently. Miller had just given the man's grandson an expensive basketball signed by University of Kentucky coach John Calipari.
"I played ball with this guy!" Miller said. "How can you be so uniformed, so ignorant, about what's going on? If Obama gets in here for four more years, our country is gone. I mean flat-out gone."
