Two GOP officials said Ohio leans clearly in Obama’s favor now. State of the race: Advantage, Obama

President Barack Obama heads out of the national political conventions with a much clearer path to winning, top advisers to Mitt Romney privately concede.

The Romney campaign, while pleasantly surprised by Obama’s lackluster prime-time performance, said the post-convention bounce they hoped for fell well short of expectations and privately lament that state-by-state polling numbers — most glaringly in Ohio — are working in the president’s favor.


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“Their map has many more routes to victory,” said a top Republican official. Two officials intimately involved in the GOP campaign said Ohio leans clearly in Obama’s favor now, with a high single-digit edge, based on their internal tracking numbers of conservative groups. Romney can still win the presidency if he loses Ohio, but it’s extremely difficult.

The Obama and Romney campaigns anticipate little movement in national polls before the first debate on Oct. 3, which both see as the most important day of this campaign. They also see eye to eye on their belief that the election will come down to whether Romney can persuade voters he understands the problems of ordinary people and that his solutions are at least marginally better for turning things around economically.

Where the two camps differ — and differ starkly — is on their theories of the case for navigating the final nine weeks. Romney, armed with more dismal jobs numbers, will run a one-size-fits-all campaign, wrapped around the message that the economy is bad, Obama is to blame and that change of leadership is absolutely essential. The Republican plan rests heavily on Romney’s capacity to bury Obama with negative ads — and reap the benefits of his billionaire backers hitting the president even harder, and more relentlessly. This, more than anything else, alarms the high command in Chicago.

A Democratic official said the other big worry for the Obama campaign is that when you dig into the small slice of undecided voters (probably only 6 percent to 8 percent of the electorate, according to the campaigns), the demographics are not favorable to Obama: mostly white, many with some college education, economically stressed, largely middle-aged.

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“Many of them voted for Obama in 2008 and felt good about that vote, and still think Obama’s a good person who really tried hard, but the economy sucks for them,” said the Democratic official, who has access to reams of internal polls and focus groups.

Despite that, Obama officials have maintained for several weeks that there are too few undecided voters for Romney to get the bounce he needs from the debates. “Romney is not going to win undecided voters 4-to-1,” a senior administration official told reporters on Air Force One on Friday. “If you are losing in Ohio by 4 or 5 points and trailing in Colorado by 2 points, if you are trailing in Nevada by 2 or 3 points, you are not going to win in those states.

“There is a small number of undecided voters so you are not going to see tremendous movement out of these conventions, even out of the debates. … [W]e have a small but important lead in battleground states that is a huge problem for the Romney camp. … Ohio needs to be tied, Florida needs to be tied at least.”

Stuart Stevens, Romney’s chief strategist, said the campaign will draw from “a cavalcade of devastating statistics that indicate where the country is,” including an increased use of food stamps, higher poverty rate, bleak jobs figures and the exploding debt.

Obama, knowing full well the Romney argument is a powerful one that will resonate with many swing voters, will run what amounts to a half-dozen campaigns, equally negative, better organized but backed with less cash.

Obama’s plan is to slice and dice his way through myriad campaigns, all distinct, all designed to turn on — or off — very specific subsets of voters in specific states or even counties. Republicans concede Obama is better organized in the areas getting hit with the micro-campaigns.

There’s the auto-bailout campaign, unfolding in Ohio and soon Wisconsin, aimed at working-class whites. Democrats feel fine about Michigan — for now.

There’s the for-women’s-eyes-only campaign designed to stretch the gender gap in the suburbs of Denver and elsewhere. A huge portion of the convention — the prominent speeches by abortion-rights activists, to constant appeals, to gender equality and access, to contraception — was dedicated to this micro-campaign alone.

There’s the Hispanic campaign playing out in Spanish on Univision in any market with a decent chunk of Latinos. The Obama campaign is aiming to top 70 percent of the Hispanic vote, higher in swing states, to offset what they expect will be a dismal showing among whites.

The Obama plan also focuses on students with an education message; veterans in states that include Virginia, Florida, Colorado and Nevada; housing in Nevada and Florida, where the market tanked; and military families in Virginia, Florida and Colorado. Obama is also targeting Medicare in states with older populations including Florida, New Hampshire and Iowa.

“They’re a broadcast network, and we’re a local cable station,” a top Obama adviser said. “Romney wins with the broader argument, which is: ‘You gave him a chance and he failed, so it’s time for a change.’ Their best argument is not around specific groups. Our opportunity is with people who do not know about the president’s specific accomplishments that might affect them, and will respond when they hear about them in a very direct way.”

In the end, what gives both camps the sense that Obama is better positioned is the map of 10 states they are fighting on. Two months ago, a top Romney official said they had to have at least one or two of these states in the bag, preferably Florida, to be on course to win. They don’t.

“Our problems are Virginia, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire,” a top official said. “Our opportunities are Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado. We can’t trade our problems for our opportunities and win the presidency. If we trade our problems for our opportunities, we lose.”

Stevens said Romney remains unfazed by the hand-wringing among Republicans and staff.

“We’re a very patient campaign,” Stevens said. “We’re the campaign that couldn’t break 25 percent [in the primaries]. We just have tremendous confidence in the governor’s ability to talk to people in a way that resonates. Very steady, very confident.”

But for those not speaking for the record, also very worried.

James Hohmann contributed to this report.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story had an incorrect date for the first presidential debate.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: David Cohen @ 09/09/2012 04:21 PM CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story had an incorrect date for the first presidential debate.