In poll after poll, the race between Romney and Obama remains a close one. | AP Photos 7 points that could tip the election

With the Supreme Court health care ruling out of the way, operatives on both sides now see just a handful of inflection points that could shape the arc of an increasingly calcified, close race between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

In a campaign in which news cycles burn hot and fast — and then out — in a matter of hours, very little has happened to actually shake up the campaign since the primaries ended. In one national survey after another, the race is a 3-percentage-point affair in which Obama hovers just below the 50 percent mark, and Romney stays around 45 percent.


“It didn’t take long for the race to get locked in. There’s no reason to think that it won’t stay locked in,” said Democratic strategist Steve Murphy.

Neither candidate is predisposed to throw the long ball; both are running campaigns that lay out little by way of future vision — Obama has been nonspecific about a second term, and Romney has played keepaway on some key policy planks — and neither has much incentive to change course.

( Also on POLITICO: Polls: No big SCOTUS bump for President Obama)

“In a race that’s as close as this one’s likely to be, both candidates are going to be ultra-cautious,” said Dan Schnur, head of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. “It’s hard to see one of them taking the kind of risk that would be necessary to dramatically change the trajectory.”

So all eyes are on the looming pivot points that could alter that narrative, though they are few, and will need to hit with serious impact — even the ballyhooed health care ruling has not, polls show, done much to significantly shift the campaign. Some are known and on the calendar; others hover over the Obama-Romney narrative, threatening but not necessarily materializing. Some are within the control of the campaigns, such as their debate performances. Some are global events that could be tethered to voter perceptions of one or both of the candidates, such as a true financial calamity in debt-dogged Europe.

“This race is going to be very close, and there’s plenty of action left to come that can influence it — unemployment numbers, credit downgrading, European crisis, VP choice (a little), the health care ruling fallout, and there’s always the potential of Mideast or other foreign policy issues flaring up,” Republican strategist Curt Anderson said. “But the truth is, there is a lot more peril than upside in all these things for President Obama. “

Below, the seven potential inflection points that could change an otherwise static race:

* The monthly jobs and growth reports.

The first Friday of every month for the rest of the campaign is likely to be unkind to Obama, and both sides know it. The only question is degrees. The first Friday brings the monthly jobs reports, which will reveal whether the unemployment rate is decreasing by degrees (which both sides think is unlikely), inching up (which both sides believe is possible) or staying static at 8.2 percent.

If the unemployment rate shoots up in a dramatic way, it probably won’t matter what Obama says — Romney will be the likely beneficiary. Romneyland also sees a net benefit in a flat-lined jobs situation because it will contribute to a mood of national anxiety that, they believe, will make Obama unelectable. The headlines will be negative for Obama surrounding the unemployment rate, if it stays the same or worsens, as they did last month, and many think it will compound the desire for a change among a sour electorate.

To Schnur’s mind, the jobs reports — and the situation in Europe — are among the most important indicators, and the rest of the coverage is “noise.”

Still, not everyone is convinced that the jobs numbers themselves will be game-changers, given that people already know, based on available data and their own lives, that the economy is not flourishing.

“It seems to me by definition it’s rather unlikely to move” dramatically, said The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, referring to the unemployment rate.

* Credit issues

A bigger concern, a number of Republicans privately said, could be another credit downgrade for the U.S., like the one that came after the debt-ceiling deal fell through in 2011. Obama became the first president to have such a downgrade on his watch, and it had an impact — a second such downgrade could leave a serious mark.

* A European calamity

The under-reported story during the week of the Supreme Court health care decision was the debt deal that European leaders reached in hope of staving off a deeper fiscal crisis.

For the White House and the Obama campaign, it averted a potential pre-November disaster. Obama’s team has long been mindful about the potential impact of Europe’s deteriorating situation on the U.S. recovery, and has, in recent weeks, attempted to set public expectations around it. German officials privately acknowledge that the trans-Atlantic phone lines have been burning in recent weeks with the clear plea from Washington: “Do something!”

Most think the current bailout deal in Europe will keep things sufficiently stable. But there are reasons for concern: In the past, Europe has appeared to level off in terms of financial danger, only to see a change in circumstances a few weeks later that roils global markets.

Obama has blamed Europe as a source of potential crisis for the U.S. European leaders have responded in kind, saying the Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008 that had worldwide ripples was hardly their doing and that Washington should tend to its own fiscal mess.

“Most of the things we know are going to happen between now and November are already baked into people’s expectations. I don’t think they are going to change the way people feel in terms of their own economic health or security. … That said, some major outside event that does really change the way people feel about their own prospects could always have an effect,” said Democratic strategist Jonathan Prince.

An example, Prince said, would be a “real massive euro event, seismic, like Lehman last time.” But he pushed back on the assumption of some Romney backers that they have the most to gain in that situation, arguing that people tend stick with what they know in times of crisis.

* The debates

Ask strategists with the campaigns, or independent of them, what benchmark could have the biggest impact on voters, and almost all respond the same way: the debates.

Every cycle, people place a premium on the debates. In 2004, this was especially true: Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry is widely thought to have lost the race in the third debate. Yet in 2012, the debates will be one of the few times when the race is engaged between two candidates often described as mirror images of each other.

“The debates are enormously important. The debates are very important to Obama because it’s an opportunity for him personally to expose the inconsistencies in Romney’s record, and it’s obviously important for Romney because he gets an opportunity to be standing next to the president,” Murphy, the Democratic strategist, said.

For Romney, it presents an opportunity to talk about his business experience in a way that dispels the attacks. For Obama, it represents a chance to drive home those attacks.

Obama has not debated in four years and is spending the summer preparing for the faceoffs he’ll have against Romney. He’s already chosen someone who knows Romney well from Massachusetts, Kerry, to be the stand-in for practice matches. The debates were never terrific formats for him in the 2008 primary and general campaigns — “You’re likable enough, Hillary” remains one of his harder-edged quips — and his team is aware that he needs to avoid looking smug or testy.

For all the headlines Romney got for his debating prowess in the primaries, he also made a number of mistakes — including looking both smug and testy. Still, he delivered when he needed to, and in the final outings, managed to outgun his rivals. And he is unlikely to propose a $10,000 bet with the president — although Obama may certainly bring it up.

* The convention speeches

For both candidates, their party conventions are opportunities to set the tone, look leaderly and rally the base. But at the moment, the conventions are an advantage for Romney over the president.

The Republican base is fired up, if not about their standard-bearer, then about the fact that the president seems far more beatable than they’d expected him to be. The party’s event in Tampa provides Romney an opportunity to make his case that he is the better man for the job for the job in stronger rhetorical terms than he has in the past. The party will have an array of stars to showcase onstage — Govs. Chris Christie and Bobby Jindal, for example.

By contrast, the Democrats’ convention can only look diminished in comparison to the Greek-columned grandiosity of the 2008 version. The Democratic base is nowhere near as excited about Obama now as it was at this time four years ago. Further, the event has been fraught with fundraising challenges and negative headlines. It’s taking place in North Carolina, a state that Obama is not favored to win again. And a number of Democrats have already said they’ll skip it.

Republicans think Romney will get a bit of a boost, even if it’s slight, from the convention as he heads into the final weeks of the race. It may not be enough to change the game, but it could make it closer.

* Romney’s VP pick and overseas trip

Unless everything that’s been reported up until now is wrong, Romney’s vice-presidential pick is unlikely to be a race-shaker. He is not going the McCain-Palin route, his advisers have said privately, and will stick with slow, steady and unsexy in terms of headlines. The likelihood of a Sen. Rob Portman or former Gov. Tim Pawlenty is high — the likelihood of a Rick Santorum or a Mike Huckabee is not.

Still, Boston hopes to get a bounce from the VP selection, as well as a week or two of good headlines about the pick, which can help Romney ride into the August convention on a high note.

They’re hoping for the same response from his first overseas trip as the nominee, which will include a London visit in honor of the Olympics, and a visit to Israel, where he will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as others across the ideological spectrum in the Jewish state. His team has not said if there will be other stops.

But the trip potentially allows Romney to attempt to cut into Obama’s advantage as an incumbent president — looking the part.

“I do think an incumbent president always has that advantage. … We all think Romney’s presidential because he’s tall and good looking,” said Kristol. “It still takes a (leap) for the public to see a challenger as presidential.”

It also allows Romney to make a case against Obama on the issue of Israel, which resonates with evangelical voters. Still, it will also mean fresh questions for Romney on his still-emerging foreign policy doctrine, ones that could make him look smaller if he is ill-prepared to answer them.

* A Mideast or North Korean military strike

Months ago, the possibility of an Iranian strike against Israel — or vice versa, preemptively — was much higher on the list of concerns for the White House.

As the election has drawn closer, the chance of that happening has gotten smaller, but it is still there, lurking as a threat that would have serious consequences for the U.S. The same holds for rogue behavior by North Korea, which recently violated U.N. sanctions with a missile launch.

It’s difficult to game out exactly what global peril would mean for Obama’s election hopes. On the one hand, the argument of strategists like Prince, the Democrat, could hold true, and voters could end up fearing the unknown more in a time of calamity.

On the other hand, Obama has faced stiff criticism not just over Israel, but over his approach to the Arab Spring uprisings in general and, more recently, to the government-sponsored violence in Syria. And a nuclear-armed Iran is a frightening scenario for many voters, even those who don’t follow foreign events closely.