On Twitter this morning, I posited that if ever there was a day where the NBC/Marist polls could come through for Governor Romney, today would have to be the day. That is because, cycle-wide, some of his best numbers in the "battleground" states have come from the "Three N's": Nevada, New Hampshire, and North Carolina.

North Carolina has habitually been the weakest link in the Obama 2008 coalition, save for Indiana (which only true Obama partisans think is liable to remain in the Democratic column this November). No state has shifted more away from the Democrats, on a marginal level, than Nevada. Even as Ohio and Florida, even in middling surveys, stayed a few points south of Obama's 2008 performance levels, Nevada slid a full ten points below Obama's double-digit margin from four years ago. And New Hampshire, with Mitt Romney's semi-homeboy status, has vacillated fairly wildly over the course of the cycle.

Alas, for the GOP, when NBC/Marist's numbers dropped earlier this evening, the result was...meh. As local sage Jon Ralston noted, the informed scuttlebutt in Nevada is that the NBC/Marist numbers (at least, with the likely voter screen in place) were probably a few points too favorable for the GOP. And Romney still trailed, even with a pretty wide LV/RV gap. With likely voters, Romney still trailed by two. Among the larger pool of registered voters, however, the margin crept out to seven points. And, as Ralston noted, that seemed closer to reality:



I know Democrats here fell pretty confident about where Obama is -- they think he is up more -- and less so about Berkley -- they think she is close but perhaps not ahead. So if you take the registered voter numbers here, they pretty much match what I have been hearing about the race from those who have seen data I trust.

Meanwhile, Romney appears to be nowhere in New Hampshire, trailing by seven points in the Granite State. North Carolina, the one battleground that almost everyone ceded to Mitt Romney, could not even muster a lead for the GOP.

Indeed, the only GOP lead today in a battleground poll was a Republican-sponsored poll in Iowa, which has been contradicted by a handful of recent polls in the Hawkeye State (though, good news! We'll get a new Des Moines Register poll here this weekend).

So, the question that begs asking here: given where the polls are, even on a halfway decent GOP day, how does Mitt Romney get to 270 electoral votes? At this point, it would appear to be more than a slight uphill climb.

Virtually every prognosticator is conceding 191 electoral votes to Mitt Romney (though that does include several states, most notably Missouri and Arizona, where recent polls have given Romney only a single digit lead). So, to win the presidency, he needs to cobble together 79 electoral votes.

But, if you look at the so-called battlegrounds, and average together the five most recent polls in each, the challenge for Romney becomes acute.



Battleground States--Average lead--Five Poll Average Colorado (9 EVs): Obama +4.4

Florida (29 EVs): Obama +4.2

Iowa (6 EVs): Obama +3.2

Michigan (16 EVs): Obama +10.4

North Carolina (15 EVs): Obama +2.2

New Hampshire (4 EVs): Obama +4.0

New Mexico (5 EVs): Obama +9.4

Nevada (5 EVs): Obama +5.2

Ohio (18 EVs): Obama +6.8

Pennsylvania (20 EVs): Obama +8.6

Virginia (13 EVs): Obama +3.8

Wisconsin (10 EVs:) Obama +5.8

What this all means, in essence, is that Romney needs a shift, and a seismic one, to overcome his present deficit. A three-point swing in his direction only gets him to 206 electoral votes (via North Carolina). A four point swing will net him an additional set of electoral votes from Iowa, Virginia, and New Hampshire, but even that only gets Romney to 229 Electoral votes. Even a five-point swing, which would net him Florida and Colorado, would only get him to 267 electoral votes.

The bottom line is this: when Mitt Romney's "good polling days" have him down two in Virginia, Nevada, and North Carolina, then he is not having a good day, after all.