Romney Pulls Back In Michigan, Pennsylvania

by Stuart Shapiro

TPM reports that both the Romney campaign and conservative SuperPACs are scaling back in two states that they hoped would be battlegrounds:

The Romney campaign and conservative groups like Crossroads GPS have pulled TV ads in Michigan, Romney’s home state, according to the Detroit News.

Nor are the campaign and super PACs running advertising in Pennsylvania, after unleashing a barrage there over the past five months.

It is still possible for groups to purchase TV advertising in either state at a later date.

Jon Chait does the math:

The reason this looks worrisome for Romney is that he’s pursuing an electoral-college strategy that requires him nearly to run the table of competitive states. The states where Romney is not competing (and which aren’t obviously Republican, either) add up to 247 electoral votes. The eight states where Romney is competing add up to a neat 100 electoral votes, of which Romney needs 79 and Obama just 23. If you play with the electoral possibilities, you can see that this would mean Obama could win with Florida alone or Ohio plus a small state or Virginia plus a couple small states, and so on.

Sure, Governor Romney could go back to Pennsylvania and Michigan.  Sure, he could win all of the states he’s targeting (although with this news, you can bet that President Obama is going to concentrate on those states as well).  But all in all this is the cherry on top of what was a very good week for the Obama campaign.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.