Internal Polls Have Romney Ahead in at Least 2 Pivotal Swing States

     According to Breitbat editor Mike Flynn, the Romney campaign has internal polls that now show the Romney-Ryan ticket ahead of President Obama in two important battleground states… Ohio and New Hampshire.  According to two tweets posted by Flynn  on his Twitter feed, Romney’s internal polls have him beating the President in New Hampshire by 3.0%, and an almost unimaginably wider margin of 4.5% in Ohio.

If these numbers are true, this would suggest that my own estimation of a Romney victory that will be much bigger than most people think possible, could be shaping up.   Especially if Mitt Romney is ahead in Ohio.

While I have sensed that this race is not quite as close as most polls indicate, my inability to totally discount the preponderance of public polling numbers that are out there has been leading me to conclude that in 2012, the G.O.P. may win the White House without Ohio for the first time in history. Part of the reason for that opinion has been due to the available polling data.  The other part is my knowing that President Obama is going to do everything possible to win the Buckeye State for himself.  Doing so would leave Romney with significantly fewer paths to victory.  But aggressive campaigning by Romney in several other key states, specifically Iowa, Colorado, New Hampshire, Nevada and of course Virginia and Florida, has led me to conclude that while Team Romney has by no means written off Ohio, they are actively working on Plan B…. the plan to win the election without Ohio if necessary.

But if these leaked internal polls are accurate, Mitt Romney is currently on his way to being able to carry out his preferred plan of winning the election with Ohio and the way I see it, if he can do that, Americans will be stunned to find out on November 7th that Romney beat President Obama by far more than anyone predicted.

If the Romney-Ryan ticket can win Ohio, that bodes quite well for additional victories in swing states like Florida, Virginia, Iowa, Colorado, and New Hampshire.  Given the make-up of Ohio, it is very good bellwether of the sentiments that exist in those aforementioned states.  Furthermore, a lead in Ohio would also indicates that Nevada is quite winnable.  Even more stunning is that it could be a sign that Romney is in contention for wins in other states like Wisconsin, which according to most polls is currently slipping away from the G.O.P. presidential ticket.  No matter what though, a lead in Ohio would significantly turn the tables on the Obama-Biden ticket by suddenly making them the ticket with fewer paths available to them to reach the magic number of 270 in the Electoral College.

Unfortunately for Romney backers, the reliability of this second and now third-hand information is not enough for us to hang our hats on yet.

While all campaigns conduct internal polls, they do not spend much time publicly talking about them or releasing the data and information contained in them.  By law, if a campaign releases any numbers from their internal polls, they must release the entire poll.  However, as is always the case with politics, campaigns can and do find ways to see that certain tib-bits somehow leak out for public consumption without being caught.  In this case,  no one can be sure of where or how Mike Flynn got hold of these numbers.  But if he did somehow get a look at the Romney campaign’s actual internal poll numbers for Ohio and New Hampshire, the news contained in his two tweets changes the narrative of this election by turning President in to the underdog in the race.

If the numbers Flynn released are actually from the Romney campaign’s internal polls, you can rest assured that they are accurate.  Mainly because of Neil Newhouse, the man who put those numbers together.

Neil Newhouse is Romney’s chief pollster and globally, one of the best pollsters around.   He is a co-founder of Public Opinion Strategies, a national political and public affairs survey research firm that has been described as “the leading Republican polling company” in the country and in 2011 he was named “Pollster of the Year” by the American Association of Political Consultants for his work on Scott Brown’s winning Senate campaign in Massachusetts.

At Public Opinion Strategies, Newhouse developed a culture and approach to winning that is practically unsurpassed as he successfully helped political candidates win tough campaigns and scored hard-fought successes in the public affairs arena for some of America’s leading corporations and associations.  Through his polling efforts Newhouse has been a master at taking accurate polls and using the information derived from them to successfully tailor the type of winning messages that have allowed his candidates to get elected.  So if Neil Newhouse’s polling does actually have Romney up by as much as 3.0% in New Hampshire and 4.5% in Ohio, chances are that the vast majority of public polls which are basing their models on outdated 2008 turnout models, are offering us a very misleading perception of just how tight the election will actually be.

Romney Takes To The Skies As His Ground Game Takes Shape

On Thursday, the signs and murmurs of a potential presidential campaign spun in a frenzy of reports pertaining to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

Early in the day came reports that were unconfirmed by the Romney camp, that the former Governor hired Rich Beeson, a former political director at the Republican National Committee, as his political director and Neil Newhouse of Public Opinion Strategies, as his pollster.

Later in the day came the news that Romney stepped down from his position on the board of directors of the Marriott hotel chains, a move which he made in the past, prior to his previous run for President and before that, his race for Governor of Massachusetts.

By the end of the day Politico was reporting that Romney aides were telling Republican supporters that the Governor would be announcing his candidacy in April. Romneys spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom stated that he did not know where Politico was getting that from but he also confirmed that Mitt believes he started his last campaign for President too early. In 2007, he made his announcement on the 3^rd of January.

April is becoming the popular time for many contenders to publicly state their presidential intentions. Mitch Daniels, Tim Pawlenty and several others have offered similar Spring timeframes.

The late starting strategy is probably an attempt by Romney to insure that does not peak too early in state likes Iowa, a Caucus state that Romney was surging in until the closing days when the newness of name Mike Huckabee snuck up and surpassed Romney in the day of the caucuses. In the meantime, while Romneys ground game shapes up, he has taken to the air and is spending time talking to world leaders. He recently completed a visit with King Abdullah II in Amman and is now in Tel Aviv.

Apparently the one thing that is too early is building up those foreign relations credentials.