Charlie Cook: Not all tossup states are equal.

Not all of the states in this Toss-Up column are equal. Most private polls show Romney with low single-digit leads in North Carolina and Virginia. For the sake of argument, let’s give Romney both states, adding 28 additional electoral votes to the 191 that Romney already led in, for a total of 219--51 short of a victory.

At the same time, Obama has a lead in Nevada that is wider than any advantage that Romney has in North Carolina and Virginia, so let’s add the Silver State’s six electoral votes to the Obama 237, bringing his total to 243, 27 short of 270.

That leaves six remaining states--Colorado (9), Florida (29), Iowa (6), New Hampshire (4), Ohio (18), and Wisconsin (10)--with a total of 76; Obama needs 27 of the 76 while Romney needs 51. But the challenge for Romney isn’t just that he needs to win two-thirds of the “true” Toss-Up state electoral votes. It's that in five of the six (Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Wisconsin) Obama is still leading in most polling, particularly the last two, while in Florida, it seems awfully close to dead even. If Obama carries Ohio and Wisconsin, where he is ahead in most polling, he gets the 270 with one electoral vote to spare, so Romney could sweep Colorado, Florida, Iowa, and New Hampshire and still come up short. No matter how you cut it, Ohio is the pivotal state, and it isn’t just the history of having gone with every winner from 1964 on and with no Republican ever capturing the White House without it.

To be sure, this race is so close that it clearly can go either way, but the Obama electoral path looks less steep than the one Romney must traverse, and the final debate seems unlikely to have altered that fact.



http://nationaljournal.com/columns/off-to-the-races/will-third-debate-change-the-electoral-math--20121023