reelection campaigns, undecideds tend to break for the challenger, that doesn t mean exclusively for the challenger. the people who decided it in the last week in 2004 voted for kerry over bush so they went for the challenger. they went for the challenger disproportionately, that might be just enough to get romney over the top. it may be in same in 1996, even though bob dole did lose, the undecides, did break for him. where do you think this is going to go if i can put you on the spot. with the knowledge that pollsters tend to be better at predicting the past than the future. i think if current trends hold, i believe that romney will probably win the popular vote. we will see whether that s enough to win the electoral college as well. do you have any surprise states that romney might pick up that aren t on the radar,
nebraska and north dakota, but most of the reigning ones of these races are very, very close, so if you need five or six, what we seem to be looking at here is a replay of 2010 where the numbers are possible, but the republicans to take control are pretty much going to have to run the table and may depend how mitt romney does that night. paul: steve, is this a candidate problem in part? scott brown has done, i mean, is a tremendous political talent, very, very good politician for that state, but it looks like he may lose to elizabeth warren just because that state is so liberal? yeah, well, let me answer your question, i think it s pretty lousy candidates on the republican side of the aisle and democrats are recruiting pretty good candidates this year, examination, bob carey in nebraska is making that price potentially tight. a red state. your home state of wisconsin tammy baldwin from madison is hardly a centrist democrat,
exactly. but frankly, paul, nobody knows, with 100% assurance exactly what this electorate is going to look like on tuesday, and if anybody tells you they do, they re lying. paul: okay. now the other big discrepancy in the polls is the difference between the national surveys, which have obama and romney very, very close to tied and the state swing state polls, which have, except for north carolina and florida, basically have the two candidates either tied, but obama having a one, two or more point lead, as many as five in some state polls, lead over romney. why the discrepancy between the national survey and the state polls? the discrepancy is caused by the tremendous number of negative ads that the obama campaign ran against mitt romney over the course of the last six months. a rising tide lifts all boats, but it doesn t lift them quite
barack obama is trying to take spending from 20% of grosse pointe woods over the last 25 years up to about 23%. paul: for the starters. for starters and plus, make the federal government the lead role in the direction of the economy in a way that no previous president has ever done and i think that that is the decision the american people have to decide is whether they want washington, the federal government finally to lead the country or to have that reside and decisions made by everybody who is working in the private sector. paul: all right. still ahead, we go from the presidential race to the battle for control of the united states senate. could a big night for mitt romney tuesday mean a g.o.p. takeover there?
jobs, and get our economy moving. he s done it before, he can do it again. paul: james, good message? well, i think so. the second half of it was positive and the first half, the secretary of business idea, it s a number of the one of the number of signs suggesting that the obama campaign thinks it s losing where they re throwing out ideas late in the campaign as a kind of a disorganized panicked quality and as the ad says, another bureaucracy is not the answer. paul: don t we have a secretary of commerce that s supposed to be a secretary of business? and we don t even need that one so the idea that we want to add another. who knows? a secretary of business under an obama administration, making sure that alternative energy companies getting more advantage over other types of firms? i mean, yikes. paul: my only problem with that ad i think it s a distraction, in the sense that romney ought to be focused directly at the camera, here is my plan and contrast with