approximate you let me pick three, i would have picked florida. that would be your three. bill? same question to you on hispanic number. i think we ve had six tracks. and five of the tracks have romney hitting florida and the one he s losing is by a point. i think these national numbers, when you re tied nationally, florida tends to be two or three points better than the national number for republicans. i now believe florida could easily go for romney. but you have to look at electoral votes. if i were governor romney, it s hard personally to count the 270 without a sweep, meaning florida, ohio, virginia. and then you do have to pick off a state and that state could be iowa. and i m a little concerned about nevada from a romney perspective. harry reid won that state because of high hispanic turnout. in 2010, hispanic turnout in nevada was higher than in 08. and i think that s potential problem and why i ve got to focus more on iowa and virginia. all right.
remote. bill, i ll start with you. if you go through our poll, it seems that you come to one conclusion. when it comes to the president. and that is, there is a small but insignificant slice of voters who have no earthly idea what a second term is going to look like from the president and that s what s holding them back. they re not running to the ballots to fire him, but they re not running to the ballot boxes to rehire him. and it seems to me they have no idea what the second term is going to look like. is that a problem? i take a different top line from that poll. i think when you look at it, there is some problem that mitt romney has, that he can t sort of achieve higher than he has been able to, especially in ohio. when you look at that poll. mitt romney is really disqualified with a large group of the noncollege men and women in that state. but, i mean, i think if you look at our national poll, bill. if you look at our national poll, that you guys spent six months disqualifyi
disqualified. i think the national possible is a lot less important than what you see in the state of roe. if mitt romney is not going to win ohio, he s not going to win this race. there is not a credible path that gets him to 270. i want to throw up the ohio poll. i know he s referencing there is a cbs quinnipiac-new york times poll that has the president 50-45. so florida is a swing state, but not relevant to the 270 electoral vote conversation, or is it relevant? florida is still in play. we saw a significant shift towards mitt romney. you re still nervous. it s going to come down to ground game. the obama camp has been here since he was elected in 2008. this is going to come down to turnout. we ve got a good ground game. who has the stamina? we believe we have it. dan balz, this overall message, you spend a lot of time polling. is that what your sense is, what s missing is they spent all this time disqualifying romney,
i m going to do that right, they re fearful of that moment. and they re happy that it hasn t happened yet. right. well, there is this reservoir of goodwill that the president has been able to tap that the pres been able to tap into and it s cushioned him against economic gravity, you know, as unemployment has been as high as it is. and i think, you know, for the governor, in these last couple of weeks, he was as someone said earlier, you know, they were trying to disqualify him and then in the first debate he proved that he was a worthy challenger. stick around i want to take a break so we have one more round of conversation. bill, i ll get to you right after the break. i promise, buddy. i got to get the trivia answer in here. who did george mcgovern to beat for his u.s. senate seat. the answer was bottum.
would do if elected. not a good number. and the biggest red flag for the president, 62% of voters want major changes if he s re-elected. only 4% said they want obama s second term to look a lot like the first one. obama adviser david axelrod appearing on meet the press said while the polls are getting closer, he believes there are positive indicators for the president. if you look at the early voting going on around the country, it s very robust, and it s very favorable to us. and we think that s a better indicator than these public polls, which are flankly, all over the map. as for red flags in our poll for mitt romney, they re there. what s holding romney back? voters still aren t fully convinced he can relate to them. romney trails the president badly, by 35 points when voters are asked which candidate is more easy going and likeable. down by 24 points. when asked who has the compassion necessary to understand average people, romney trails by a 16-point margin. on the question