Last Call

Nate Silver believes there’s a 50/50 chance that Ohio is decisive.

Strap in, folks.  I’ve been saying for a while now that as goes Ohio, so goes the nation in this election, and two weeks out Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com finds the math is shaking out to match that exact scenario.

We are now running about 40,000 Electoral College simulations each day. In the simulations that we ran on Monday, the candidate who won Ohio won the election roughly 38,000 times, or in about 95 percent of the cases. (Mr. Romney won in about 1,400 simulations despite losing Ohio, while Mr. Obama did so roughly 550 times.)

Whether you call Ohio a “must-win” is a matter of semantics, but its essential role in the Electoral College should not be hard to grasp.

I’ll go one step further.  If Ohio will decide this election, then the Cincinnati metro area (Hamilton, Butler and Warren counties) will decide Ohio.  If the urban turnout in Hamilton County and Cincinnati proper is good like it was last year (sweeping into power a nearly all Democratic City Council), Obama will win.  If it gets buried like it did in 2010 by Boehner country in the Warren and Butler County suburbs north of the city, say hello to President Romney.

That’s how important I think southwest Ohio will be to the state and the nation in the next two weeks.  The recent early voting victory for the Democrats here is going to make all the difference I believe, and I see the President pulling it out here by a couple of points as a result.

If you’re in Ohio, GET TO THE POLLS.  You can still vote early all the way through until Election Day, including next weekend and the weekend before Election Day.  Your vote matter no matter where you are, but your vote will absolutely matter in the Buckeye State.

Get out there.  Help others get out there.  Help get Souls to the Polls in Ohio.  Please.