Romney campaign suspends TV advertising in Ohio

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Thursday's New York Times reports that Romney's most recent $3.4m outlay for television advertising in eight swing states excludes Ohio entirely:

On Wednesday, the Romney campaign reserved $3.4 million worth of advertising time in eight swing states. Nearly half of that - more than $1.5 million - was for Virginia. The rest was spread across Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Wisconsin. His total ad spending for the week is more than $10 million.

...

A slew of recent Ohio polls have continued to move the Buckeye state further and further out of reach for Romney. Indeed, Nate Silver's model now gives President Obama an 82% chance of winning Ohio on November 6th, and his 'now-cast' estimates "that Mr. Obama would have a 96 percent chance of winning Ohio in an election held today".

Excluding Ohio from its most recent spending may indicate a shift in strategy by the Romney campaign to a "Plan B", also discussed by Nate Silver in his Wednesday blog post; a strategy that no other Republican in history has pulled off: Winning the Presidency without winning Ohio.

The map ... in which Mr. Romney wins Iowa despite losing both Ohio and Wisconsin, would suffice to give him 273 electoral votes. In the simulations where Mr. Romney won the election despite losing Ohio, this was the case that came up most frequently.

I'd call this the 'hail mary' strategy, since, as Mr. Silver discusses, it would require that Romney run the table in ALL of the following swing states: Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada and New Hampshire (in which he trails in just about every one of them, including Nevada, a state in which Romney has "never held a lead in a public poll") . This scenario would concede Wisconsin to Obama and result in a 273-265 win for Romney in the electoral college. (Note that in this scenario, New Hampshire's four electoral votes move Romney over the top, though a New Hampshire loss for Romney in this scenario would drop the race into a 269-269 tie, in which the tie would then be broken by the majority in the House).

Nate Silver's confidence in Romney's ability to pull this off? Fat-chance.

It isn't a great plan. But when you're the Republican candidate and are down outside the margin of error in Ohio with six weeks to go, you don't have any great plans.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/27/1136961/-Romney-pulling-out-of-Ohio-ZERO-spent-out-of-3-4m-in-ads-Plan-B-Hail-Mary