47% Could Be a Winning Number for Romney

I have to admit my first reaction to the video taken at a private Romney fund-raiser was not good and I feared it could spell trouble for the campaign, but if it can be used to launch a narrative about entitlement versus opportunity it could win the election for Mitt Romney.

The key is the 6% of the people who fall between the 47% who rely on the government for hand-outs and support, and the 53% who are looking for a chance to create a better life through personal accountability and responsibility.

Looking at the charts in Are Conservatives Abandoning Romney and Where Have the Conservatives and Evangelicals Gone what may not be immediately apparent is there are 6% of the voters in the swing states that are still persuadable, and that is where Romney’s key to victory may be found.

President Obama’s average lead in the eight remaining swing states (Michigan and Pennsylvania are going to Obama) is only 1.1% after demographically adjusting all polls for the pollster’s party bias.

Gallup’s Daily Tracking as of today has Obama up just one point and that’s based on an unadjusted seven-day rolling average of registered, not likely, voters which normally favors Democrats by a couple of points. Also the Gallup numbers are national which are far less important since 42 states, in my opinion, can be called and their electoral votes assigned already.

The remaining eight states are Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin, and Rasmussen Reports Swing State Daily Tracking has Romney up one point as of today.

Disagree with my, Gallup or Rasmussen’s numbers by a factor of 3 and the race in the deciding states is still within 3 points, and Romney only needs to carry 60% of the persuadables to pick up 3.6%. That’s more than enough to grab the majority of swing state electoral votes to put him over 270.

The math works but the key is to pivot the message to personal accountability and responsibility, and establish what could be a whole new foundation for the upcoming debates. Romney could then go on the offensive with Obama and his incessant growth of entitlement programs, desire to eliminate the work requirements for welfare and willingness to have 53% of us pay for the existence of 47%.

While not close to scientific and admittedly so, CNBC has a running survey on their website and 75% of participants agree with Romney’s statement, but here’s the Reince Priebus quote to CNN I’d be playing again and again:

I think that we are entering into a dependency society in this country, that if we don’t break that up, I think that’s going to be very hard for us to compete in the world. I don’t think the candidate’s off message at all.

Make this about entitlement versus opportunity; apathy & laziness versus accountability & responsibility; and lay the foundation to eviscerate Obama in the debates about allowing the dependency state to grow unfettered on his watch. It works domestically and globally, it works economically and politically, and it could be 47% is a winning number for Romney.