I never seriously thought he had a chance, no.
Regardless, there absolutely was the societal perception that he "had a chance." While things like his great debate performance and the period where he led in the polls have been mentioned, there was a commonly held belief (mostly among conservatives, but that doesn't make it ill-founded) that the media and Democratic strategists were using flawed turnout models that didn't account for how uniquely minority-heavy the 2008 election was due to its historic nature.
Many predicted that there would be a drop in minority turnout and a spike in White turnout (specifically White college grads and middle to upper-middle class Whites, groups that were at the time reliably Republican and turned out at much higher levels than other Democratic groups), leading to a "surprising" Romney victory that *the media* never saw coming. I remember maps like this being floated regularly, and they weren't that hard to believe if we all take off our 20/20 hindsight glasses:
That's a 285-253 victory for the GOP. Even if we apply hindsight to VA and CO being "gone," there were quite a few people that thought Romney could pull off Wisconsin, and a trade of those states still gets him a 273-265 victory. Again, this is about
perception, and I vividly remember that a lot of people thought this was going to be a much closer election than it ended up being, and I don't think we should let hindsight (not saying you are, just a general note) cloud our memories too much ... when we look at the actual margins and think, "Wow, Obama won VA, CO, PA, NH and IA by 4%+," we fail to put ourselves back in that time when frankly a lot of people thought 2012 would look closer to 2004 than 2008.
