Do Republicans think Mitt Romney will win?

[HagridOfTheDeep]

Here's what gives me lingering hope: Romney doesn't do that terribly even in current polling. If you accept the turnout models we're getting from, um, "questionable" polling firms, Romney can still win Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, and Colorado (I know this one is contentious, but it's still close and I'm liking the early vote numbers). Heck, even Virginia isn't a done deal for Romney yet.

So if Romney can count on Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, and Colorado, and if he's got, say, a 40% chance of winning Virginia... well, that's not too bad. It puts him an Ohio away from the presidency. And if the turnout models ("party ID") are uniformly off by a few points, Viriginia becomes more reliable, New Hampshire looks decent, Iowa is back in play, Wisconsin could flip, Pennsylvania isn't out of the realm of possibility, and Ohio is a coinflip. Since I do think some of the party ID numbers look a little too good for the Democrats, there's a real chance that Romney could win.

Short version: Romney's not that far behind in the current polls. If the polls are, in fact, systematically off-target by a couple points, a ton of states flip to Romney (such that he'd be favoured to win). Obama's looking good at the moment not because he's blowing Romney out of the water with large margins, but because he's had consistent leads of about two points in important states. If those leads are artificially bloated, Obama's got nothing.