With the big speeches and the big money starting to get thrown around in this 2012 campaign cycle, it is fair to argue that the general election is shifting into another gear as the long, hot summer looms in front of us.
And what little polling dropped this week (one of the thinnest weeks for data in months) painted a very clear picture of the state of play, both in the battle for the balance of power at the White House and on Capitol Hill.
Holy crap, things are gonna be close.
National polling has the Obama-Romney battle almost uniformly close, and the state polling has, to some extent, come in line with that conclusion. A back of the envelope estimate, based on the most recent state polling averages in each state, gives the president an edge of 3-4 points, and a (more math-y) estimate by Nate over at the NYT had it between 2-3 points this morning.
Meanwhile, the Senate could be equally interesting. The range of possible outcomes keeps getting wider and wider, it seems. No one was talking about Maine, Indiana, and North Dakota as critical races in the battle for a Senate majority at the start of the year. Now, they are all there, while races in places like Massachusetts and Nevada continue to look like pure toss-ups that could allow the Democrats to build a bit of a firewall for their Senate majority.
Meanwhile, the roster for November at the House level keeps building week-to-week, as the first half of the primary elections season is rolling to a close by the end of this month.
All this (and more!) in the "school's out, for summer" edition of the Weekend Digest...
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