And Now We Fight

With the close of the Democratic National Convention, we are now officially in to the Presidential race.

At the moment, just about everything is drawn even. Almost all national polls, and most battleground state polls show a statistical tie between President Obama and Mr. Romney. Some polls show Mr. Obama up a little while others show Mr. Romney up a little. At this point, it is all noise.

From a historical point of view, a tied race is not the best news for Mr. Obama. He has had the advantage in being able to spend campaign money while Mr. Romney has been unable until the Republican convention finished. That Mr. Obama has not been able to build himself any kind of significant lead would be troubling. Also troubling is that historically undecideds break towards the challenger. The idea is that if a President is doing a good job, less people are undecided and will voice their support for the President. If they are not sure, the generally opt to see if the other guy can do any better.

This is still a close race any anything can happen. But Mr. Obama is going to have put some blood, sweat, and tears into this race to win it. The generally panning reviews of Mr. Obama's acceptance speech are not the most auspicious start to the general campaign.

Likewise, Mr. Romney is not going to be able to sit back and just say that I'm not Barack Obama and expect to win. He will need to draw blood and risk getting bloodied himself if he wants to win. Mr. Romney has made large ad buys in a number of battleground states but has oddly omitted Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania from the ad buy. Even if he doesn't think he'll win any of these states, it would be beneficial to attack them, if only to spread Mr. Obama's thinning resources even thinner.

We have two months to go and it will be interesting to see how the battle tactics evolve as the field shapes up.