With two disastrous debate performances behind it, the Obama-Biden ticket is  in trouble. President Obama’s supporters  assumed the win was in the bag. Though Mitt  Romney is taking the lead in national polls, Democratic strategists  confidently argued Mr. Romney lacked a path  to electoral victory because he would have to “run the table” of the swing  states in order to win. Mr. Romney is turning  out to be more of a pool shark than they expected.

The latest battleground polls show a Romney surge in the critical swing states. The  nine most noted swing states are Florida (29 electoral votes), Ohio (18), North  Carolina (15), Virginia (13), Wisconsin (10), Colorado (9), Iowa (6), Nevada  (6), and New Hampshire (4). Mr. Romney has a  base of 191 electoral votes and needs another 79 to win. The four largest states  on the list have a combined 75 electoral votes, so if he wins them he would only  need to add the smallest of the states, New Hampshire. Securing five of nine  will win it.

Suffolk University announced Wednesday that it would no longer spend  resources conducting polls in Florida because the Sunshine State has gone Mr. Romney’s way. That leaves Ohio as a must-win  state, so both sides are spending millions in ad dollars, primarily along the  I-71 corridor between the Buckeye State’s three largest cities. At least  mathematically, Mr. Romney could win without  Ohio. He could, for example, pick up Colorado and the unexpectedly competitive  Wisconsin. Likewise with Virginia, which could be replaced with wins in Colorado  and New Hampshire.

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