And the winner for the presidency will be?

For someone who follows political issues and campaign numbers more than I should, I've found the race for presidency very interesting.  At Real Clear Politics website - the political junkie's favorite website - the polls consistently show Obama neck and neck with Romney in nationwide polls and slightly ahead on individual state based polls.  Going on that you might give Obama the edge.  However, a closer look suggests that might not be the case, given questions about polling methology and weighing voters disporporationately in favor of democrats.

Michael Barone, a serious student of campaigns and Washington politics for decades, thinks Romney will win because of the way polls show independent voters breaking disproportionately for him and voter enthusiasm is greater for Romney than Obama.

In a column he says,

Fundamentals usually prevail in American elections. That's bad news for Barack Obama. True, Americans want to think well of their presidents, and many think it would be bad if Americans were perceived as rejecting the first black president.

But it's also true that most voters oppose Obama's major policies and consider unsatisfactory the very sluggish economic recovery -- Friday's job report showed an unemployment uptick.

Also, both national and target state polls show that independents -- voters who don't identify themselves as Democrats or Republicans -- break for Romney.

That might not matter if Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 39 to 32 percent, as they did in the 2008 exit poll. But just about every indicator suggests that Republicans are more enthusiastic about voting -- and about their candidate -- than they were in 2008, and Democrats are less so.

That's been apparent in early or absentee voting, where Democrats trail their 2008 numbers in target states Virginia, Ohio, Iowa and Nevada.

 Here's an interview with him.  

His verdict?

Bottom line: Romney 315, Obama 223. That sounds high for Romney. But he could drop Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and still win the election. Fundamentals. 

Another interesting perspective is by Fred Barnes at Weekly Standard.  He points to enthusiasm, issues, and high propensity voters favoring Romney.

What's interesting is the political pundit class universally believes Obama will win.  I suspect they're looking at the polls and they naturally tilt towards their natural bias which is more liberal.  As Howard Kurtz, former Washington Post columnist, points out:

We still have to go through the ritual of holding the election on Tuesday, but the media’s forecasters have placed their bet, and the overwhelming consensus is that the president will win a second term.

As the candidates again raced to the swing states where the election will be decided, and as parts of New York and New Jersey remained crippled by Hurricane Sandy, the unmistakable message emanating from the press was that Mitt Romney had fallen short....

 But Kurtz also points out the consequences of them being wrong.

If Obama somehow manages to lose, it will be a stunning defeat for the nation’s first African-American president. But it will also be a crushing blow for the punditocracy that headed into Election Day filled with confidence that Obama had it in the bag. And Fox News won’t let the mainstream media hear the end of it.