US blogwatch: Superstorm Sandy puts dampener on election

The Romney camp’s suggestion that the Republican Governor of stricken New Jersey, Chris Christie, do a photo op with him got short shrift. Mr Christie told Fox News. “I’ve got a job to do here in New Jersey that’s much bigger than presidential politics.”

*Political bloggers seem to be swapping tales of the storm rather than attacking each other. David Frum of thedailybeast.com even posted a link to a consumer report on home generators. Huffington

post.com — one of several political websites hit by power cuts — reports that 10 pictures per second were being posted to Instagram with the hashtag #sandy yesterday.

*With only six days to polling day, it’s make or break. That explains Mr Romney’s TV ad being aired in Ohio claiming Chrysler’s owners will move Jeep jobs to China. Molly Ball dissects that claim on theatlantic.com

While it’s too early to tell whether Sandy will have any real impact on early voting, dailykos.com reports an intriguing leaked Republican memo from Florida — not much affected by the storm —suggesting some alarm in the Romney camp about the efficiency of the Obama drive to get people voting.

*Mitt Romney is polling 0.9 per cent ahead in national polls but is narrowly behind in most swing states, according to realclearpolitics.com — raising the possibility that he could win the popular vote but lose the election.

If Mr Obama wins enough swing states, he takes all their electoral college votes and gets to the magic number: 270 of the college’s 538 votes. Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog on washingtonpost.com says most pollsters think such a split is unlikely. Both sides will hope they’re right.