Watch online: Tuesday, September 25, 2012; 12:00pm -1:30pm
With less than two months to go until the presidential election of 2012, the contours of the campaign thus far have been remarkably similar to the ones outlined in our paper from the fall of 2011, “The Path to 270.” The study argues that the election would boil down to the relative balance between two fundamental forces nationally and across the most important battleground states: demographic change—favoring President Barack Obama and the Democrats—and the lingering impact of an economy not yet fully recovered from the depths of the Great Recession—favoring the Republican candidate (now former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney) and his party.

With the campaign debate heating up and increasingly cast in ideological terms, it is time to revisit the basic questions posed by the original report: Will the rising electorate of communities of color, the Millennial generation, professionals, single women, and secular voters that pushed President Barack Obama to victory in 2008 be sufficient and mobilized enough to ensure his reelection in 2012? Or will the Republican Party and its nominee, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, capitalize on a struggling economy and greater mobilization from a conservative base that holds the president in deep disdain?
RSVP or watch this event live online: http://www.americanprogress.org/events/2012/09/17/38203/the-path-to-270-revisited-the-role-of-demographics-economics-and-ideology-in-the-2012-election/?evlc=rsvp