Who has run better campaign?

[Likely Voter]

Looking back, who has run the better campaign in terms of strategy, media, messaging, etc.?

[Ljube]

Obama. He didn't have unforced errors.

But I'll give the final judgment on Nov 7th.

[Niemeyerite]

Herman Cain.

Voted Obama.

[rockhound]

Obama by far.  No substance, terrible record, but still keeping the race close.

[Vosem]

Both candidates have had epic failures and remarkable, bizarre successes. It's difficult to say. I'm inclined to say, yeah, we'll know come November 7.

[Cobbler]

Obama for sure. Romney's campaign as a whole has been very mediocre.

[Mister Twister]

Obama. He didn't have unforced errors.

His awful first debate performance was kind of an unforced error

[pepper11]

Voted Romney because I am voting for him, but both candidates ran very effective campaigns. No major errors on either side. Both with good ground game, good ads, staying on message. Obama has better surrogates (except Cutter), but other than that it's even.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Obama's had the better campaign.  Romney got into a bad habit in the primaries.  If he ran into a problem, he throwed a bunch of money at it and buried the problem with ads.  Thing is, even if he'd been able to outspend Obama by the kinds of margins he achieved in the primaries, it wouldn't have had the same effect.  Not only is there the law of diminishing returns, but most people didn't have a firm idea of what they thought of the primary candidates before the primary circus reached their state, whereas, people have had four years to decide what they thought of Obama.  Romney's ads were never going to be able to change that much.

[You kip if you want to...]

Obama. To say Romney's been anything but a train wreck is, quite frankly, insane.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc0QFc9qaGw

[Cryptic]

Obama hands down.  The only thing Romney got right was his performance in the first debate.

[SnapPoll]

I'd have to say Romney has run a better campaign (but doesn't mean he'll win the election). Obama spent a lot of time, effort, and money and trying to paint his opponent as a greedy, out of touch, "I don't care about anyone but me" monster. Romney crushed that perception in the first debate. That's a lot of time and money wasted on Obama's part.

Also, the fact that Obama is now forced to go visit and defend Iowa, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, etc... is another indication that his campaign has missed the mark.

Both candidates have made some missteps, day to day errors, wrong comments etc... That's pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.

The strategy of trying to stereotype and painting Romney a certain way was a major strategy that apparently that failed. The election now has come down to who has a better ground game.

[Umengus]

Obama and not a little.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Wow, a question on which democrats and republicans do agree.

[milhouse24]

Romney is at least tied or ahead in most polls.  The mainstream media is against him and he has battled some of the more conservative factions of the party. 

There are some that believe should be way ahead of Obama given the economic circumstances.  I'm not sure if any other candidates would have been able to fight Obama to a tie or win. 

September could have gone better for Romney, but he's peaking in October when it matters. 

Romney is doing enough to win a close race.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Whoever wins.[/thread]

[Chaddyr23]

Obama. Romney should be running away with this thing!

[Beet]

IMO, any positive effect for Obama from running a better campaign was cancelled out by his bad performance during the first debate. Obama should be winning clearly, when he came into office all the indicators were pointed in the wrong direction and now they are almost all pointed in the right direction. I understand the campaign's reluctance to press this too hard due to the continued economic suffering out there, but it seems he also personally didn't enjoy talking about economic issues during the debates and that did hurt him (in comparison, he went on a passionate, unprompted rant about education during both of the final two debates). Also I believe the campaign's reluctance to talk about his future plans hurt him during early to mid October, although he has corrected that somewhat.