Shuster's Notebook: The battle for Ohio

By David Shuster / current.com / @DavidShuster

As the presidential race heads into the final three weeks, the Obama and Romney campaigns are now in agreement over one thing: Whoever wins Ohio is almost certainly going to win this election.

The Romney campaign has just doubled down on its advertising, resources and candidate visits to the Buckeye State. Likewise, the Obama campaign is flooding the Ohio airwaves with advertisements and preparing an unprecedented get out the vote operation.

Watch Dennis Kucinich explain the potent power of Ohio

No Republican has ever won a presidential election without also winning Ohio. And as if that isn't daunting enough for Romney, it's hard to see how the Republican gets the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency unless he also captures Virginia and Florida.

Top Romney supporters see that, as well. This weekend, Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman said, “There’s a way to do it by winning other swing states and still not winning all three but it makes just the math harder."

Indeed, if you count the electoral votes of states clearly favoring one candidate or the other, and examine the remaining battleground of "toss-up" states, the map looks frightening to Republicans and would essentially require Romney to "run the table."

Without Ohio, Romney could only reach 270 by capturing North Carolina, Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Virginia, New Hampshire and Florida. And while Romney now has a slight 1 point edge in Florida, the GOP candidate is behind by three points in Iowa.

Romney is down 2 points in Nevada.

Virginia is dead even. New Hampshire is even. Colorado is even.

Again, Romney has to win each of those states to make up for a loss in Ohio. Winning Ohio, though, is going to be a steep climb for Romney, even if he spends every day and night in the Ohio State football stadium and morphs into Woody Hayes. Ohio's economy is better than most of the nation; unemployment is lower; and most Ohio voters credit the auto bailout that President Obama supported and Mitt Romney opposed.

Furthermore, President Obama is getting a boost from the strong senate campaign of incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown. Brown, a progressive all-star, has been hammering the Republican brand every day for months. Furthermore, Brown is crushing his conservative opponent and inflicting some collateral damage on Romney.

Anything can happen in three weeks. Plus, the Ohio poll numbers have gone from plus-8 for Obama a few weeks ago to plus-4 now, following the president's dreadful first debate.

Still, Dems looking at the electoral map are a lot more confident right now than Republicans. An Obama victory in Ohio would practically guarantee his re-election. And the Romney campaign knows it.