Presidential races

Mitt Romney's final internal polls in a number of swing states found him in a much stronger position than the Election Day reality.

The poll results, obtained by The New Republic, had Romney leading in Colorado and New Hampshire, and tied in Iowa, all states he lost by more than 5 percentage points. They also showed him closer in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Pennsylvania than the actual results.

"I'm not sure what the answer is," Romney pollster Neil Newhouse told TNR when asked why those numbers were so far off, arguing that his polls were closer to the final results in the other swing states.  "The only ones we had that really seemed to be off were Colorado — a state that even [President] Obama's people tweeted they thought it was going to be one of their closest states — and the New Hampshire numbers, which seemed to bounce a lot during the campaign."

The poll numbers offer more concrete evidence that Romney's campaign truly believed the candidate was in a much better position heading into Election Day than he was, partly because of Republican pollsters' underestimating minority and youth turnout in a number of states.

Obama's superior ground game also may have undercut these numbers by skewing the final results a few points toward him.

Two former top Florida Republicans say a new law that shortened the early voting period in the state was designed by the GOP to suppress the Democratic vote, not to curb voter fraud, according to a report Monday from the Palm Beach Post.

His favorability has soared post-Sandy, but many conservative Republicans see his embrace of President Obama as a betrayal.

A report cites friends who say the former governor is "weighing financial and family considerations" for a future run.

"Branstad certainly won't be the person determining if there's a straw poll," Iowa GOP Chairman A.J. Spiker told The Hill.

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Dean Chambers, the man behind the “Unskewed Polls” website, has a launched a new website declaring the election was stolen by Democrats.

The decade-old Election Assistance Commission has been inoperative for nearly a year.

President Obama had his best run of media coverage during the final week of the campaign, while positive coverage of Mitt Romney dwindled, according to a study released Monday from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The senator said he is not formally announcing his candidacy but thinks his brand of libertarianism could help the GOP.

He said they can't have Hispanic voters thinking we "want to deport their grandmother."