it's been an outlier relative to the other battleground states all along. and they think that's not a statistical anomaly. they think the romney campaign can talk about the history of ohio, but that things are different in ohio now. for the reasons i just said and the overall economic performance of the state. they feel really confident about the fact that they are -- that they have a decisive lead in ohio and that in the end, that that gives them a massive advantage going forward. >> andrea mitchell, three weeks out, team obama seems to have a four to five-point lead in ohio. the dispatch poll before the last debate had a nine-point lead. team romney, though, still thinks they've got a really good shot of winning that state. it is safe to say this year in 2012, as your dear friend tim russert would say, this year it is ohio, ohio, ohio. if mitt romney wins ohio, i think he wins the election. if he loses ohio, it's an outside shot, at best. >> i agree entirely because he's