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By Steve Deace

75 Days

75 days from today Americans will go to the polls in the 2012 election. Today’s morning briefing is devoted to analysis of where things stand as the party conventions loom.

NBC News chief political analyst Chuck Todd is out with his first in-depth look at the battleground states in this year’s presidential election since Paul Ryan was added to the Republican ticket. Like most of his fellow pundits, Todd sees very few toss-up states. In fact, he believes there are only nine of them, and he ranks in order from most likely to least likely the ones Romney has the best chance to win this fall.

The only real “poll” I follow on a daily basis is on Intrade, where some of the best futures speculators in the world engage in para-mutual wagering on events still to come. Just as nobody knows football games like the oddsmakers in Las Vegas, the Intrade crowd knows world events. 75 days out the speculators on Intrade give Mitt Romney a 42.1% of winning the election this fall.

If you go by today’s Intrade odds, Romney will win the following states 75 days from now: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

That’s a total of 235 Electoral College votes Intrade is currently projecting for Romney, which would mean President Obama would be re-elected with 303 Electoral College votes (it takes 270 to win).

However, there is some good news for Republicans. The GOP is at 82.6% to retain control of the House of Representatives, and has a 53% chance of capturing control of the U.S. Senate. By the way, in case you were wondering, Todd Akin in Missouri has dropped from 53% likely to win that Senate seat to 41.3% this week with all the controversy surrounding him.

Conclusion: Intrade currently believes the most likely outcome of the 2012 election is Republicans controlling both houses of Congress with a Democrat remaining in the White House.

We’ll check back with Intrade on September 18th, which will be 50 days from the presidential election, to see if there’s been any movement in those numbers.

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