An Associated Press analysis concludes that if the presidential election were today, President Obama would likely win 247 electoral votes to Romney’s 206 — both short of the 270 electoral votes needed to win.

Seven states, offering a combined 85 electoral votes, are viewed as too close to give either candidate a meaningful advantage: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio and Virginia.

Billionaire investor Joe Ricketts, who dropped plans for a $10 million advertising blitz linking President Obama with the fiery race-based rhetoric of the Rev. Jeremia Wright, “is involved in another effort slated for this summer, a documentary film based on a widely criticized book, The Roots of Obama’s Rage by Dinesh D’Souza, which asserts that Mr. Obama is carrying out the ‘anticolonial’ agenda of his Kenyan father,” the New York Times reports.

“Mr. Ricketts’s aides said he was one of roughly two dozen investors, providing only 5 percent of the film’s budget. But his involvement shows how the more strident attacks against Mr. Obama, which Mr. Romney’s aides view as counterproductive, continue to find backing even as the Republican Party and the Romney campaign seek to keep the focus on the economy.”

A new Rasmussen survey in Indiana shows Joe Donnelly (D) and Richard Mourdock (R) locked in a dead heat in their U.S. Senate race, 42% to 42%.

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) said that he “may not have turned in enough valid signatures to qualify for the Aug. 7 Republican primary in his suburban Detroit district,” the Detroit News reports.

Said McCotter: “Fully respecting the accuracy and integrity of the Secretary of State’s Office, we will thoroughly review our petition signatures for their sufficiency or insufficiency. Out of respect for Memorial Day, an announcement of our findings will be made public on Tuesday.”

“If his signatures are ruled insufficient, McCotter would still have options. He could run as a write-in Republican candidate or as an independent.”

A new Wisconsin poll commissioned by the Democratic Governors Association finds Gov. Scott Walker (R) with a narrow lead over challenger Tom Barrett (D) in the recall election, 49% to 46%.

Donald Trump told Lloyd Grove that President Obama was born in Kenya, not the United States.

Said Trump: “That’s the way life works… He didn’t know he was running for president, so he told the truth. The literary agent wrote down what he said… He said he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia… Now they’re saying it was a mistake. Just like his Kenyan grandmother said he was born in Kenya, and she pointed down the road to the hospital, and after people started screaming at her she said, ‘Oh, I mean Hawaii.’ Give me a break.”

President Obama, not Mitt Romney, “is the one with the muddled message — and the one who often comes across as baldly political,” Politico reports. 

“Obama, not Romney, is the one facing blowback from his own party on the central issue of the campaign so far – Romney’s history with Bain Capital. And most remarkably, Obama, not Romney, is the one falling behind in fundraising.”

However, First Read points out there is “one big exception to this: Donald Trump. Yesterday, we found out that Romney will attend a fundraiser in Las Vegas on Tuesday with Trump, and the campaign is also pushing a “Dine with Donald Trump and Mitt Romney” competition. This now makes Trump an unmistakable surrogate for the Romney campaign, especially considering his other assistance to Romney (his endorsement, attendance at other fundraisers). And as we’ve seen in the past, candidates are often forced to own what their surrogates say.”

“Mitt Romney did what he had to do in order to become the nominee.”

— Newt Gingrich, in an interview on MSNBC.

Ron Brownstein: “The new round of national and state surveys this week generally showing President Obama clinging to a tenuous advantage over Republican Mitt Romney reinforce the conclusion that socially liberal, upscale white women may stand as the president’s indispensable line of defense in his struggle for reelection.”

“Both the national ABC/Washington Post survey released earlier this week, and the NBC/Marist Polls released Thursday in the battleground states of Ohio, Virginia and Florida show Obama retaining preponderant support among minority voters who were critical to his 2008 victory. Conversely, in almost all of the surveys, Obama faces a consistent pattern of erosion from his already meager 2008 levels of support among whites without a college education.”