Electoral College: Colorado Goes Blue – Romney’s Best Case Now A TIE!

Map and chart from the Abulsme.com 2012 Electoral College Prediction page. Both assume Obama vs Romney with no third party strong enough to win states. Both show the polling situation as it currently exists. Things can and will change before election day. On the map Red is Romney, Blue is Obama, Gold States are too close to call. Lines on the chart represent how many more electoral votes a candidate would have than is needed to tie under several different scenarios. Up is good for Obama, Down is good for Romney.

Just yesterday I was mentioning that at some point things have to stop getting worse for Romney. Yesterday was not that day. Neither is today. Today my poll average for Colorado sees Obama’s lead increase to over 5%. So I color the state light blue and take it out of swing state status.

So, if we give Romney every single one of the remaining swing states… we end up with a 269 to 269 electoral vote tie. In all fairness, ties go to the House and almost certainly that would lead to a Romney win. So Romney can still pull out that very messy win.

But this means that with current polling Romney would not be able to manage a direct win in the electoral college, even in the most favorable disposition of the swing states. That is a remarkably bad position to be in, even this early.

The overall summary looks like this:

Given that, lets compare to four years ago…

On April 11th 2008 if each candidate won every state where they were ahead, McCain would have beaten Obama 283 to 255. He would have won by 28 electoral votes. That is a tight victory in electoral college terms but it is a victory.

Meanwhile, today, if each candidate won every states where they are ahead, Obama would beat Romney 328 to 210. That is a 118 electoral vote margin.

Romney is in a much worse position now than McCain was in four years ago. Of course McCain ended up losing by a pretty substantial margin. So should we all just go home? Obama is going to win, so why bother even having a campaign? No. Not hardly. If we were seeing these numbers in October… then maybe, like I did on October 3rd 2008 when McCain’s best case got this bad, I’d say exactly that. But it is not October. It is April.

Despite McCain’s small lead at this time four years ago the actual election ended up being Obama 365 McCain 173… a 192 electoral vote margin for Obama. So big swings can happen. In 2008 between April 11th and election day 110 electoral votes moved in Obama’s direction. If Romney’s campaign manages to move a similar 110 electoral votes his way… he would win easily.

So even though Obama is way ahead based on today’s polling, the battle has just barely begun. There is a lot more to come.

As our recently departed Senator Santorum would say, “Game On!”