Electoral College: New Hampshire Swings!

Chart and map from the Abulsme.com 2012 Electoral College Prediction page. Both assume Obama vs Romney with no strong third party candidate. Both show polling as it currently exists. Things 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.

One state moves today, and once again it is a move in Romney’s direction:

New Hampshire gets a flurry of polls at the end of June and it becomes clear that the race has gotten a lot closer since the last round of polling in May. Obama’s lead in the five poll average drops under 5% to 3.4%, so I once again classify New Hampshire as too close to call, which means I now include the possibility of winning New Hampshire in Romney’s best case:

As we near the end of June, we see that it has been a very good month for Romney in this analysis.

A month ago on May 29th, Romney’s best case was to tie (269 to 269). His best case is now to win by 84 electoral votes (311 to 227). Slowly but surely, he has been moving “Weak Obama” states where Obama had a lead over 5%, into the zone where those states are close enough to be within reach. Michigan (16), Virginia (13), Colorado (9), and New Hampshire (4) all made this move in the last month.

He has also made some movement in reducing Obama’s best case by increasing his lead in Arizona (11). On May 29th Obama’s best case was to win by 220 electoral votes (379 to 159). Now it is to win by only 198 electoral votes (368 to 170).

So Romney is doing what he needs to be doing, getting more states into play, giving himself many more “paths to victory” and thus a lot more flexibility into how to attack the electoral college.

It is worth noting though that our third line, the one representing what happens if everybody wins every state where they are even slightly ahead in the polls, has not moved at all in the last month! A month ago it showed Obama winning 332 to 206, and it shows the same thing today. So while Romney has been reducing Obama’s lead in a variety of states, he hasn’t yet started moving states “over the line” toward him.

Perhaps in July.