In the latest Curmudgeon’s Corner Sam and Ivan talk about:
Recorded on 14 Oct 2012 Length this week – 56:18 |
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Two states move today, one toward Obama, one toward Romney. As usual, in order of Electoral College strength:
In the last three months Nevada has usually been “Leaning Obama”, meaning Obama has the advantage, but not by very much. In September Obama’s lead headed higher for a little bit, then dove again after the debates. Now it heads up again, with Obama’s lead in the five poll average now at 5.2%. Given this, Nevada now is classified as “Weak Obama” meaning it would take a pretty significant move for Romney to take the lead and win the state. So Nevada is no longer included in Romney’s “best case” scenario.
Pennsylvania is a bit odd. Three days ago Obama’s lead topped 5% in the five poll average. But today we add a new poll that arrived out of order. It was still in the five most recent polls by the last day of polling, so it counted as a “recent poll” for us, but it was also the first poll since February showing Romney ahead in Pennsylvania, and showing him ahead by a relatively substantial 4% at that. This is way out of line with other recent polling in the state, so certainly LOOKS like an outlier. Especially since by the time it was released there were already polls taken after it that did not show that kind of movement. But I don’t do any outlier removal here. I just let the five poll average do what the five poll average does. For the moment, this means that Obama’s lead in Pennsylvania is now down 2.8%, with the peak above 5% erased. Because this was still a “current poll” I do not retroactively adjust the overall historical trend however. This potential outlier is now the 5th oldest poll I have in Pennsylvania, so it will age out with the very next Pennsylvania poll. Pennsylvania may or may not pop back to “Weak Obama” at that point depending on the results of that next poll. So this puts Pennsylvania back in play, with the possibility of Romney winning the state now back in his best case scenario. Which brings us to the updated summary:
We still have a close race. Obama is ahead, but Romney only needs to pull 21 more electoral votes over to his side to win. Right now the easiest way to get there is to hold North Carolina (15 ev, 3.8% Romney lead), Virginia (13 ev, 2.6% Romney lead), Florida (29 ev, 0.4% Romney lead) and then to pull ahead and take New Hampshire (4 ev, 0.5% Obama lead) and Ohio (18 ev, 2.8% Obama lead). There are many other combinations that will do it too. That just looks like the easiest to me at the moment. Note: Chart and map from the Abulsme.com 2012 Electoral College Prediction page. Both assume Obama vs Romney with no strong third party candidate and 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.
Only one change today, Montana moving toward Romney:
So, although there was some speculation about Obama contesting Montana in 2008… and he did end up making it close, losing the state by only 2.3%… this time around nobody has been talking about Obama trying to win Montana. Although there was one individual poll in April showing Obama only behind by 2%, the five poll average has never shown Obama closer than 6% behind Romney. For most of the year Montana has been in the “Weak Romney” category, meaning Romney is relatively safe, but if something major happened… perhaps a mirror image of the Obama decline after the first debate… then the state might become competitive. Instead, we see Romney’s lead on an increasing trend over the past few months, and with today’s update, Romney’s lead is now at 10.7% over Obama. So Montana moves to “Strong Romney”… essentially meaning that even if Romney completely implodes, he’d probably still win Montana. Since Montana isn’t even close to the competitive zone, this does not affect our models:
The race remains close. Obama is ahead. Obama has always been ahead. Romney still has NEVER taken the lead in my model. But if Romney wins all the states he is ahead in, he is only 21 electoral votes short of a 269-269 tie. He can get those 21 electoral votes in a variety of ways. Assuming Romney holds his current leads in Florida (29 ev, 0.4% lead), North Carolina (15 ev, 2.8% lead) and Virginia (13 ev, 4.0% lead), probably the easiest way to a victory right now is to win Ohio (18 ev) where he is only behind by 2.8% in the five poll average today, and then win any one of New Hamphire (4 ev, behind by 0.6%), Colorado (9 ev, behind by 1.3%) or Iowa (6 ev, behind by 2.5%). Of course, if he is winning Ohio, he will probably be close in Wisconsin (10 ev, 2.8% behind) and Nevada (6 ev, 3.9% behind) as well, and either of them would do the trick too. As of my sweep of polls a few hours ago, we only had TWO state level polls that finished after the second presidential debate. One in North Carolina and one in Ohio. The North Carolina one slightly improved Romney’s position but not enough to recategorize North Carolina, while the Ohio one had no affect on the five poll average at all, as it matched the margin of the poll it replaced in the average. Bottom line, no where near enough data to judge the effects of the second debate. Maybe in the next few days. Note: Chart and map from the Abulsme.com 2012 Electoral College Prediction page. Both assume Obama vs Romney with no strong third party candidate and 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.
Three states move between my categories today. One moves toward Romney, two move toward Obama. That sounds like a mixed day, but on balance the benefit goes to Obama. As usual, lets look at the states in order by electoral college weight, but now I’ll zoom in to only show 3 months of polls rather than a year since we are getting close to the end (under three weeks!) and polls are coming in so quickly…
First up, Colorado. According to the five poll average, the state went from an Obama lead of 4.9% on September 23rd, down to a Romney lead of 1.3% on October 8th. With today’s update, Obama takes a very slim 0.5% lead again. This is essentially a tie, but with this the state tips ever so slightly back onto the Obama side of the ledger.
Georgia is Romney’s one piece of good news for the day, but there are a bunch of caveats. Romney’s lead in Georgia hits 10%, so we move it to the “Strong Romney” category. But this is largely due to one poll from September that looks like an outlier, so absent other movement backing up that poll, Georgia is likely to revert back to “Weak Romney” once that poll ages off. If we even have enough more polls in Georgia before the election to do that. It has been pretty sparsely polled. More to the point though, it doesn’t really matter if Romney’s lead in Georgia is just under 10% or just over 10%. Either way, Georgia is a Romney state, and there is no realistic scenario where Obama wins Georgia. Georgia is safe for Romney. So while winning by a bit larger margin may be “nice” for Romney, it doesn’t actually help him at all in the contest with Obama.
Obama’s lead in Michigan topped out at 9.7% on September 20th. It declined to a 4.0% lead on October 8th. It has now popped back up to 6.1%. It seems that the post-debate movement toward Romney was relatively short lived. In the last three months the degree of Obama’s lead in Michigan has bounced around quite a bit. It has however always been a lead. A few isolated polls aside, Romney has never held the lead in the five poll average in Michigan. For awhile there it looked like Michigan was close. Not so much any more. All of this leads us to the new summary:
Since Georgia doesn’t affect any of these three situations, what we see here is basically just Obama strengthening again. Some of the gains Romney had made in the last couple of weeks are just slipping back away from him. Yesterday Obama’s lead in Pennsylvania once again became substantial enough to not call it a close state. Today the same happens to Michigan. And Obama retakes the lead in Colorado. It certainly looks like Romney peaked between August 12th and August 15th and things are now heading back in Obama’s direction, without Romney ever actually taking the lead in the electoral college model. If initial reactions to the second debate are any indication, at the very least we should expect no further downward plummeting by Obama, and perhaps even more additional upside for Obama beyond that. Caution needs to be urged in interpreting this though. Only a small number of states have moved so far, and just barely over the respective category lines. More polls could easily reverse the recent changes. If these initial trends continue over the next few days though, we’ll get a very solid picture. None of the polls included so far include the time period after the second debate. That will of course be the next thing to watch for. Will there be big noticeable effects from the second debate as there were after the first one? Of course to win, Romney needs to do more than just hold on to his previous gains. He actually needs to bring even more states over to his side in order to win. If he couldnt’ do it last week, then what exactly can he do now to make it happen? At the moment Obama’s lead is still very narrow. Romney has many potential ways to win. It is still a close race. But the movement seems to be shifting toward Obama again. Note: Chart and map from the Abulsme.com 2012 Electoral College Prediction page. Both assume Obama vs Romney with no strong third party candidate and 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.
After a few days with no changes, one state changes categories today and hey, for the first time in awhile, the movement is toward Obama:
Obama’s lead in Pennsylvania in my five poll average peaked at 9.4% back in mid-September. On the eve of the first debate, this was down to 8.6%. By October 11th, that lead had dropped to 3.8%. Romney actually made Pennsylvania close… but since then the polls have started looking better for Obama again, and the five poll average rises back up to a 5.4% Obama lead. This pulls the state back out of my swing state category and into the “Weak Obama” category, but just barely. Note that even in the dip, not a single poll showed Romney ahead in Pennsylvania. The last time any poll showed Romney ahead in Pennsylvania was way back in February. Although Obama’s lead dipped in Pennsylvania in the post-debate period, a Romney win here seems pretty unlikely if this is indeed the end of the downward post-debate trend. There are too few polls as of yet to know if this is an actual reversal of the recent trend, or if it is just the polls being jittery. For the moment though, the five poll average pulls the state out of Romney’s best case:
Romney’s best case is 20 electoral points weaker, but his overall position is still way better than it has been for most of the year. Obama is still ahead. Romney has still never actually pulled ahead in the electoral college analysis. But it is close. It is still very close. The question remains what it has been for at least the last few days… Has Romney peaked? Or can he pull a little more support in his direction? Right now Romney is behind, but barely. Just a LITTLE more movement in his direction would have him in the lead. But the first debate had already caused a very large movement compared to where the race stood for most of the year. Is there really room for more movement? Or has Romney hit a ceiling? The move toward Obama in Pennsylvania may well be the start of a more general reversion in the polls to something more like the Obama leads we’ve seen most of the year. Or it might not. Too soon to tell. But with the second presidential debate in less than 16 hours, whatever trends may have been underway up through today will get replaced by reactions to the new news cycle. If Obama puts in another sub-par performance, maybe he drops further and Romney takes the lead. If so, Obama is in real trouble. Otherwise, with an “OK”, “Good” or “Great” performance from Obama, we’ll probably start to see some more Obama gains in the polls as those who moved away from him in the last two weeks think to themselves “OK, maybe he’s not that bad after all.” In that case, Obama retains his position as favorite, and maybe even starts making it look inevitable again if he does really well. So… debates almost never make a difference, except when they do… and this next debate is another critical one. So we’ll see what happens… Note: A poll added today in North Carolina that were older than the “last five” changed the date North Carolina last moved from Lean Obama to Lean Romney from October 4th to October 8th. The historical trend chart has been adjusted starting with today’s update. Note: Chart and map from the Abulsme.com 2012 Electoral College Prediction page. Both assume Obama vs Romney with no strong third party candidate and 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.
A boy and his dog, taken Sep 2nd 2012. |
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