Electoral College: Florida back to Swinging, Ohio goes Blue – Romney can win again!

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. 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. On the map Red is Romney, Blue is Obama, Gold States are too close to call.

Two changes today based on new polls added to my master spreadsheet. And they both change the inventory of swing states, so important changes at that! Here are the details:

Florida (29 electoral votes): Just two days ago the five poll average moved Obama’s lead in Florida to over 5% (5.2%) and thus moved the state out of swing state status and into the “Weak Obama” category. Well, that didn’t last very long. Today’s update puts Obama’s 5-poll lead at 4.0%, so the state goes back into the “Lean Obama” category and is once again classified as a swing state for our model. Florida is big at 29 electoral votes, so makes a big difference in the electoral math.

Ohio (18 electoral votes): Meanwhile, Obama’s lead in Ohio goes above 5% to 5.2% in the five poll average. This removes Ohio from the swing state pool and moves it into the “Weak Obama” group. This means Obama has a decent lead at the moment, but not so big that it wouldn’t be worth Romney’s time to try to attack that lead and pull Ohio back to being a close contest. Ohio is one of those states that everyone expects to be close, so don’t be surprised if, like Florida, Ohio doesn’t stay in this status too long.

All and all since Florida is “worth more” than Ohio, today’s moves are good for Romney. And in fact, this once again makes it so if Romney wins all the swing states, he wins the election…

While some states have moved in both directions, if we look at all the changes in April so far, Obama is still in a better position than he was at the beginning of the month. We still haven’t had enough state polls to detect the recent move in Romney’s direction over the last week and a half. If Romney hold his position in the national polls, expect more states to move in Romney’s direction over the next few weeks.