Abulsme.com: 2012 Electoral College

Electoral College: The Penultimate Update

Today was by far the biggest update I’ve ever done. New polls in 31 states plus the Maine congressional districts. Absolutely exhausting checking all my sources and entering in all the data today. After all that though, the result is three states changing status, with none of those status changes making a big difference in the race. Time for a quick look before we get to the meatier stuff:

On Saturday Romney’s lead in the South Dakota five poll average dropped below 10%. With today’s update is is once again slightly more than 10%. Romney’s going to win South Dakota. (Graph shows a year since polling has been so sparse here.)

Some story in Missouri. Just yesterday Romney’s lead in the five poll average dipped below 10%. Today it is above 10% again. Romney will win Missouri.

Finally Florida. While the other two don’t really matter much to the state of the race because Romney is clearly going to win both, Florida isn’t all that significant right now because the fact that Florida has once again bounced across the line, and now has Romney narrowly ahead, does not actually give any additional insight into the state of the race in Florida. Florida has been bouncing back and forth close to the line. Small fluctuations up and down are just sampling noise. The best we can say about Florida is that it is tied, and there is no indication that the state is breaking one way or another. As I’ve said several times before, we’ll know which way Florida goes once all the votes are counted. We may not even know on election night depending how it goes.

So, the current state of the race with just about a day to go before the polls start closing:

	Romney	Obama
Romney Best Case	338	200
Current Status	235	303
Obama Best Case	190	348

So goodbye to 332-206 for the moment, and perhaps for good. There isn’t that much time left after all.

Fundamentally, we have no significant change to the race today in terms of the three main lines in my summary. Obama is still heavily favored, but Romney can still win if he manages to defy expectation and win in a bunch of the close states.

So, here we go again, looking at those close states.

With just the states he is ahead in by more than 5%, Romney starts at 190 electoral votes. Then if we go in order…

Nebraska 2nd (1): Romney ahead by 3.8%
North Carolina (15): Romney ahead by 1.4%
Florida (29): Romney ahead by 0.4%

That is all the states (and CDs) Romney is actually ahead in based on my five poll average. That gets him to 235 electoral votes. 34 electoral votes short. If you continue to bring the states in order of Romney’s support level…

Colorado (9): Obama ahead by 1.2%
Virginia (13): Obama ahead by 1.6%
Iowa (6): Obama ahead by 2.0%
New Hampshire (4): Obama ahead by 2.8%
Maine 2nd (1): Obama ahead by 2.8%
Ohio (18): Obama ahead by 3.1%

Ohio is once again the tipping state. If Romney pulled all of these in, he would have 286 electoral votes and therefore win the presidency. Now, if Romney does indeed win Ohio, he could then afford to actually lose Iowa, New Hampshire and Maine’s 2nd.

This leaves Romney’s current “easiest path to victory” to be holding on to the three states he is ahead in, and then pulling ahead and winning in Colorado, Virginia and Ohio.

There are other paths involving the remaining close states, which are:

Pennsylvania (20): Obama ahead by 4.2%
Wisconsin (10): Obama ahead by 4.3%
Michigan (16): Obama ahead by 4.5%
Nevada (6): Obama ahead by 4.8%

There are certainly ways some of those states could be part of a path to 270 (or 269) for Romney, but since Obama is even further ahead in those states, that kind of movement seems even more unlikely.

So looking at the tipping point margin graph:

The race has been stable for the last week.

Romney is out of time. If there was going to be a last minute move toward Romney in the swing states, it needed to have been happening over the last few days. There is nothing. States appear to be jiggling around a bit due to the sheer volume of polling that is happening right now, but there is no real indication of any movement that makes any sort of difference to this race.

The best bet for the Romney team remains that all the polls are just systematically wrong, and the reality is that a lot of the states I listed above are actually at least 3% better for Romney than they look from the polling. There HAVE been presidential election years where the state polls were off by that much. So this is not impossible….

…just pretty unlikely.

Absent a miracle for the Romney folks, this looks like Obama getting reelected.

Before I close for the day, just a quick note.

The plans for abulsme.com for the next 48 hours had been one final update to these polling charts before the polls start to close less than 24 hours from now. After that I was planning to do what I did in 2008, which was updates to the website every 15 minutes or so as states get called one way or the other by the major networks. The networks usually only call the election itself when one candidate actually gets to 270 electoral votes, but really, you will probably know well in advance of that, as one can already assume how many states will go. You do not have to wait for the polls to close in California to know that Obama will win California for instance.

The plan above may still happen, but life may get in the way. I just got word within the last two hours that my mother-in-law is getting released to go home after having had major surgery a couple of weeks ago… which is great, because it means she is doing well, but my wife needs to be there when she gets discharged, and to help her during the first week or two home. So my wife may need to be flying out of here, possibly as soon as tomorrow. Is she does, depending on exact schedules, I may not be able to do “election night coverage” after all as I’ll be needing to deal with things at home. If so, I might post the occasional comment on twitter, but won’t be furiously updating graphs all night long.

I should know better about what my plans will be by the time I post my final update tomorrow. Thanks for you patience!

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

Electoral College: A bunch of states get closer, but not the right ones for Romney

As election day approaches, the number of polls coming in each day has increased dramatically, and that means some states will be jiggling just from the higher volume of polling, although some of it may represent actual movement too.

Today according to the five poll average, five states change categories today, and they all move toward the center, toward being more competitive. But when we look at them, it turns out none of these (with one possible exception) look like they will be in a position to make any difference in this race. Let’s take a look at each of them anyway:

Missouri had been trending further toward Romney, but the last poll looks like Obama may be gaining a bit of support there. It doesn’t matter though, Romney is going to win Missouri.

Wisconsin had bounced up to over a 5% Obama lead. It now falls below that level to a 4.5% Obama lead. This is close enough that I once again classify Wisconsin as “Lean Obama” and therefore a state that Romney could win. But of all the close states, this is the one with the second largest Obama lead. There are many closer states that are better Romney targets as he tries to claw his way to 270.

Ever since Thursday I have been mentioning the big ugly outlier in Virginia. Well, today it finally rolls off the five poll average. With this the average drops to a 3.6% Obama lead. Virginia would never have left the “close state” category without the outlier, but even without the outlier, Obama has been making gains in Virginia. A week ago all the polling indicated a tied race in Virginia. No longer. It is still close, but now Obama has a clear lead.

Of the states changing status today, Virginia is currently the closest, and it is also the only one with a history of actually being very close. At the moment, Virginia isn’t close enough compared to the other close states to actually be part of Romney’s “easiest path to victory” which I’ll cover later in the post, but given the history of polling in the state, it could easily get closer again before we are done, so it still has a chance of making a difference in the race if Romney can win it.

This state is “getting closer” only because the outlier is rolling off the average though. Without the outlier, the trend is actually toward Obama in Virginia. Virginia seems to be slipping away from Romney.

I am showing a chart since August to show a bit more context for Georgia. The five poll average moved to a greater than 10% lead for Romney due to what is a clear outlier in September. Polling has been sparse in Georgia, because it hasn’t been in contention this cycle, so that outlier only rolled off the average today. I now have Romney with a 7.5% lead in Georgia.

So this “gain” for Obama doesn’t matter. Romney will be winning in Georgia.

Michigan has been hovering right around the 5% Obama lead mark for the last month or so. Usually Obama’s lead is slightly more, with today’s update it is slightly less… 4.7%. This is due to one recent poll that actually shows Romney ahead in Michigan! This is out of line with all other recent polling, but as usual, I do not manually remove outliers, I let the averages do their thing. (Although I keep thinking that maybe in 2016 I should use a median, which is less sensitive to these things.)

Anyway, at 4.7%, Michigan has the biggest Obama lead of any of the current crop of “close states”. Like Wisconsin, this means that there are a lot of other states that would be easier for Romney to take the lead in that Michigan. If Romney actually pulls ahead in Michigan, this means it is very likely that he has already pulled ahead in all of the other close states… at which point he would not only have won, but be heading for a pretty comfortable victory.

So while it might be a bit closer than it was (maybe), Michigan is still quite unlikely to end up flipping to Romney, or to be one of the critical states in the last days.

This brings us to the new map and summary:

	Romney	Obama
Romney Best Case	338	200
Current Status	206	332
Obama Best Case	190	348

Romney’s best case now actually is the best it has been ALL YEAR LONG, exceeding his best case at the peak after the 1st presidential debate. In a sense, this does represent a Romney comeback in the last few days. He *is* making a bunch of states closer. He has taken a bunch of states where Obama had been ahead by more than 5%, and pulled them back so they are somewhat close. This may help him in the popular vote, but in the electoral college, it doesn’t look like he has moved any of these states ENOUGH. He may be making states closer, but he is NOT pulling them over the line to him.

Meanwhile, while Obama hasn’t been pulling ahead by more than 5% in more states, and he hasn’t managed to pull any more states to his side either, he actually has been increasing his lead in some of the most critical states.

Time to take a look in more detail by comparing the five poll average now to the five poll average 7 days ago:

Nebraska 2nd (1): 3.8% Romney lead a week ago, 3.8% Romney lead now (no change)
North Carolina (15): 2.4% Romney lead a week ago, 2.4% Romney lead now (no change)
Colorado (9): 2.8% Obama lead a week ago, 0.4% Obama lead now (2.4% move toward Romney)
Florida (29): 0.8% Romney lead a week ago, 1.1% Obama lead now (0.3% move toward Obama)
New Hampshire (4): 1.0% Obama lead a week ago, 2.6% Obama lead now (1.6% move toward Obama)
Ohio (18): 2.0% Obama lead a week ago, 3.4% Obama lead now (1.4% move toward Obama)
Iowa (6): 1.2% Obama lead a week ago, 3.4% Obama lead now (1.2% move toward Obama)
Virginia (13): 0.4% Obama lead a week ago, 3.6% Obama lead now (3.4% move toward Obama)
Pennsylvania (20): 4.6% Obama lead a week ago, 3.8% Obama lead now (0.8% move toward Romney)
Maine 2nd (1): 6.1% Obama lead a week ago, 4.2% Obama lead now (1.9% move toward Romney)
Nevada (6): 2.8% Obama lead a week ago, 4.2% Obama lead now (1.4% move toward Obama)
Wisconsin (10): 3.8% Obama lead a week ago, 4.5% Obama lead now (0.7% move toward Obama)
Michigan (16): 6.5% Obama lead a week ago, 4.7% Obama lead now (1.8% move toward Romney)

That is a lot of close states! But what can be seen here? Out of 13 close areas, only FOUR moved toward Romney in the last week. Colorado, Pennsylvania, Maine’s 2nd congressional district, and Michigan. Of these only Colorado is in Romney’s easiest path to victory. I listed the states above in order by the level of Romney support from highest to lowest.

That means the states he NEEDS to be improving in the most in order to win are Colorado, Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio and Iowa. Looks like Colorado is almost tied now, so I guess whatever Romney is doing there is working and is time well spent. But the rest of these critical states are moving the wrong direction for Romney.

There has been speculation that Romney is trying to do a “hail mary” of some sort, trying to actually win Pennsylvania and Michigan as an alternate path to victory. The states he is ahead in, plus Florida, Colorado, Pennsylvania and then Michigan is certainly another path to victory. But given Obama’s current leads in those states, going through New Hampshire, Ohio and Iowa certainly seems like an easier path than Pennsylvania and Michigan. Perhaps Romney’s internal polling shows Obama’s support is “softer” in these states though.

For the most part though, this looks like effort put into the wrong places, while Obama consolidates his leads in the states more likely to be the tipping point. And that is the cue for today’s tipping point graph:

The Virginia outlier is gone, so now the chart can be interpreted directly. (I’ve removed the little x’s showing what things would have looked like if I had manually removed the outlier.) Iowa is now the tipping point state, and Obama is ahead by 3.4% in Iowa. There was a dip in the past few days (which was slightly more without the Virginia outlier) but Obama’s popped up again. If Romney manages to move the polls in all the close states by at least 3.4%, he can win. But that is a tall order at this point. A very tall order.

As I type there are 48 hours and a few minutes left until the first polls start closing on election night. 3.4% is a huge move in such a short time. Something incredibly dramatic would have to happen to move opinion that much in the final moments.

Romney’s only real hope at this point is that all the polls are wrong.

Absent that, Obama wins a second term.

Electoral College: Maine 2nd in Play? Oh, and South Dakota.

Two category changes today. Frankly, neither are significantly impactful to the overall state of the race, but let’s take a look anyway.

I am showing a whole year on the chart since polling has been extremely parse in Maine’s 2nd congressional district. Like Nebraska, Maine gives two electoral votes to the statewide winner, then one each for winning each congressional district. Last weekend I talked about Nebraska’s 2nd dropping into “Lean Romney” territory. This weekend we have Maine’s 2nd dropping into “Lean Obama” territory.

ME-2 has been very sparsely polled. Prior to today, I was still using the 2008 general election results to “pre-fill” the five poll average. Obama won ME-2 by 11.3% in 2008, so that helped push his numbers upward. With that rolling off the five poll average, plus an October poll showing Romney ahead by 5%, the five poll average drops to 4.9% and so I reclassify ME-2 as “Lean Obama” and I now consider Romney to have a chance there.

4.9% seems pretty substantial though, so Obama is still pretty safe here, right? Well, maybe. Bottom line is that ME-2 now joins NE-2 to produce the two “closest” electoral votes without a substantial amount of polling. Sure, the five poll average gives Obama a 4.8% lead. But if you only take polls from the last month, it is a tie. Now, there is reason to be suspicious of that poll showing Romney ahead, but it is what it is and I include it. The reality though is that like Nebraska’s 2nd, Maine’s 2nd is just an area where we’re somewhat blind.

From the few polls we DO have, it seems the best we can say is that NE-2 is close, but still more likely to go for Romney, and ME-2 is close, but still more likely to go to Obama.

Showing a year of history here as well, since South Dakota is also sparsely polled. Unlike ME-2 and NE-2 though, which are closer than some states that are polled much more frequently than they are, South Dakota is sparsely polled because it isn’t even close to being in contention. With the latest poll Romney’s lead in the five poll margin drops to just under 10%. So I now classify it as “Weak Romney” instead of “Strong Romney”. But South Dakota is a long way from being in contention. Romney will win South Dakota.

With that, it is time for the new map and summary:

	Romney	Obama
Romney Best Case	299	239
Current Status	206	332
Obama Best Case	190	348

Romney’s best case is one electoral vote better than yesterday since I consider the possibility of him winning ME-2.

Basically though we’re exactly the same place that we have been. Obama ahead, but Romney can win if he steals a bunch of the states where Obama is ahead, but only by a small margin.

Looking at the tipping point margin again:

The outlier in Virginia I mentioned yesterday and the day before still hasn’t rolled off, but the other states have moved in such a way that it barely makes a difference now. At the moment the tipping point state is New Hampshire, where the margin is a 3.02% Obama lead. If you “fixed” the outlier in Virginia, the tipping point state would be Ohio, where Obama’s lead is now 3.0%. Pretty much the same.

So we remain where we have been. Unless the polls are all wrong and biased toward Obama, Romney has to make up about 3% in the key states in order to pull ahead and win this.

Three days left until the first polls close and we start getting actual election results.

Will anything change in the last three days? Probably not. But I suppose there is always that chance.

Electoral College: Three states move toward Obama, but two only sorta

Today’s update includes Wisconsin, Virginia and Florida all changing categories, all moving in Obama’s direction. But two of these three states need to have asterisks next to the status change, and one of them needs a big asterisk. So lets look at them:

We’re looking only at the last few weeks in these state trend charts now since the election is so close and there is so much polling. Of the three states moving today, Wisconsin looks the most like a real bonafide movement. There is a lot of spread in the polls, but this looks like a real trend toward Obama over the last few weeks. The five poll average goes over 5% today, to 6.3%, so I take it out of the “Lean Obama” category where I consider Romney winning the state to be possible.

Virginia is the state that requires the big huge asterisk. As I mentioned yesterday, there is a big ugly outlier point currently in Virginia. According to the process I defined months ago, it gets included. I won’t second guess that process to remove it based on my own judgement rather than any hard or fast rule which was determined BEFORE seeing the data. (I may change the inclusion rules in 2016 though.) In any case, I will however point out that it is a pretty unbelievable outlier.

Even without this outlier, there is movement in the last week toward Virginia. But with the outlier included in the five poll average, Obama’s lead in the state jumps to 5.6% today, changing the state’s category. Without the outlier, Obama’s lead has still increased, but only to 2.8%. At the current rate of polling in Virginia, the outlier should roll off the average before the election, quite possibly tomorrow.

But for the moment, I list Virginia as “Weak Obama” and take it out of Romney’s best case.

But I really don’t believe it.

Finally Florida. This one just gets the asterisk because we essentially just have Florida continuing to bounce around right near zero. If you eliminate the two most extreme polls in the last two weeks (one favoring each candidate) there does appear to be a bit of a trend toward Obama. But the state is still really close, and may continue to bounce back and forth before we are done.

So the new summary and map:

	Romney	Obama
Romney Best Case	298	240
Current Status	206	332
Obama Best Case	190	348

So once again the “current status” is 332 to 206. It seems like we may have seen that before.

As usual since the range between the best cases includes the possibility of both candidates winning, it is time to look at the margin in the tipping point state:

The outlier in Virginia effects this chart as well, so I’ve added red x’s that show where the line would have been if I had excluded that data point.

With or without the outlier, Obama’s lead in the tipping point state is a little less than it was previously. With the outlier included, the tipping point is now New Hampshire, where Obama is ahead by 3.4%. If you excluded the outlier, the decline is more pronounced, the tipping point would be Virginia, where Obama’s lead would be 2.8%.

The degree of the dip is within the size of the swings this metric has shown over the last few weeks though. It may be the start of a trend toward Romney, or it may just be noise in this way of measuring things. Only a few more days left to find out.

If you look at each of the swing areas, you can find movement in both directions. Just comparing my data from yesterday to my data from today, we have Ohio (18), North Carolina (15), Colorado (9) and Iowa (6) moving toward Romney while Florida (29), Virginia (13), Wisconsin (10), Nevada (6) and New Hampshire (4) all move toward Obama. Pennsylvania (20) and Nebraska-2 (1) didn’t change as there were no new polls in either today. Daily numbers are noisy. You need to look at the overall trend.

The net effect right now: Obama is still ahead, but the tipping point (with or without the Virginia outlier) is getting a little bit closer than it was.

All eyes have been on Ohio. Ohio has gotten closer than it was. Obama’s margin is down to 2.3%. But with Ohio closer, other states like New Hampshire, Nevada and Virginia become the tipping point, and Obama still has larger margins there.

Romney still needs to get a significant movement in his direction to win. Or just hope that all the state polls are wrong.

Obama remains a heavy favorite for the electoral college, but a Romney upset COULD happen. If you were going to bet on this race though, you clearly should be betting on Obama.

Betting against Obama means you think either that Romney can make up an approximately 3% deficit in the key states in a matter of days, or that the state level polls in the key states are all biased toward Obama by the same margin.

Romney’s lead in the national polls seems to be diminishing in the last few days though, with things looking more tied than anything else. So the possibility of an electoral college / popular vote split may be slipping away. Oh well, that would have been fun!

Electoral College: Florida Flips Again, Still Really Tied

So yesterday I said:

As I’ve cautioned before with Florida (and a couple other states), the state is close, the five poll average has bounced back and forth across the line repeatedly. The average today moves slightly to the Obama side of the line. But it could easily go back to the Romney side of the line tomorrow. There have been no moves that indicate Florida is moving definitively toward one candidate or the other. Absent such a move in the next few days, we’ll basically just need to wait for the actual vote count.

Florida did indeed flip back to just barely Romney in today’s update, and I’ll just let my quote from yesterday on that stand for today as well, with the names reversed.

For reference, the chart of polling in Florida shows the situation there quite clearly:

Updated map and summary:

	Romney	Obama
Romney Best Case	321	217
Current Status	235	303
Obama Best Case	190	348

Goodbye to 332-206 for now. Perhaps we will see you again soon.

And now to the “Tipping Point Margin”:

This looks like Obama continuing to increase his lead in the tipping point, while the tipping point moves to Virginia. But… I urge caution… this is due almost entirely to what looks like a clear outlier in the Virginia polls that showed Obama up by 17% in Virginia! 17%! That outlier pushed Obama to a 3.5% lead in Virginia. But that new poll is way out of line with every other poll in the state. A 17% Obama lead in Virginia is simply not believable. (This was a registered voter result rather than a likely voter result, but still…)

I don’t manually remove outliers, but if you did, then Obama’s lead in Virginia drops back to 0.5%, which is probably closer to reality. If you did this, the tipping point state would still be Nevada rather than Virginia, and the margin in Nevada is still 3.2%. So the chart above is showing a 3.5% lead in the tipping point state (actually 3.46% before rounding) rather than 3.2%. That last little gain is an illusion due to the outlier. The outlier will wash away soon enough, in the mean time, this isn’t really that big a difference given the noise in this metric.

Either way, the picture has stayed consistent for the last few weeks. Obama has a slight lead in the electoral college as predicted by current polling, and that lead seems to generally be getting more solid. But that lead is still by no means secure. A 3.5% (or 3.2%) lead in the tipping point state is much more solid than the 1.0% lead Obama had on October 10th.

But 3.5% is also not all that secure. A 3.5% lead could disappear in a day or two with a bad news cycle for Obama. That seems less likely as we get closer, but it is still quite clearly not impossible. And as Romney supporters have been particularly fond of pointing out lately, there is also the possibility of systematic error in the polling, even when you average across many pollsters. It has happened before (most recently in the 1996 Clinton/Dole race), and it will happen again. Maybe it will be this year.

If there are no major changes in the few remaining days before the election, we go into the election with Obama a heavy favorite, but with a Romney upset a long shot, but still within the realm of reasonable possibility… which is where we have been most of the last year.

Note: Eight hours or so between my daily poll sweep and the blog post today. Polls released during that time period will of course be included in tomorrow’s update.

Electoral College: Florida flips again, Obama continues to build lead in tipping point states

One state changes categories today. It is Florida.

As I’ve cautioned before with Florida (and a couple other states), the state is close, the five poll average has bounced back and forth across the line repeatedly. The average today moves slightly to the Obama side of the line. But it could easily go back to the Romney side of the line tomorrow. There have been no moves that indicate Florida is moving definitively toward one candidate or the other. Absent such a move in the next few days, we’ll basically just need to wait for the actual vote count.

So, new map and summary:

	Romney	Obama
Romney Best Case	321	217
Current Status	206	332
Obama Best Case	190	348

Hello old friend, it is nice to see you again! Once again we have a 332-206 Obama victory, which is where the “Current Status” line has been more often than anywhere else all year long. There have been moves above this, and moves below this, but so far, things have always come back here. I guess we’ll see if that holds through election day.

Once again though, lets dig deeper. Winning is possible for Romney here. But just how far away is he? Lets look again at the “Tipping Point Margin” chart I debuted yesterday:

What looked like a slight trend in Obama’s direction looks more significant today. With today’s update Obama’s lead in Ohio increased to 3.3%. This actually moved Ohio past Nevada, where Obama’s margin is now 3.2%. This makes Nevada the new “tipping point state”. Romney’s easiest path to victory is now holding on to all the areas he is ahead in, then erasing Obama’s advantage and taking the lead in Virginia (13 ev, 0.9% Obama lead), Florida (27 ev, 1.0% Obama lead), Iowa (6 ev, 1.2% Obama lead), Colorado (9 ev, 2.0% Obama lead), New Hampshire (4 ev, 2.2% Obama lead) and then Nevada (6 ev, 3.2% Obama lead).

Ohio may well return to the tipping point position tomorrow, but for now that is where we are.

The tipping point margin is a metric that looks pretty noisy over the past few weeks, so I would urge caution reading much into individual daily ups and downs. A lot of that is just going to be statistical noise. However, this represents the best margin in the tipping point state Obama has seen since October 7th in the midst of his downward plunge after the first debate. The upward trend in this measure of the state of the race is now looking more clear.

Tick tock. The time left for Romney to make a move in the polls is diminishing quickly. Will something gain traction? If not, then Romney’s main remaining hope is that all the polls, not just those from Democratic leaning pollsters, but all of them, are actually wrong and are systematically tilting toward Obama. This is not impossible, and along with the possibility of a last minute event that changes things, is likely a big part of why sites like 538 give Romney a 20%+ chance of winning. Views of this using just the raw polling data, like that done by Darryl at horsesass.org give a much lower chance of a Romney victory.

But then there is Sandy. Michael, A commenter on yesterday’s update, brought up the possibility of reduced voter turnout in areas of Pennsylvania affected by Hurricane Sandy making the state winnable for Romney. Unlike potential effects on popular opinion of Obama due to how he responds to the hurricane, turnout effects due to the storm may simply not be measurable by the polls. First of all, the degree to which any remaining issues from the storm may impact voting on Tuesday may not be clear until almost Tuesday. Second, because people in effected areas are busy dealing with the storm impact itself, they may be more reluctant to participate in polls, and some pollsters may not even bother trying.

Now, most people seem to think that the effects of the storm on actual voting next Tuesday will be minimal, as most services will have been restored by then, etc. But for argument’s sake, lets imagine that turnout in the Philadelphia area is significantly reduced, giving Pennsylvania to Romney despite Obama’s 4.6% lead in current polling. Let’s also give Virginia to Romney on the same basis… reduced turnout in Northern Virginia breaking what is essentially a tie in Virginia at the moment, and giving the state to Romney.

With those two states as well as the states he is already ahead in, we have Romney with 239 electoral votes. That is still 30 electoral votes short. If we start adding states in again based on how close Romney is… Florida… which is essentially tied right now… brings Romney to 268 electoral votes. Just one electoral vote short of a tie. Iowa would then be the tipping point state. With it’s 6 electoral votes, Romney would win 274 to 264. Romney is currently behind in Iowa by only 1.2% in my five poll average. (Only 2 of those 5 polls were concluded after the last presidential debate, and those last polls look better for Obama, but lets call it 1.2% for now.)

If Hurricane Sandy was indeed able to deliver Pennsylvania and Virginia for Romney, Obama would STILL be ahead… but it would be a LOT closer!

For the moment though, as long as that scenario does not develop, Obama’s position seems to be better now than it has been in weeks. He is increasing his lead in Ohio and other swing states. Even if you grant some movement toward Romney in Pennsylvania and Virginia that isn’t visible in the polls, it seems like Romney still needs something else to move things in his direction.

Before the hurricane, Romney’s camp seemed to be trying (but failing, at least in the critical states) to gain traction based on the Obama administration’s handling of the attacks in Benghazi on September 11th. Maybe a renewed push on that issue in the remaining days will do the trick? The Romney campaign has also been pushing hard in Ohio with an attack implying Obama’s policies are resulting in Jeep moving jobs from Ohio to China. Fact checkers have called these claims misleading at best, but that doesn’t necessarily stop the attack from being effective. Maybe that will start reversing the polling trend in Ohio? Or will there be some new event that moves things dramatically toward Romney?

Watch this space in the next few days. We’ll find out… :-)

(And of course, Romney’s apparent lead in national polls continues… so if the polling is correct and nothing changes before election day, the possibility of Romney winning the popular vote while losing the electoral college remains very strong.)

Note: I actually finished my daily sweep of the polls about 10-11 hours prior to making this blog post. I usually try to keep that gap shorter, but it is what it is. There have of course been new polls released in that time. Those will be included in tomorrow’s update.

Electoral College: More Movement on the Edges (Plus New Chart!)

Minor change on the edges as New Mexico once again drops below a 10% Obama lead:

A few days ago Obama’s lead in the five poll average in New Mexico moved slightly above 10%, today a new poll pulls it back down to just below 10%. Either way, Obama will win New Mexico. So lets quickly move on so we can get to the good new stuff. First of all, new map and summary:

	Romney	Obama
Romney Best Case	321	217
Current Status	235	303
Obama Best Case	190	348

While New Mexico is colored lighter blue on the map, the summary is unchanged from yesterday, since New Mexico wasn’t moving in or out of “swing state” status.

Since we still have a contest where Romney could win if he swept all the swing states, lets again look internally at how the polls stack up within the swing states, but rather than me listing the current margins in each of the swing states as I have done before, we’ll cut to the chase, and look at the “spiffy graph” I promised on Saturday. Graph first, then explaination:

OK, in my recent posts I’ve listed the swing states, listed their margins, and then mentioned which states Romney would need to win if he took them “in order” by how well he is doing in the state. When you do this, one state would put Romney over the top. I then looked at the margin in that “Tipping Point” state. In other words, if Romney improved his margin by the same percentage across the board in all states (or at least all the swing states) how much better would he need to be doing in order to actually win enough of those states to win the electoral college?

I base these margins off my five poll average rather than something more sophisticated, but the general concept of this is similar to Sam Wang’s “meta-margin” at the Princeton Election Consortium. It shows another way of looking at the race, and one which gives a closer look at who is ahead and by how much than simply looking at the three model lines I usually present. With the three lines I normally present you can tell who is ahead and that it is relatively close, but it is hard to get a sense of exactly how FAR ahead the candidate in the lead is when it is “close”.

So anyway, what does this show? Well, basically the same trends we see in Romney’s Best case line and the current line. Namely, the first part of October Obama was in free fall, but that stopped around the time of the VP debate, and since then there has been a pretty noisy signal, but with a slight trend toward Obama. If you are generous to Romney, you can say that the trend has been flat since the VP debate, but any argument that there has been continuing Romney momentum is clearly false.

The “tipping point state” has almost always been Ohio, with a few days here and there when polling moved states slightly out of their normal order. But be it Ohio, or occasionally Florida, Virginia or Nevada, Obama’s lead in the tipping point state has been staying in a fairly consistent band between 1% and 3% for the past three weeks.

Obama is no longer in the comfortable territory he was in before the 1st debate, where Romney would have to move the tipping point states by more than 5% to win… a state I described before as Romney’s best case being to lose. But he has a buffer there, and, so far at least, the key tipping point states are not showing the moment Romney would need in order to win.

Now, if something were to happen to induce a move as large as the decline Obama had at the beginning of October, then yes, that would potentially still be enough to flip the race. As I type these words though, there are 7 days and 55 minutes until the first polls close on election day. There is very little time left for a last minute change large enough to flip this to Romney.

It could happen, it is just becoming a bigger and bigger stretch with every day that goes by that does not move things dramatically in Romney’s direction.

Meanwhile of course, even while NO electoral college model that I’ve seen has put Romney ahead at ANY time in the past year, all the aggregators of national polls have shown Romney ahead for almost all of the last three weeks, and that lead continues today. If nothing happens to shake things up in the next seven days, the prospect of an electoral college / popular vote split seems to get more likely by the day.

Edit 2012 Oct 30 22:43 UTC to fix some wording issues.

Edit 2012 Oct 30 23:19 UTC to fix typo.

Electoral College: Nebraska 2nd in play again?

One change today, and as the headline implied, it is Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district. Nebraska is one of two states (the other is Maine) that does not award electoral votes with a winner take all formula. Instead, you get two electoral votes for winning the state as a whole, and then one electoral vote for winning each congressional district. In 2008, McCain won the state, but Obama got one electoral vote for winning Nebraska’s 2nd district, which is the district containing the city of Omaha. Nebraska as a whole, and Nebraska’s 1st and 3rd congressional districts are all very safely Romney. But the 2nd?

Polling in Nebraska’s 2nd has been extremely sparse. I have only five data points in my spreadsheet since the 2008 election… and that is only because I include both values when a poll includes results for both registered and likely voters. (Yeah, yeah, that is probably methodologically unsound, I’ll reconsider in 2016.) So really, only 4 polls since 2008. And only three of them were in the last 12 months. So we don’t have a great picture. But lets look at what we do have:

I’m showing the whole last year rather than just the last three months due to the paucity of polling.

Until today, the five poll average still included the “seeds” from the 2004 and 2008 elections. In 2004 Kerry lost Nebraska to Bush by a full 22%, so that significantly depressed the average. If you did my five poll average only counting the results of the new poll for likely voters, the average would now be a Romney lead of 2.6%. Using my normal rules for the five poll average, you get a 3.8% Romney lead. There are other ways you could compute an average for NE-2 depending on how you want to weight current polls vs older polls, etc. But given that the polls we have seen this year show a 1% Romney lead (in March), a tie (in September), and a 5% lead (now, looking at either Registered or Likely voters) it seems fair to lump NE-2 in with the states where Romney is ahead, but by less than 5%.

So Romney is ahead in NE-2, but it is close. With my five poll average officially at a 3.8% Romney lead, that does mean though that while close, Florida and North Carolina are both considerably closer. Any situation that includes NE-2 going for Obama is likely to actually be an Obama blowout. Well, with how sparse the polling is, maybe it really isn’t fair to say that. There just isn’t enough data to really place NE-2 well on the spectrum. We have only the vaguest idea what is really going on there. So absent more polls here in the final days, we’ll list NE-2 as the “most likely surprise” in this election. It represents the “closest” electoral vote that hasn’t been polled heavily this year.

Anyway, this gives us a slightly different map and summary:

	Romney	Obama
Romney Best Case	321	217
Current Status	235	303
Obama Best Case	190	348

So Obama’s best case improves by 1 electoral vote to a 348 to 190 win. That is a nice win, although still substantially short of his 365 to 173 in 2008.

Obama’s best case IS possible, just like Romney’s best case is. It seems like either of those though would require something actually happening in the remaining days of the campaign to move things in that direction, rather than just a continuation of normal campaigning.

Maybe Hurricane Sandy? Dunno. We’ll see.

Anyway, looking at the close areas again, just to see where we are:

Nebraska 2nd (1): 3.8% Romney lead
North Carolina (15): 2.4% Romney lead
Florida (29): 0.8% Romney lead
Virginia (13): 0.4% Obama lead
New Hampshire (4): 1.0% Obama lead
Iowa (6): 1.2% Obama lead
Ohio (18): 2.0% Obama lead
Colorado (9): 2.8% Obama lead
Nevada (6): 2.8% Obama lead
Wisconsin (10): 3.8% Obama lead
Pennsylvania (20): 4.6% Obama lead

Romney gains a little bit in Ohio, so that state once again is the “tipping point state”. So the percentage Romney has to move every state in order to win is down to 2.0% (from 2.8% yesterday).

I mentioned yesterday that I might produce a “spiffy graph” showing the trend in this number… specifically the margin in the tipping point state over time… which can otherwise be thought of as the amount of “uniform movement” across all the close states that would have to happen to flip the winner. Well… I’ve been working on it… it requires pulling some historical data I didn’t explicitly keep track of at the time… but it isn’t quite done yet, and I am rapidly approaching the 00:00 UTC deadline I give myself for the daily updates. So maybe I’ll have that in the NEXT update. Sorry about that kids.

In the mean time, suffice it to say that the state of the race remains that Obama has a small but consistent lead in the critical states. If nothing changes, he will most likely win. But Romney remains within striking distance if something happens to move things his direction, or to a degree just if he has a really lucky day with turnout factors on election day.

But it is still looking like an Obama win in the electoral college.

(With the possibility of a split between that and the popular vote seemingly growing daily.)

Electoral College: States move toward Romney, but winning gets harder

Four states change status today, three moving toward Romney, one moving toward Obama. On the surface this looks very good for Romney. We’ll look into why that might not be the case in a bit, but first lets look at the four states that move today:

Very little to say about New Mexico. Obama’s lead increases slightly and is now over 10%. Obama will win New Mexico.

Not much to see in Missouri either. Romney’s lead increases slightly and is now over 10%. Romney will win Missouri.

Tennessee is a bit odder. The new poll showing a 25% Romney lead in Tennessee looks like an outlier. No other poll in the state from the last year shows a Romney lead greater than 9%. Without this poll the five poll average has a Romney lead of 6.4%. With this, the Romney lead jumps to 10.0%, which moves Tennessee to the “Strong Romney” category. This may not be deserved, but I don’t make judgements about outliers, I just let the average sort it out. Either way, Tennessee’s not in contention this year. Romney will win Tennessee.

Pennsylvania shows Obama’s lead dropping under 5% again as an outlier showing Obama leading by 10% drops off. Again, we just let the average deal with outliers here, and that is what has happened. Pennsylvania returns to “Lean Obama” which probably better represents the true state of the race in Pennsylvania at the moment. Having said that, it is at the high end, Obama’s lead in the five poll average is now 4.6%. This is a pretty substantial lead. Any scenario that has Romney winning Pennsylvania would already have him wining the presidency handily.

OK, so this gives us this new map and summary:

	Romney	Obama
Romney Best Case	321	217
Current Status	235	303
Obama Best Case	191	347

As before though, since depending which way the close states go you could have either candidate winning, we need to look at the individual states:

North Carolina (15 ev): 2.4% Romney lead – 4/5 polls after last debate
Florida (29 ev): 0.8% Romney lead – 5/5 polls after last debate
Virginia (13 ev): TIE – 5/5 polls after last debate
Iowa (6 ev): 1.2% Obama lead – 2/5 polls after last debate
New Hampshire (4 ev): 2.2% Obama lead – 2/5 polls after last debate
Colorado (9 ev): 2.8% Obama lead – 5/5 polls after last debate
Nevada (6 ev): 2.8% Obama lead – 5/5 polls after last debate
Ohio (18 ev): 3.1% Obama lead – 5/5 polls after last debate
Wisconsin (10 ev): 3.8% Obama lead – 3/5 polls after last debate
Pennsylvania (20 ev): 4.6% Obama lead – 2/5 polls after last debate

Something interesting here, but I am running out of time to go into detail. Ohio is no longer the tipping point state! If you start adding these states up in order of how far away they are from Romney, you see that Romney’s clearest path to victory is now holding North Carolina and Florida, then pulling ahead and winning Virginia, Iowa, New Hampshire, Colorado and Nevada. If he does that, he wins 273 to 265.

So as of today, if he moves every state more than 2.8% toward him, Romney wins. But yesterday that percentage was 2.5%. Wednesday it was 1.6%. Tuesday it was 1.2%

I may make a spiffy graph of this with the next update, but for now just looking at those numbers, you can see that despite moving some states closer to him, Romney’s path to victory is slipping away. The states he needs to pull ahead in are instead slowly pulling away.

Electoral College: Florida flips back to Romney, Other Movement on the Edges

Three states change category today, but before I get to those, let me highlight changes to the chart showing the trend over time. I’ve zoomed in to show only the time period since August and have annotated some of the notable events of the campaign in these last few months. So a few thoughts on what you can see here…

First of all, you can easily see that the two events that seem to have the most visible impact are the 47% video and the 1st debate. But it is also clear that Obama’s peak was quite a bit before the first debate. I searched for specific news events around the date of that peak, but I didn’t find anything particularly memorable. So one interpretation is simply that folks who had moved based on the 47% video started to bake that in and think maybe the whole thing was overblown, so movement back toward Romney began.

Second, it is pretty clear that Romney peaked between the VP debate and the 2nd presidential debate. Obama began to recover slightly before the 2nd debate. The overall trend has been toward Obama since then. (Even with today’s movement toward Romney on the “Current” line.) Romney’s October peak was beyond his beginning of September high, and therefore higher than I thought it would be. But at this point Romney has still NEVER taken the lead in my analysis. The “Current Poll” line has always shown an Obama lead. Romney has never been ahead in this race. Never.

Third, for all but a few short periods of time, Romney’s best case, if he were to win all the swing states, includes winning. Romney can indeed win. It is not out of the realm of reasonable possibility. It is close enough that either campaign events that move things in the last week and a half or just Romney over-performing the polls by a few percent on election day could result in a Romney win.

But Obama’s lead is real and persistent, and has been in place all year. If we just have a ho hum continuation of the campaign as it has been straight through election day, then Obama wins. Something has to happen to push Romney into the lead.

Obama has to make a big mistake, or Romney has to do something outstanding that is unexpected, or some news event has to make Obama look bad on the eve of the election. Something. With the status quo, Obama wins the electoral college. (As we mentioned Wednesday, the popular vote is another story.)

OK, now lets review the states changing categories today:

Not much to say here. The five poll average had briefly topped 10% in Montana. Now it drops below that line again. This puts Montana back into the category it has “normally” been in. Romney has a 9.0% lead in Montana. Romney will win Montana. This state is not in contention.

Same kind of thing here. Romney’s lead in the five poll average goes over 10% in Indiana. This is a big move compared to 2008, when Obama won the state by 1.0%, but Indiana has never been close in 2012. It is just an even bigger lead for Romney now. Romney is ahead by 11.0% in Indiana. Romney will win Indiana. Indiana is not in contention.

Unlike the others, Florida actually is moving from one candidate’s column to the others. And it is a big state. So this is significant, right?

No.

Prior to today’s update the five poll average had Obama up by 0.6%. With today’s new data, the five poll average has Romney up by 0.8%. These numbers both reflect the same thing… Florida is too close to call.

Florida has moved back and forth across the line many times this year. There has been no significant movement in either direction to indicate that Florida is moving definitively toward one candidate or another.

It is close. We’ll know which way Florida goes on election day.

So, this gives us a new map and summary:

	Romney	Obama
Romney Best Case	301	237
Current Status	235	303
Obama Best Case	191	347

Once again, since the best cases include both candidates winning, we need to look at the specifics of the close states:

North Carolina (15): 2.4% Romney lead – 2/5 polls after last debate
Florida (29): 0.8% Romney lead – 5/5 polls after last debate
Virginia (13): 0.2% Obama lead – 5/5 polls after last debate
Iowa (6): 1.2% Obama lead – 2/5 polls after last debate
New Hampshire (4): 2.2% Obama lead – 2/5 polls after last debate
Nevada (6): 2.4% Obama lead – 5/5 polls after last debate
Ohio (18): 2.5% Obama lead – 4/5 polls after last debate
Colorado (9): 2.6% Obama lead – 5/5 polls after last debate
Wisconsin (10): 3.2% Obama lead – 2/5 polls after last debate

Once again Romney starts at 191 electoral votes with no close states. Add in North Carolina and Florida where he is ahead and he is up to 235. That leaves him 34 electoral votes short.

Going in order by how easy it should be for Romney to pull ahead, add in Virginia, Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada… all of which Romney is behind in at the moment… and you get to 264. Still five electoral votes short.

And that brings us once again to Ohio. To win Romney has to get most of the states mentioned previously, but then also win Ohio. (If he wins Ohio, he could afford to lose some combinations of Virginia, Iowa and New Hampshire, but generally speaking if Romney wins Ohio, he will probably win those other states too.) Obama’s lead in Ohio has been increasing. On Tuesday Obama’s lead in Ohio was 1.2%. It is now up to 2.5%. Will that hold? Who knows.

But as we get closer to the election, 2.5% starts to morph from looking like a small number, to looking like a large number. In the last year Romney has NEVER been ahead in the five poll average in Ohio. It has usually been close. But Romney has never been ahead. Never. Ohio is indeed looking like a firewall.

A uniform move in the polls of any more than 2.5% toward Romney across the close states would give Romney the election. But Romney is running out of time, and most people have made up their minds.

This is once again looking like a steep uphill climb for Romney. Not impossible. It could happen.

But it is not looking good for Romney.

[Edited 2012 Oct 26 23:58 to correct chart of Florida polls over time. While my text was correct, I inadvertently included a chart missing some recent polls. Fixed. I also slightly adjusted some of the arrows on the electoral college trend chart.]

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Electoral College: The Penultimate Update

Electoral College: A bunch of states get closer, but not the right ones for Romney

Electoral College: Maine 2nd in Play? Oh, and South Dakota.

Electoral College: Three states move toward Obama, but two only sorta

Electoral College: Florida Flips Again, Still Really Tied

Electoral College: Florida flips again, Obama continues to build lead in tipping point states

Electoral College: More Movement on the Edges (Plus New Chart!)

Electoral College: Nebraska 2nd in play again?

Electoral College: States move toward Romney, but winning gets harder

Electoral College: Florida flips back to Romney, Other Movement on the Edges

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