This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
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Two states changing status today, and both are bad news for Obama. Lets get right to it:
Prior to the debate last week, Obama’s lead in the five poll average in Nevada was 5.9%, which was a substantial enough lead for Obama that Nevada was not in the list of states that were within reach for Romney. We now have the first post-debate poll, and it shows a tied race in the state. This is just one poll out of five, but it causes the five poll average to drop to a 4.1% Obama lead. So once again I list Nevada as just “Lean Obama” and it contributes to Romney’s best case.
Although it is a drop from where the state was before the debate, “Lean Obama” is actually where Nevada has been most of the last year, so to some degree this is reversion to the mean. Obama had a bunch of strong polls in September, but those are now in the rear view mirror, replaced by the worst numbers he has had in the state all year. (It is important to point out that some of these bad numbers were from polls taken BEFORE the debate.)
The five poll average is still buoyed by some strong late September polls. Unless Obama gets a quick bounce back in the next few polls, I expect Obama’s lead in Colorado will diminish further as those polls age off.
In Colorado before the debate Obama was 3.3% ahead in the five poll average. There have now been four polls that ended after the debate and the state flips to a 1.3% Romney lead. This is the first time in the last year that Romney has been in the lead in Colorado according to the five poll average. Unlike Nevada, where the state was down from a spike toward Obama, but had so far only returned to well traveled territory, in this case Romney is breaking new ground. Romney adds what had been a narrow but consistent Obama state to his column.
So, the new summary:
|
Romney |
Obama |
| Romney Best Case |
287 |
251 |
| Current Status |
244 |
294 |
| Obama Best Case |
191 |
347 |
Before any discussion, time to eat some crow. On September 6th I said:
…my gut is saying the beginning of September will have marked Romney’s post-primary high water mark in my models. So write that down. I’m going out on that limb. You can all call me on it when it proves to be completely wrong.
So what is the comparison between now and the beginning of September?
- On September 1st, Romney got 180 electoral votes in Obama’s best case. He now gets 191.
- On September 1st, Romney got 235 electoral votes in the “Current” case. He now gets 244.
- On September 1st, Romney got 317 electoral votes in his own best case. He now gets 287.
Well, OK. I never specified how exactly to judge this, but two out of three of the lines being better than they were seems like it should qualify, especially since one of them is the “current” line. By that mark, Romney is now at the best point he has been since the very beginning of January.
To be fair to myself, from that moment onward, in almost every update, I did mention that there was one way for Romney to come back again, and that was for Obama to majorly screw up. I perhaps stated this most clearly in my update from September 27th, which turned out to be Obama’s peak:
Yes, there could be more bad economic news. Yes, Obama could start making huge mistakes and somehow screw this up. But the magnitude of what would be necessary to reverse this gets larger by the day and the scenarios less likely.
At this point Romney needs Obama to catastrophically implode. That is unlikely.
This is done. Obama wins.
Uh… umm…. unless Obama himself screws it up, or something completely unexpected of epic proportions happens.
Gotta always add the caveats. :-)
If you believe the most hyperventilating reports out there, a catastrophic Obama implosion is indeed what seems to have happened at the first debate. It seems it was not as unlikely as I expected. I presumed both Obama and Romney would put in not great but competent debate performances and the net effect would be essentially zero. Instead we saw a brand new Romney, hitting his stride in a way he never had in the previous year, and an Obama who looked like he didn’t want to be there and was phoning it in at best.
Although Obama peaked before the debate, as each post-debate poll comes in, what a couple of weeks ago seemed like an insurmountable lead for Obama is getting transformed into a genuinely close race. A number of people doing detailed analyses of the polls have pointed out that if you look carefully at the dates on both state and national polls, there is tentative evidence that Romney’s debate bounce may have already peaked and is now starting to recede. So this may be a good time to do another detailed look at where the swing states stand, and what it would take for Romney to win.
First thing to point out… despite the fairly significant drop Obama has seen since his peak… he is still ahead! (For the moment anyway.) Some national polling averages now show Romney ahead in the popular vote, but remember we do not have a national election, we have 51 smaller elections. Looking at the states using my five poll average, here is where we now stand, looking not just at my categories, but also specifically at the magnitude of the candidate leads in the close states.
With only the states where Romney is ahead by more than 5%, Romney gets to 191 electoral votes.
Then we add in the close states where he is ahead:
- North Carolina (15 ev) – Romney leads by 2.9% – 1/5 polls after the debate
- Colorado (9 ev) – Romney leads by 1.3% – 4/5 polls after the debate
- Florida (29 ev) – Romney leads by 0.2% – 2/5 polls after the debate
That gets Romney to 244 electoral votes if he can hold his lead in those three states. You need 269 electoral votes to tie (a situation Romney would probably win in the house) or 270 electoral votes to win outright. So Romney needs 25 more electoral votes to tie, 26 to win. To get there he needs to start pulling ahead in states where Obama is currently ahead.
- Ohio (18 ev) – Obama leads by 0.4% – 5/5 polls after the debate
- Virginia (13 ev) – Obama leads by 1.0% – 4/5 polls after the debate
- Iowa (6 ev) – Obama leads by 3.2% – 1/5 polls after the debate
- Nevada (6 ev) – Obama leads by 4.1% – 1/5 polls after the debate
There are a number of combinations that will get Romney to 270, and any of those four close states could easily flip. They are all close enough that the lead can disappear overnight. With the current state of the polls though, the easiest way for Romney to win seems to be to flip Ohio and Virginia, both of which are now looking exceptionally close. Prior to the debate, Obama had a 7.8% lead in Ohio… now down to 0.4%. That is a massive move in such a short time. Prior to the debate, Obama had a 4.3% lead in Virginia, now down to 1.0%. That’s a smaller move, but not insubstantial. If Romney can move each of those just a LITTLE bit further, then it would put him ahead in my “current” electoral college model for the first time ever.
For almost all of the last year, while Romney’s best case was to win, I’ve been able to repeatedly say that hitting the best case was difficult. Romney would have to almost sweep the close states, and during most of that time, Romney was behind in most of those close states. It was a tall order.
Not so much any more. Romney is still behind. But both Ohio and Virginia are in easy spitting distance. A very slight move in those states, and he pulls ahead. Then if he manages to stay ahead, perhaps even consolidating those leads, then he wins on election day. For the first time since January, this looks like a close race.
The question of course is how long lasting this “debate bounce” is. Can Romney hold onto his gains… and extend them a little further to eke out a narrow win? Or do we start reverting back to where the race has been most of the year? Do we end up back at the “everybody wins the states they are ahead in” line being at Obama 332 to Romney 206 where it has been more often than anywhere else?
The “feel” of the race has certainly changed. Obama was knocked on his heels and is now on defense. At long last, Romney has repositioned himself toward the center, making a play for the voters he needs to win over to win. To win though, he needs to not just hold his gains so far, but pull things a bit further toward him.
If Obama on the other hand can just hold on and prevent any further losses, he wins. If Romney’s bounce recedes (as some say is already happening) then once again Obama wins.
It seems likely that we will indeed see some reversion to the mean, which would favor Obama. But if Obama has another bad debate, or in general if he can’t shift the narrative back in his favor in the next few weeks, he is in big trouble. Romney isn’t in the lead yet according to my classifications… but a few more good polls and he is there. He is close. Really close.
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.
 
Another state moving dramatically toward Romney based on post-debate polls. This time it is Florida:
Prior to the debate the five poll average in Florida was a 3.2% lead for Obama. Florida had favored Obama in the average since September 6th and had even hit a 5% Obama lead for a few days. Both polls taken since the debate show Romney ahead however, and now the average flips back toward Romney. With 2 polls after the debate and 3 from before the debate, I now have Florida with a 0.2% advantage for Romney.
0.2% is of course so close to zero that the only way to really interpret this is as a tie. Florida could go either way. Florida is now even closer than North Carolina, where Romney has an 0.8% lead. And THAT was really close.
All of the “close states” could easily be seen going either way when votes are actually cast, but at the moment Florida and North Carolina are the closest of the close.
This makes the new summary as follows:
|
Romney |
Obama |
| Romney Best Case |
281 |
257 |
| Current Status |
235 |
303 |
| Obama Best Case |
191 |
347 |
The “Current Status” now matches the best Romney has done since the primary season ended. (He was actually even slightly better than this at the very start of the year in January.) His “best case” hasn’t caught up to his September peak yet, but if he won every state he is ahead in at the moment, he puts in a better performance than he has since early September.
That scenario still has Romney losing of course, just by less than before. To actually win, he needs to pull more than 34 additional electoral votes over to his side.
We now have six “close” states. Here are the current margins in those states based on my five poll average:
- North Carolina (15 ev): 0.8% Romney Lead – 1/5 polls after debate
- Florida (29 ev): 0.2% Romney Lead – 2/5 polls after debate
- Colorado (9 ev): 1.8% Obama Lead – 1/5 polls after debate
- Virginia (13 ev): 2.8% Obama Lead – 2/5 polls after debate
- Iowa (6 ev): 4.2% Obama Lead – 0/5 polls after debate
- Ohio (18 ev): 4.2% Obama Lead – 2/5 polls after debate
Romney’s path here… first consolidate North Carolina and Florida. Then he NEEDS to flip Ohio. Colorado, Virginia and Iowa wouldn’t be enough without Ohio. If he has managed to flip Ohio, he has probably already managed to flip the others. If he does, then he wins.
There are not yet any polls in Iowa from after the debate, but if we look only at post-debate polls, Romney is already ahead in Colorado and Virginia, and is tied in Ohio.
Two polls, the most we have post-debate in any state, is still not very much. It will be good to get a few more polls to confirm these moves. If the moves are substantiated by more polls, it will have been a pretty big move toward Romney based on a debate.
The Obama campaign is trying to pivot hard to being more aggressive, and to calling Romney out on flip flopping and misrepresenting his own positions, and perhaps a bit on picking on Big Bird… we’ll see if it works.
I suspect however that Obama’s performance at the next debate will be more critical. To move things back in his direction again he needs to basically show the performance at the first debate was an aberration.
Now, to win Obama doesn’t NEED to start moving things back in his direction… he just needs to stop further movement toward Romney. Obama is still ahead. By a not insubstantial margin. When discussing a similar status in the models a few weeks ago, I talked about how good the position was for Obama. In a static picture, this is still a pretty good map for Obama. It takes a bit of a stretch to get to Romney winning. Possible, but a stretch.
The difference is the recent movement. In September, every new poll was showing things looking even better for Obama. Now almost every new poll seems to be showing things better for Romney. Romney isn’t winning, but the motion is in his direction.
Obama may still be ahead, but to start feeling comfortable again, he needs to stop bleeding support in the key states.
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.
First, lets talk about Virginia.
Virginia actually should have flipped back from “Weak Obama” to “Lean Obama” YESTERDAY. The data was in my spreadsheet. Virginia had clearly dropped below a 5% Obama lead again, to 4.3%. I have no idea how I missed it, but I did, and I did not mention it in yesterday’s update. I screwed up. I have corrected the historical trend graph above to reflect this category change as of yesterday.
The graph below of the Virginia polls is as it was YESTERDAY, not yet including new data from today:
As I mentioned when Virginia changed status on Wednesday, it is just bouncing back and forth. The recent history now looks like this:
- Sep 14 to Sep 20 – Lean Obama (6 days)
- Sep 20 to Sep 22 – Weak Obama (2 days)
- Sep 22 to Sep 23 – Lean Obama (1 day)
- Sep 23 to Sep 28 – Weak Obama (5 days)
- Sep 28 to Oct 3 – Lean Obama (6 days)
- Oct 3 to Oct 4 – Weak Obama (1 day)
- Oct 4 to ??? – Lean Obama
The latest change to move the state back to being a close state happened BEFORE any polls that were taken after the first debate.
Now, I wouldn’t have known this yesterday, but today’s update contains two new Virginia polls, the first ones taken after the debate, and they suddenly show Romney ahead! So the five poll average is dropping rapidly, and is now down to a 2.8% Obama lead. So maybe this time we are done bouncing, and we’ll either stay close but leaning Obama, or end up moving to Leaning Romney. We’ll see. But as of the update that should have happened yesterday but I missed (damn it!) Virginia was still just bouncing back and forth, hovering around the “Obama 5% Lead” mark.
Next up is a state that really does change due to today’s new data:
Ohio had been moving rapidly in Obama’s direction. Every new day of polls seemed to increase Obama’s lead. Obama’s lead had gone over 5% on September 26th and had gotten up to a 7.8% lead in the 5 poll average as of yesterday.
Today I added two new polls, both taken entirely on the 4th, which is of course after the first debate. One shows Obama up by only 1%, the other shows Romney up by 1%. Together they average to a tie. If more polls end up backing up these two new polls, it will show a very substantial movement due to the debate, on the order of a 7% or 8% shift. That would be gigantic.
For now though, with three polls before the debate and two after, Obama’s lead in the five poll average is down to 4.2%. That puts the state back into the “Lean Obama” category, and puts it back into play for Romney.
To summarize the updated state of the race:
|
Romney |
Obama |
| Romney Best Case |
281 |
257 |
| Current Status |
206 |
332 |
| Obama Best Case |
191 |
347 |
The big change of course is that Romney’s best case once again includes winning. If he sweeps all the close states, now once again including Ohio and Virginia, he can win 281 to 257. Now, of the six close states, he is only ahead in North Carolina according to my five poll average, so this is still a tall order.
But the new polls in Ohio indicate there just might have been a big debate effect. Other new polls with post debate data in Virginia, as mentioned above, and in Florida also show noticeable tightening, just nothing that changes a state to a new category yet. Both Virginia (if I’d properly updated it yesterday) and Florida were already categorized as close states. The new polls, so far, have made these states even closer, but have not actually flipped them over to be leaning Romney.
If more new polls over the next few days continue to show big improvements for Romney though, we could see some of the Lean Obama states start flipping over to being Lean Romney states, and we could see a few more Weak Obama states become close Lean Obama states.
So far we just have Ohio making a category change that seems like a clear debate effect. But Ohio is a big state, and there has still been very light post-debate polling. We’ll know better what the real effect of the first debate was after a few more days.
Then we’ll hit the VP debate, and other changes in the news cycle, which will make it hard to determine if any further changes are really due to the debate, or from other things that happen later.
Bottom line though, coming off a very bad month most of September, since September 27th Romney has been bouncing back. Since then his numbers have been fairly consistently improving.
For now I’ll stick by the prediction that the beginning of September was his post-primary high water mark in my models though. I think his levels at that point… namely a 317 to 221 best case if he were to win ALL of the close states (an unlikely outcome) and a 303 to 235 Obama win “current status” if everybody just takes the states they are ahead in… is likely to serve as a ceiling for Romney’s gains. I don’t think he’ll be able to break past that point.
Unless of course Obama has a whole lot more bad performances like his debate this week up his sleeve for the coming weeks. If that happens, then who knows. :-)
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.
No, this change is NOT due to Obama’s debate performance. There are not yet any state level polls that include time after the debate. We should have a few of those in a few days I’m sure. For now, this still represents what was happening pre-debate.
There was one change today, in what is currently the closest of the close states:
North Carolina has consistently been in the “close state” category all year long. It REALLY could easily go either way. With the latest data it moves from leaning just slightly Obama, to leaning just slightly Romney in the five poll average. Romney now leads by 0.8%.
Right now the next closest state is Florida, where Obama is ahead by 3.2% at the moment. If one argued that the 5% threshold I use for “close” is really too wide, you could easily conclude that North Carolina is actually the ONLY state where things are close at the moment. It really is right on the edge right now. Just about anything could move it one way or the other.
Regardless, as of right now, the five poll average has it back on Romney’s side of the line, where it has spent most of the last year. So, the new summary of the state of the race:
|
Romney |
Obama |
| Romney Best Case |
250 |
288 |
| Current Status |
206 |
332 |
| Obama Best Case |
191 |
347 |
The “current” line, where everybody gets every state they are even slightly ahead in, now reverts to a 332 to 206 Obama win. This has been where it has been more often than anywhere else over the last year. Things have sometimes moved a little from this line in one direction or the other, but it always seems to come back here.
In that sense the race has been remarkably stable. Most of the discussion I’ve presented here has ended up reflecting changes to Romney’s “best case” where he wins all of the close states. But if we only look at who is actually ahead in each state… we’re usually at a 332 to 206 Obama win.
I’ve mentioned before, if I had to pick a final state of the race right now, putting all the red and blue states on the map above in their respective columns, then giving North Carolina to Romney, and Iowa, Colorado and Florida to Obama, seems like a very safe bet.
At the moment, even if you give Romney all four of these states, he still loses 250 to 288. He needs to take the lead in Iowa, Colorado and Florida, then start making some of the “Weak Obama” states close again.
Romney had a very strong performance in the first debate, and Obama had a very weak one. But will that make a difference here? Study after study have shown that historically the effect of debates is very small. There are just too many voters who have already made up their minds and nothing in any debate short of a complete meltdown by one of the candidates will change that. I think that is likely to be the case here too.
I would not be surprised to see some tightening. Some of the “Weak Obama” states are just barely in that category. They could easily move back into my “Lean Obama” category. But Romney needs very big moves to start actually moving states onto his side of the line. Not just a point or two. Florida needs more than a 3% shift to move to Romney. To get enough states back on his side with a uniform shift he has to move things more like 6% or 7%. That would be a huge move.
I don’t think you will see that kind of move coming out of this debate alone. It is much more likely that we’ll see a small move. I think Romney’s beginning of September position, which was a closer race, but one which Romney was still losing, represents a cap on the gains Romney is likely to make. It will be very hard to Romney to break through that ceiling.
But, if from now until election day, the electorate sees the bold confidant and actually somewhat centrist Romney they saw last night, and they continue to see the nervous, hesitant, submissive Obama they saw last night… then we may start to see a bigger shift than would come out of just the debate alone.
I think it is a pretty safe bet the Obama campaign will be doing everything they can to present a different Obama next time out though. He knows he screwed up, he knows what he screwed up, and it is mostly about optics rather than substance, so they will try to fix it.
It has been the situation for quite some time that there wasn’t a huge amount Romney could directly do to help his position in the race, but that Obama had plenty he could do to damage his own position. Obama made that kind of mistake last night. Romney now has an opening, and for almost the first time in this race, Obama is on defense.
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.
Important note added 2012 Oct 5 16:36 UTC: Virginia should also have changed from Weak Obama to Lean Obama in this update. I had the polls. The numbers were there in my spreadsheet, I just completely failed to notice. I will be including the Virginia change in the Friday update and talking about it there.
 
One change today, and it is a state moving toward Obama:
The last few weeks Virginia has bounced between categories just a tad:
- Sep 14 to Sep 20 – Lean Obama
- Sep 20 to Sep 22 – Weak Obama
- Sep 22 to Sep 23 – Lean Obama
- Sep 23 to Sep 28 – Weak Obama
- Sep 28 to Oct 3 – Lean Obama
And now, with the latest numbers, it moves once again to Weak Obama.
The truth is that for these last few weeks, Obama’s lead in the Virginia five poll average has stayed right around 5%. Since September 20th it has remained within the range 3.9% to 5.8%. It’s just happened to bounce back and forth over that arbitrary 5% dividing line a few times.
There hasn’t been any actual real significant movement in Virginia during that time period. It just happens that the state is hovering right at the boundary between my two categories. So sometimes it looks like it might (just barely) be a state that Romney has some hope of flipping, and sometimes it looks like a state that is out of his reach (just barely).
If I had decided to only call states close where the lead was less than 3% then Virginia would not have looked close at all in the last few weeks. If I had decided to call anything less than 6% close, then it would have seemed like it was close the whole time. The line is arbitrary. Of course, if you are going to categorize things rather than present a spectrum, you have to draw the lines somewhere, and I picked 5%.
So once again, at least until the next poll, Virginia looks like a state Obama can be pretty confident about, and we take it out of Romney’s best case:
|
Romney |
Obama |
| Romney Best Case |
263 |
275 |
| Current Status |
191 |
347 |
| Obama Best Case |
191 |
347 |
Virginia “close” or Virginia “not close”, Romney’s situation is the same: Even if he wins all the close states… all of which he is behind in at the moment… it does not give him enough to win the election.
To win the election he has to also win one or more states where Obama is currently ahead by more than 5%. For that to happen he needs something that completely changes the dynamics of the race.
We are less than 24 hours away from the first of the Presidential debates. Romney of course hopes this may be an event that starts the big move in his direction. Historically debates have not have that kind of impact. But he can hope.
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 change categories today. Two states move toward Obama, one state moves toward Romney. But Romney’s state is bigger than the other two combined, so he wins the day. Lets look at them each, from smallest to largest:
The five poll average in New Hampshire had been generally sticking at an Obama lead less than 5%, but with two related polls (both from WMUR/UNH with and without pushing leaners to express a preference) showing Obama with a 15% lead in the state, the average spikes upward These data points may well prove to be outliers, they certainly seem like it initially, but for the moment they move Obama’s lead well out of the “Leaning” category, and indeed almost all the way to the “Strong” category. For the moment though, Obama’s lead stands at 9.8% and we put New Hampshire into the “Weak Obama” category. (Note that even if we’d only counted one of these two polls, the state would still end up as Weak Obama.) This has the effect of moving New Hampshire out of Romney’s reach for the moment.
In Nevada things look less like they are being influenced by an outlier. Instead three of the last five polls in the state now show leads over 5% and the average now jumps to a 5.7% Obama lead. There does seem to be some real movement toward Obama in those last few polls. Will it last? Who knows. But for the moment Nevada also moves out of Romney’s reach as well.
This would all look pretty bad for Romney today, except for the third state:
Florida, where the five poll average had just hit 5.0% exactly last Thursday causing me to move Florida to “Weak Obama”, now drops back below 5% again, putting Florida back into the much more familiar “Weak Obama” category where it has been for most of the last year. The spike upward appears to be over, and Florida has reverted to form as being a close state. Well, sorta close. The five poll average still has Obama at a 4.1% lead in Florida, which is not insubstantial. And he has been “slightly ahead” in the state for most of the year. But this is still a small enough lead that given the right sorts of events it could disappear quickly. So once again, I list Florida as being in play.
And that makes the current status:
|
Romney |
Obama |
| Romney Best Case |
263 |
275 |
| Current Status |
191 |
347 |
| Obama Best Case |
191 |
347 |
So Romney’s best case if he wins all the close states… now once again including Florida… is still to loose, but now by a pretty small margin. Obama 275 to Romney 263. If he can get Nevada back in play and win that, we could have a 269-269 tie, which would probably end up going for Romney in the House. A tie would be a lot of fun. Still an unlikely scenario though.
In general, to win, Romney has to win Florida (29), North Carolina (15), Virginia (13), Colorado (9) and Iowa (6) for sure. All of those are “must win”. And Romney is currently behind in all of them to various degrees. They are all pretty close though and flipping them is not unrealistic. On top of that he then needs to get at least one of the big states in the “Weak Obama” category, or two of the smaller ones. Those are all states where Romney is behind by more than 5%.
Although the map looks a bit better than it did a few days ago, it is still a very bleak picture for Romney 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.
Edit 2012 Oct 3 09:44 UTC to add final note.
Two states change status today, and for a change, they are moves in Romney’s direction:
First up, Iowa, with six electoral votes. A new poll came in “out of order” which erases yesterday’s peak that got Iowa to a 5% Obama lead. The chart above looks at the five poll average as of the end dates of each poll given all polls known today. The trend chart at the top of this post shows the state of the race as of what was known on each day.* So even though the peak gets erased on the state trend, it still shows up for that one day on the summary chart since as of yesterday that was the best estimate. A bit confusing, sorry about that.
In any case, Iowa now drops back into being a competitive state. Obama now has a 3.6% lead… Romney coming back and winning the state seems very possible. 3.6% is not a big lead. Two of the last five polls in the state actually show Romney ahead in the state. The five poll average has never shown Romney ahead here, but Iowa once again goes into the “close state” pool. Romney winning the state is quite possible.
Next is Virginia with 13 electoral votes. On September 23rd Obama’s five poll average lead in Virginia topped 5%. Today he dips back below that threshold. Obama’s lead now stands at 4.3%. Virginia has bounced around quite a bit over the past few months. In the last three months it has ranged from a 5.8% Obama lead to a 0.3% Romney lead. Most frequently the state has shown an Obama lead, but a small one that could easily disappear. Virginia is once again in that situation.
So where does that leave us?
|
Romney |
Obama |
| Romney Best Case |
244 |
294 |
| Current Status |
191 |
347 |
| Obama Best Case |
191 |
347 |
Romney’s best case is still to lose, but if he wins all the close states it will not be quite as bad a loss now that Virginia and Iowa look like they may be in play again.
Is this the beginning of a more general move back toward Romney? It is obviously too early to tell. But it is not unreasonable to think that while Romney had a few bad weeks, if he manages to avoid any more major missteps, people who reacted negatively recently may start to come back to him. We’ll see how big this move over the next few days.
After that, we start seeing what effect, if any, come out of the Presidential debates.
* The exception is when an old poll comes in so late that is is not within the five poll average at all. If that happens, and if it changes the trend lines, I will retroactively adjust the historical trends. But if polls come in “out of order” but still within the “last five” they are considered a current poll and are just added in normally with no retroactive adjustments.
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.
The title on this post is perhaps a bit hyperbolic, but only a little bit. Romney is way behind in the Electoral College race. He has been all year. He has NEVER been in the lead. As of yesterday’s update even if Romney won every close state he would still lose. With today’s update two more previously close states move toward Obama, making Romney’s best case an even bigger loss and putting him in the worst position he has ever been in… by far.
Both changes today just barely take states out of my competitive zone, so new polls in the next few days could easily reverse today’s changes. But even if that happens, the picture for Romney remains bleak.
He needs a massive turn around in his fortunes to make this race competitive again, let alone to win. Impossible? No. But increasingly unlikely? Yes. To come back and win at this point Romney needs something huge that turns everything on its head. Could a big black swan event happen? Maybe. But aside from that, he is done. This is over.
Lets look at the details. From lower electoral college weight to higher:
Iowa (6 electoral votes) had consistently shown a small Obama lead in the five poll average. Always close. Always a state Romney could potentially flip. But then the convention happened, and 4 out of the 5 polls since then have shown Obama with a lead of more than 5%. (The one outlier is a poll actually showing Romney ahead by 3%.) Today the five poll average hits 5% (exactly) and so I move the state from “Lean Obama” to “Weak Obama”. If the election was held today, this isn’t a state where you would think Romney had a chance. It is now out of reach.
As usual, I must say this is “for the moment”. The five poll average now sits at exactly 5%. The next poll could move the state back into competitive territory.
And now the big one…
Florida, with 29 electoral votes, was by far the largest of the close states. It has gone back and forth between a Romney lead and an Obama lead in the five poll average, although most of the time there has been a small Obama lead. But it has been close and competitive nearly all year. With today’s update Obama’s lead hits (exactly) 5%. So the state moves from Lean Obama to Weak Obama. As with Iowa, Florida is just barely in this category. The very next poll could make things look more competitive. And we probably should expect some “reversion to the mean” as we go forward. For the moment though, this means that even in Romney’s best case where he wins all the close states, he still loses Florida.
Without Iowa and Florida as Romney possibilities, where do things stand?
|
Romney |
Obama |
| Romney Best Case |
225 |
313 |
| Current Status |
191 |
347 |
| Obama Best Case |
191 |
347 |
Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.
Yesterday I said:
So how lopsided does this matchup need to look at this stage in the game to start just saying outright that absent an event of cosmic proportions the race is over and Obama will certainly win? We are very very close. It is tempting to just say so right now. But I will hold off a little bit.
But if Romney’s best case gets ANY worse… or if there is no major move in Romney’s direction starting in the next week or two… then it will be very difficult to construct Romney win scenarios with a straight face…
I still feel a little hesitant about outright saying this is over. There is still after all more than a month for Romney to turn things around.
But Romney’s best case DID get worse. Yesterday Romney already would lose even if he won all of the close states. Today, with Iowa and Florida also moving out of reach, Romney’s best case is starting to look like not just a loss, but a very comfortable Obama win.
Iowa and Florida today, and Ohio from yesterday, and maybe some of the other “Weak Obama” states, could move back and get closer before the election. This would not be surprising at all. In fact it would be surprising if Romney slipped too much further behind. At some point he has to rebound a bit, right? But even if he starts closing the gap and stops the free fall, it looks like a really tall order to actually pull ahead.
Even at his best point this year the most Romney could say was that if he flipped a few more states from Leaning Obama to Leaning Romney he could win. He was never actually ahead. Even if he does well in the next few weeks, is there anything that indicates he could improve on his position from the beginning of September when he last peaked? Because even then, he was losing. Just by less.
Yes, there could be more bad economic news. Yes, Obama could start making huge mistakes and somehow screw this up. But the magnitude of what would be necessary to reverse this gets larger by the day and the scenarios less likely.
At this point Romney needs Obama to catastrophically implode. That is unlikely.
This is done. Obama wins.
Uh… umm…. unless Obama himself screws it up, or something completely unexpected of epic proportions happens.
Gotta always add the caveats. :-)
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 state changes category today, but it is an important one, as Obama’s lead in Ohio hits 5%:
With the additions today, the five poll average in Ohio is an Obama lead of EXACTLY 5.0%. I define the “Weak Obama” category as 5% and above though, so this is enough to move the state to the new category. It is right on the edge though. The next day of polls could easily reverse this change. The trend in the last couple weeks has been the opposite, but this could change at any time. For the moment though, it looks like Ohio is moving away from Romney. Obama’s lead is now big enough that my models no longer include the possibility of Romney winning Ohio.
This leaves Romney in a very bad spot:
|
Romney |
Obama |
| Romney Best Case |
260 |
278 |
| Current Status |
191 |
347 |
| Obama Best Case |
191 |
347 |
So, even if Romney wins EVERY CLOSE STATE (all of which he is currently behind in), he would still lose to Obama 260 to 278.
This is of course “if the election was held today”… and the election is not being held today. But it is still worth repeating:
Romney can win every state that is even remotely close, and it is still not enough. HE STILL LOSES.
This is the 4th time this year that Romney’s “best case” has been this bad. In each of the previous cases, Romney has subsequently pulled back some of the states where Obama is ahead by more than 5% and made them somewhat competitive again. He hasn’t actually managed to pull enough of them over the line to his side to ever be in the lead in the electoral college, but he has at least managed to make enough states close that he could win if he swept those close states.
So now of course the question is: Can he do it again? Can Romney fight back and make some more states close again? Pennsylvania (20), Ohio (18), Michigan (16), Virginia (13), Minnesota (10), Wisconsin (10), Oregon (7), New Mexico (5) and Maine’s 2nd Congressional District (1) are the areas where Obama’s lead is between 5% and 10%. Some of those are probably permanently out of reach. But perhaps Romney can make some of them into a battle again with a massive advertising blitz? Perhaps with the help of a few big stumbles by Obama?
I don’t think it can happen without big stumbles by Obama. Romney stopping his tendency to put his foot in his mouth and starting to run a disciplined and competent campaign wouldn’t be enough. He needs Obama to screw up.
And even then, can he get past making a few more states close to actually starting to take the lead in some of these states? Let alone enough of them to win the Presidency?
It seems unlikely. The scenarios that result in Romney catching up and winning seem more and more far fetched by the day. To be clear, a Romney win is NOT impossible. It could happen. It is just getting less and less likely as time goes on. Obama’s lead is increasing, and Romney is running out of time to catch up.
Romney supporters seem to be pushing two main lines of thoughts on how Romney can still win:
First off, we still have the debates. Sometimes the debates can drive big changes they say. But everything I’ve been reading over the past couple months with regard to research on this subject says that debates very rarely move the polls any significant amount. Certainly not by a big enough amount to make up this kind of deficit. (Tales of a major reversal of fortune in the Carter/Reagan race after the final debate have been very effectively debunked by several people. It is basically an urban legend driven by looking at one set of polls while ignoring all the others.) Could Obama come out, have a nervous breakdown, start walking in circles and clucking like a chicken on live national television and thereby completely blow his lead? Well, yes, something of that magnitude could do it. But assuming a basically competent debate performance by Obama, even if Romney “wins” debates, it is hard to see them giving Romney the boost he would need to win.
Second of all, more and more you hear the argument that the polls must be wrong. That there is a systematic pro-Democratic bias in the polls, and Romney is really doing much better than the polls would indicate, and because Republicans are more motivated, they will have higher turnout and therefore win. The only thing to say here is that as long as you are looking at poll averages and not any particular pollster, the house effects leaning one direction or another basically get averaged out. Also, for the most part even the pollsters that have a partisan alignment are actually motivated to structure their polls to produce results that match the actual outcomes in the end. Even a highly partisan pollster would try to correct a systematic bias in their results if they found one, because it translates into lower predictive value for their polls, which makes them less valuable. Finally, there is just the historical record. People who have convinced themselves that the polls just must be wrong have tended to be disappointed much more often than they’ve ended up being right.
So how lopsided does this matchup need to look at this stage in the game to start just saying outright that absent an event of cosmic proportions the race is over and Obama will certainly win? We are very very close. It is tempting to just say so right now. But I will hold off a little bit.
But if Romney’s best case gets ANY worse… or if there is no major move in Romney’s direction starting in the next week or two… then it will be very difficult to construct Romney win scenarios with a straight face…
…OK, really, it is already very difficult to construct those scenarios. Can he make it closer than it looks today? Sure. Can he move things enough to actually win? That is looking pretty far fetched at the moment. I’ll hold off saying “it is over” for a couple weeks to give Romney a chance to figure out the miracle he needs. Maybe he’ll be able to find and execute on said miracle. Maybe.
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.
(Edit 2012 Sep 27 15:28 to add final note.)
Two changes in category today, and bucking the recent trend, they are both moves toward Romney. In reverse order of electoral college weight:
Minnesota (10 electoral votes) had been pretty sparsely polled before the conventions, and the five poll average had shown an Obama lead as high as 11.7% in July. With the batch of new polling in September, Obama’s lead has now dropped to only 7.9%. “Only” is of course relative. 7.9% is still a pretty substantial lead. Minnesota is not in play right now. The only question is how much Obama is going to win by. It looks like Obama’s margin will be less than it once looked like it might be. But this should still be an easy win for Obama.
Tennessee (11 electoral votes) is another state that hasn’t been polled all that often. The last set of polls, back in May, had moved the five poll average to a Romney lead of less than 5%, specifically a 4.2% lead. That had put Tennessee into the set of states my model thought could go either way. After all, a 4.2% lead is pretty slim. The right set of things happening, and perhaps Obama could have actually taken the lead there.
Well, the new set of polls added this week, which are actually two related results from YouGov, moves the average to a 5.8% Romney lead. As far as my model is concerned, that pulls Tennessee out of reach for Obama. Tennessee always seemed like a big stretch for Obama. It always seemed a bit odd that it was showing up in the “close states” category. Well, it now resumes a more natural looking position as a “Weak Romney” state, meaning that Romney has a big lead there, but maybe not so big a lead that he should completely ignore it.
Of course it will get ignored, because Obama doesn’t need it to win. Any scenario that has Obama winning Tennessee is probably an Obama landslide. So Obama isn’t going to pay attention to it. Meanwhile, if Romney is in a position where he is really fighting to win Tennessee, he has already lost. Given he is way behind right now, he needs to be concentrating on states where Obama is ahead to try to bring them back over to his side of the line. Spending time shoring up a state like Tennessee would be a waste of resources for Romney too. So, no attention for Tennessee. Poor Tennessee.
So where does this put the summary? Minnesota has no effect because it was never close. I no longer consider winning Tennessee to be a possibility for Obama, so Obama’s “best case” gets a little worse:
|
Romney |
Obama |
| Romney Best Case |
278 |
260 |
| Current Status |
191 |
347 |
| Obama Best Case |
191 |
347 |
The interesting thing here is of course that the current status is now the same as Obama’s best case. This is because there are no longer ANY close states where Romney is ahead. Tennessee is no longer close because it is now more solidly Romney. So that is good for Romney. Two states moved TOWARD Romney today. This is GOOD for Romney compared to yesterday.
But the overall situation remains very very difficult.
The remaining close states… Florida (29), Ohio (18), North Carolina (15), Colorado (9), Iowa (6), Nevada (6), and New Hampshire (4)… are all states where Obama is ahead.
Now, all of those states are close, and some of them are very close, with Obama’s lead no more than a sliver. Romney could retake the leads in one or more of these states with a little bit of a good news cycle and just one or two good polls.
But what this effectively does is put Obama at his ceiling. Previously, there was headroom above the “current” situation. You could imagine Obama doing a bit better and moving one or more states that were close but leaning Romney to being close but leaning Obama. Now there are no more Romney states that are close… states that one could easily imagine Obama picking up.
To do any better than a 347 to 191 win… which is where the state by state polls put him right now… Obama would need to start picking up states where Romney is ahead by more than 5% (but ones where he is ahead by less than 10%, because we need to retain at least some realism).
The areas in this category are now Georgia (16), Arizona (11), Indiana (11), Tennessee (11), Missouri (10), South Carolina (9), Montana (3) and Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District (1). With the possible exception of Nebraska’s 2nd, which is very infrequently polled but where a poll this week showed the race tied, all of these seem like BIG stretches right now. Even if Romney collapses further and Obama expands his national lead, one could maybe see some of these getting closer again, but they have a long way to go to actually end up in the Obama win column.
As he was looking at the wiki between my update there and this post, a reader asked a question: Has this happened before?
I knew it hadn’t happened in this cycle, but I had a vague memory of there being some time in 2008 where all the close states were leaning in one direction. But I was wrong. Looking at my 2008 analysis, this didn’t happen then either. (I wasn’t doing this in 2004 or before, so I can’t speak to those years.) So indeed,with my method of classifying states… with leads in a five poll average less than 5% being considered “close” states that could go either way… this is the first time in two election cycles where ALL of the “close” states have leaned toward one candidate.
The positive spin for Romney is that Obama has reached a top. It will be very hard for him to do any better in the electoral college than where things are right now.
Of course, the flip side of that is that at the moment Obama is pretty far ahead, and to win Romney has to win almost all of the close states… all of which he is behind in at the moment.
This is not where a candidate wants to be in late September.
It isn’t quite time to just call the race for Obama and go home.
But it is getting close.
Last time around I “called the race” on October 3rd. In 2008 that was the first time we had a situation where McCain’s “best case” in my model was still losing. I didn’t actually think that situation would be sustained through November, but it the end it was. From October 3rd onward, the state by state polls showed a clear Obama win.
This time around, Romney has already been in that “best case is to lose” situation in my model three times. Each time he has recovered, but if Obama increases his lead in one or two key states, he could end up there again pretty easily. Unlike the last three times, there will be very little time to recover if he falls that far behind again. Of course, he would have to not just improve from that point, he would have to get to a point better than he has been at any time this year to actually pull into the lead.
At this very moment, his “current” line is well behind where McCain’s was four years ago too. Four years ago today it looked like McCain would get 256 electoral votes if the election was held then. That wasn’t enough to put him in the lead of course, but it was a lot better than the 191 Romney has in his column at the moment.
Romney needs some major game changing event to make this an interesting race again. He is running out of time for it.
He must wake up every day hoping that Obama will make some major mistake. Instead though, in the last few weeks anyway, it seems like it is Romney putting his foot in his moth over and over again. That isn’t what he needs to be able to start closing the gap, let alone to take the lead.
Note: With a new poll that I added to my spreadsheet today, the date that Wisconsin moved from Lean Obama to Weak Obama shifts from September 20th to September 21st. The trend chart at the top of this post reflects that adjustment.
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.
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