No truly new polls today, but I added some more slightly older ones from Polltracker now that I am using them as a source as well. They have a few that were not included by my other sources. In any case, only one change came out of that today:

With this, the five poll average in Virginia goes back above 5%. If I’d gotten the polls “in order”, Virginia actually would not have dipped below 5% yesterday at all. Polls arrive out of order all the time of course. As I’ve mentioned before, with a few exceptions when I find really old polls, I mark changes in category based on my best knowledge as of any given day, I don’t try to retroactively change the status on past days.

In any case, Obama now leads by 5.3% in the five poll average. So, Virginia once again leaves the group of states I consider possible for Romney to win… if the election was held today that is. Things can of course change.

In the mean time though, the summary:

Virginia may be bouncing around the 5% Obama lead line at the moment, but be it a little below or a little above, either way, it is a state that would make Romney’s electoral math much easier if it was actually in play. At the moment, it is just out of reach. Without it, Romney’s road is pretty hard.

It has been pointed out that although the state by state math looks bad, if there are campaign events that bring a uniform national move toward Romney, then a bunch of states will of course move in his direction too. That is how it works. States that are leaning Obama will start leaning Romney. States that are weak Obama and currently out of reach will start being close.

This kind of move is very possible. No chickens should be being counted by the Democrats. But time is running out for things to happen (either positive things from Romney, or mistakes by Obama) which bring about that kind of move. Polls looking into how set people are on the candidates they support at the moment show a pretty small percentage of actual undecided or “persuadable” people though. So it may be pretty difficult to bring about that kind of move.

As I’ve said before, to get there we probably need a major screwup by Obama as opposed to anything Romney could do to bring people toward him.

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.

If this one stays as close as it is, it will be annoying to catalog the flips between now and election day between just barely one way and just barely the other way. In any case, Virginia, which moved from Leaning Obama to Leaning Romney in my five poll average on Wednesday, now moves right back where it was with the next new poll:

This represents a move in the five poll average from a Romney lead of 0.3% to an Obama lead of 0.3%. I can’t emphasize enough that both of these results just mean a super tight race in Virginia at the moment. It is too close to call. In general I say that any state where the lead is less than 5% should be considered a toss up, simply because that small a lead can disappear quickly. This is why I color all those states the same color on the map, regardless of who is slightly ahead. But 0.3%? For all intents and purposes, the state is tied at the moment.

Of course, you have to keep in mind what “the moment” is. My five poll average in Virginia currently goes back almost exactly a month. A lot has happened in that month. But we’ve only had five polls in Virginia. Two of the five polls have been since the conventions. If you average only those two… you get an 0.2% lead for Romney. Still too close to call. Virginia really does look like a toss up at this point.

Never the less, since the five poll average is slightly on Obama’s side at the moment, we move it to Obama’s side for the “Current” line of our summary, which assumes the candidates win every state where they lead even slightly in the five poll average.

And where does this put us? It puts the current line right back at a 332 to 206 Obama win… Right where the model has been for all but a few scattered weeks since the beginning of April. More specifically 124 of the 167 days since April 1st have had the model at a 332 to 206 Obama win. That’s 74% of the time. The other 26% of the time things have looked a bit better for Romney, or a bit better for Obama… more often a little bit better for Romney… but then we’ve reverted right back to good ol’ 332 to 206.

Even when states have come and gone from the set of close states, changing either Romney or Obama’s “best case” where they win all the close states, the model line in the middle has stayed remarkably stable.

Compare this to my analysis exactly four years ago. If you look at the center line of that chart (a double pink/blue line rather than this year’s purple) you’ll see that between March and September it was moving all over the place. (In interpreting the old charts, keep in mind that last time around down was good for Obama, this time up is good for Obama.) This year things are just remarkably stable in comparison.

It is also interesting to note that by this time four years ago the “lead” in the race had changed hands five times. (And it would change hands two more times before the election.) In comparison this time the lead has changed hands… well, never. Obama has been ahead from the start.

But to show how things can change in the final stretch to November: On September 14th 2008, the current state of the polls was actually showing a 269-269 tie. Obama of course went on to win 365 to 173. In the last month and a half of the campaign, 96 electoral votes moved onto Obama’s side of the line. So big movements are possible in relatively short amounts of time.

Even having said that though, if I had to make a bet right now, I’d bet on a 332 to 206 Obama win. This time around even when the polls move from that spot, they seem like they keep wanting to go back there. :-)

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.

One state changes status today and it moves in a surprising direction given the overwhelming talk of the Obama bounce following the Democratic Convention. Virginia moves from just barely Obama, to just barely Romney:

Since the Conventions ended, I’ve added polls in AL, AZ, FL, IL, MA, MN, NC, NJ, NM, OH, VA and WA. Twelve states. Eleven of these states didn’t change categories. Now the first one does, and it is Virginia. Not moving toward Obama, but moving toward Romney. But what about the bounce?? Aren’t all the polls showing a massive movement toward Obama right now? What is going on?

Well, the national polls have been showing that kind of move. The expectation is that the state polls will naturally follow. If the “bounce” lasts awhile and does not immediately fade, then they probably still will. But so far that just isn’t showing up. Now, since I use a five poll average, even if there is a move on one new poll, it might not cause a category shift right away. In most of these cases though, the new polls at the state level have been right in the same general range as the polls from before the conventions. Perhaps there has been some movement, just none that has moved any state to a new category in my model.

Until Virginia. Moving toward Romney. The five poll average moves from an Obama lead of 1.6% to a Romney lead of 0.2%. As usual when states move from “leaning” one way to “leaning” I will point out that any lead under 5% can disappear overnight with the right set of things in the news. I color all the states where the lead is less than 5% the same color on my map. These states really are close. They could go either way. And the states where the margin is less than 2%? Even more so. You might as well flip a coin.

So one should be very careful ascribing too much significance when one state flips back and forth across the line. The “current” model does move in this case… where every state goes the way the five poll average stands today. But I list the two “best case” scenarios here for a reason. To see where we really are, you need to look at that full range of possibilities. (Although of course we’re more likely to get a result “toward the middle” than near the edges of this range where one or the other candidate sweep all the close states… itself an unlikely scenario.)

In any case, the new update to the models:

Bottom line, Obama is still ahead. He has a much stronger position. But Romney does have multiple ways to win. If the conventions have produced a bounce that improves Obama’s position substantially, it isn’t showing up in the electoral college yet.

My prediction from my last update that the beginning of September was going to be Romney’s peak in my model looks like it hasn’t come to pass though. My model shows Romney in a bit better position now than he was at the time of that update. Oh well! (Edit 2012 Sep 13 16:25… actually, my prediction was that the beginning of September would mark Romney’s peak. Although Virginia flipping did improve Romney’s position over the last update, it still isn’t as good as it was at the beginning of September, so my prediction has actually held so far…)

Conventional wisdom is that you have to wait for a couple weeks after the convention for public opinion to “settle down”. Add to that the fact that if you are looking state by state you have to wait for the critical states to get polled and you realize we’ve still got very incomplete information at the state level.

Since the conventions ended, of the close states Florida (29), Ohio (18), North Carolina (15) and Virginia (13) have been polled. Of these, only Ohio has been polled more than once. No new polls at all yet for Michigan (16), Tennessee (11), Wisconsin (10), Colorado(9), Iowa (6), Nevada (6), or New Hampshire (4).

So… we still need to wait for a bit more polling to see where things really stand in this post convention stage. Polling should be continuing to accelerate as we approach November, so with luck we won’t have to wait too long.

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 12 11:13 UTC to correct the list of states with polls added since the convention to include AL and NJ, which I’d forgotten.