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Electoral College: Missouri Red Again

One update today, and it is Missouri reversing the move it made on the 25th:

As you can see, polling in Missouri lately has been a bit, uh, wild. The last five polls, which only go back about a week and a half, have ranged from an Obama lead of 1%, to a Romney lead of 17%. That is just all over the place. I’m not sure that public opinion is really swinging quite so much so fast and there is something odd with the polls instead, but we have what we have. Before the two new polls I added today, the five poll average had a Romney lead of 3.8%. The two new polls were very good for Romney and we are now up to a Romney lead of a full 9%!

This is a very quick moment in Romney’s direction. I guess if there was indeed any movement away from the Democrats due to Akin, the backlash is now in full effect. Most of the last year Romney has been ahead in Missouri, but not by much. If the trend of the last few polls holds up, it looks like Obama’s support in Missouri pretty much collapsed and the state may even be heading toward my “Strong Romney” category.

With the polling as all over the place though, I’d reserve judgement on that. The next polls may move in the opposite direction. For the moment though, Missouri is very much in the “Weak Romney” category, meaning Romney has a pretty substantial advantage there, but not so large that he can feel safe completely ignoring the state.

This change once again reduces Obama’s best case:

Romney Obama
Romney Best Case 317 221
Current Status 235 303
Obama Best Case 180 358

This means that even in his best case, Obama can’t reach his 365 to 173 victory margin from 2008. Even though Romney has had a good month in our models, Obama is still ahead… but the margins from 2008 are veery unlikely. This will be closer than 2008 unless something dramatic changes.

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 6 09:34 UTC to add final note.

Electoral College: Obama Weakens in Connecticut

One state changing status today, and that is Connecticut, where Obama’s lead has diminished:

Connecticut has been fairly sparsely polled, being generally considered to be a pretty safe Obama state. But there have been a few new polls recently, and they have shown Obama’s lead somewhat diminished from the levels it had been at most of the last year. With today’s update, Obama’s lead in the five poll average drops to 9.6%.

Now, that is still a pretty substantial lead, but it moves Connecticut from my “Strong Obama” category to my “Weak Obama” category. In general, this represents states where the candidate has a definite lead, but not so large a lead that it is safe to ignore the state. The right set of events could potentially reduce the lead further and make the state competitive.

Having said that, it would take a pretty substantial change in the dynamics of the race to make Connecticut competitive, so that is not expected. But the slow deterioration of Obama’s margin in the state may still be something to watch.

Since Connecticut neither is nor was a “too close to call” state, the three models I track do not change:

Romney Obama
Romney Best Case 317 221
Current Status 235 303
Obama Best Case 170 368

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 6 09:33 UTC to fix link in final note.

Electoral College: Missouri Back to Swinging

One change in this update, and for the first time in more than two weeks it is a move in Obama’s direction.

The state that moves this time is indeed Missouri (10 ev), the location of the recent dustup about comments made by Todd Akin. Could some of that be spilling into the presidential poll numbers? Well, I’d be reluctant to say that quite yet. Two of the five polls in the five poll average were taken after the incident last weekend. A PPP poll on the 20th showed Romney up 10% in Missouri. Then a Rasmussen poll on the 22nd showed Obama up 1%. Now, perhaps that was real movement caused by the coverage going on in those days. Or not. The two polls are just not enough to get a good grasp on that.

The addition of the latest poll does drop Romney’s lead in the state in my average to 3.6% though, which is enough to call the state close again. While Obama is still behind here, it is now close enough that putting some effort into trying to win it doesn’t seem completely unreasonable. Having said that, despite a few scattered polls showing Obama leads, Obama has never been ahead here in the five poll average. Obama winning Missouri is unlikely absent large moves nationally pushing toward an Obama landslide.

This does improve what I call Obama’s “best case”:

Romney Obama
Romney Best Case 317 221
Current Status 235 303
Obama Best Case 170 368

Obama’s best case now actually exceeds his 2008 results (a 365 to 173 victory). This would require a sweep of all of the close states though, including the ones he is behind in at the moment. That would be Florida (29 ev), North Carolina (15 ev), Tennessee (11 ev) and Missouri (10 ev). In the five poll average at the moment, Romney is ahead by 3.5% in Florida, 0.6% in North Carolina, 4.2% in Tennessee and 3.6% in Missouri.

I’ve always said that a lead less than 5% can disappear overnight with the right events in the news, but still, it is hard to imagine at the moment the kind of news that would get Obama all four of these states.

Florida has bounced back and forth all year. It is easy to imagine it going either way.

North Carolina is more of a stretch. Obama has sometimes been in the lead there, but most of the time Romney has been. But maybe if things go very well for Obama he will manage North Carolina.

Tennessee and Missouri though? Obama has never been ahead in those states. Obama taking leads in either states would be indicative of a huge Romney collapse.

The Republican convention is starting in a few days though. So don’t expect many moves in Obama’s direction in the short term. Unless the convention is a huge disaster, it is much more likely we see more movement toward Romney from now until the Democratic Convention gets under way.

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.

Electoral College: Boom! Florida flips to Romney!

I mentioned yesterday that several states were right on the edge of tipping if things went Romney’s way. Right on cue, a couple new polls and the biggest one, Florida, flips over to Romney…

For the past few months Florida has been leaning toward Obama, but only by the slightest of margins. Now the five poll average shows a Romney lead in the state for the first time since May.

Now, I will point out that the poll that pushed the five poll average over the center line was one from Foster McCollum that some places are treating as an outlier and therefore are not including in their averages. It has Obama up by 14%. By comparison no other poll has shown a Romney lead of more than 5% since May, and the biggest lead Romney has shown in any Florida poll in the last YEAR is 7%. Nate Silver actually specifically discussed this poll and the problems with it and why some people are excluding it in a recent post.

For my models, if a poll turns up in any of my several sources, I use it. I do not do any specific outlier removal. I let the five poll average do what the five poll average does, and if you have an outlier, it will still be balanced by the other four polls in the average, and soon enough as new polls come in, it will age out of the average anyway. With this poll, Florida shows up in my average with a 2.8% Romney lead. If you excluded it, you would have an 0.2% Obama lead. Either way, the polling shows Florida is very very close and could go either way.

I do count it though, and this means the first change in the “Current” line in my model since May (the last time Florida flipped).

Romney Obama
Romney Best Case 317 221
Current Status 235 303
Obama Best Case 180 358

This puts Romney back where he was in May in terms of the electoral college results if all the states vote according to current polling. That is, Obama wins 303 to 235. As I mentioned yesterday, in terms of his best case (where he wins all the close states and wins 317 to 221) this is the best position Romney has had since February.

Obama is still ahead in this race. But Romney has been gaining on him all month. Things look a lot closer now than they did a few weeks ago. And we’re about to head into convention week for the Republicans, so we should expect a further bounce toward Romney. (Although some analysts think it will be smaller than usual since so many people have already made up their minds.)

The things to watch will be if the bounce is wide spread enough and long lasting enough to actually put Romney in the lead for the electoral college for the first time ever. And if it does, can he keep any of those gains? The convention bounces are usually ephemeral and after the hubbub from both conventions die down, you end up pretty close to where you were before them.

Ohio (18 ev), Colorado (9 ev) and Iowa (6 ev) have Obama leads less than 2% at the moment. Will Romney pick off one of them next? If he is going to, the next couple of weeks are when you would expect it to happen first. So keep watching.

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.

Electoral College: Michigan Swings Too

So, just as July was very bad for Romney, August has so far been very good for Romney. Today’s move is the state of Michigan, with 16 electoral votes:

Over the course of the last year, Michigan has polled all over the place, ranging from Polls showing Romney ahead by 5%, to polls showing Obama ahead by 18%. A huge range. More recently the five poll average had an Obama lead of 6%. Today’s update pulls that down to 4%. Since that is below my 5% threshold, Michigan once again goes into the “could go either way” category. 4% is just a very slim lead that can disappear pretty easily with the back and forth of the news cycle. This of course improves Romney’s “Best Case” in my model:

Romney Obama
Romney Best Case 317 221
Current Status 206 332
Obama Best Case 180 358

With this update, Romney’s “best case” (where he wins ALL the close states) is better than it has been since February. Over the past few weeks, he has diminished Obama’s lead in several critical states. The “current” line in my model, where each candidate wins all the states they are even slightly ahead in, has stubbornly stayed still at Obama 332 Romney 206 for almost three months now. But getting states close has to happen before states jump over the line.

There are now 9 states where Obama is ahead, but by less than a 5% margin… which can be considered very vulnerable. Of those Obama’s leads in Florida (29 ev), Ohio (18 ev), Virginia (13 ev), Colorado (9 ev) and Iowa (6 ev) are all actually less than *2%*. Those five states could really flip at almost the drop of a hat. They are right on the edge. That is 75 electoral votes right on the verge of going over to Romney’s side of the fence with a few positive news cycles for Romney. And guess what. Move those 75 votes to the other side and Romney wins 281 to 257.

Obama is still significantly ahead in the electoral college analysis at the moment. And Romney has never been ahead in this analysis. But the above serves to show just how quickly things can change. Over the last few weeks things have moved quite nicely in Romney’s direction and there are a lot of states that could easily move further.

This isn’t even close to over yet. The amount of time left is getting shorter all the time, but if Romney keeps things moving in this direction, this could get very interesting!

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.

Electoral College: Ryan’s Home State Gets Closer

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.

This is the first status change in my models since Romney announced Paul Ryan as his running mate. Appropriately enough, it is Ryan’s home state of Wisconsin moving a bit in Romney’s direction:

The five poll average in Wisconsin (10 ev) has been hovering right around the 5% Obama lead mark, which means over the past few months it has bounced back and forth between my “Lean Obama” and “Weak Obama” categories. With today’s update, it moves once again into the “Lean Obama” category, meaning I consider the state to be “in play” and Romney’s best case scenario now includes Romney winning here. The most recent poll (and the only one since the Veep announcement) actually shows Romney slightly ahead in Wisconsin. It is of course yet to be seen if the selection of Ryan will leave Wisconsin permanently in this competitive category, or even move the state into Romney’s column, or if this is just Wisconsin continuing to bounce around.

For now, Wisconsin is again classified as a swing state leaning toward Obama. This improves Romney’s “Best Case” in my models:

Romney Obama
Romney Best Case 301 237
Current Status 206 332
Obama Best Case 180 358

This puts Romney in his best position in several weeks. He is not only better off than the “even his best case loses” situation he was in at the beginning of August, but enough states are now “close” that Florida isn’t even a must win state any more. Romney has a variety of different “paths to victory” as they say. If all the close states go his way, and even if he loses a couple, he can still win.

He does have to get a bunch of these close states though, and he still has work to do. Right now there are 10 states where the margin is less than 5% in my averages. At the moment, Obama is ahead in 8 of them. The next step in making this election close and competitive is to start moving some of the states that currently lean Obama over to his side of the fence. The biggies right now are of course Florida (29), Ohio (18), Virginia (13). These are not only big in terms of the electoral college, but Obama’s lead in all three is less than 2% right now, which makes them very vulnerable.

Is this the start of a Romney bounce from the VP selection? It is really hard to tell. “Bounces” usually last a week or two. State polling is still slow enough that even in the most frequently polled states, I am looking at the last month or so usually. A short term bounce may be missed entirely, or its effects could be exaggerated and appear to last longer than they would otherwise, so looking for those short term effects in this kind of model is probably futile. Things will be somewhat unsettled from now through the end of the conventions anyway.

After that though, polling frequency will probably increase significantly, the number of people paying attention to the race will increase, and it will start getting close enough to the election that maybe, perhaps, the state of the polling starts looking like an actual predictor of November rather than just a hypothetical “if the election was today”.

Fun stuff ahead.

Electoral College: Four States Get Tighter – Romney Can Win Again!

Chart and map from the Abulsme.com 2012 Electoral College Prediction page. Both assume Obama vs Romney with no strong third party candidate 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.

Four states change categories today. In all four cases, the races look a little closer than they did. The impact is different in these cases, so lets look at each one. In order from the smallest number of electoral votes to the greatest…

South Dakota (3 ev): South Dakota has been very sparsely polled. The poll added today is only the 3rd one in the last year and only the 4th since the 2008 election. With this update the 5 poll average (which includes the 2008 election to fill out the average) drops to a Romney lead of 9.9%. This is less than the 10% threshold I use, so I move the state from “Strong Romney” to “Weak Romney”. But obviously South Dakota is nowhere close to being a competitive state. It would take a move of epic proportions to actually make South Dakota a competitive state. But the three polls this year do seem to show that Romney’s lead is a bit less than it once was.

Virginia (13 ev): Obama’s lead in the five poll average had touched 5%, moving it out of the close state category, but it didn’t last. The latest poll added to the average brings Obama’s lead back down to 4.3%. This means Virginia is once again one of the states I consider close enough that it could easily go either way depending on the events of the campaign. This will improve Romney’s “Best Case” in my models. Virginia has been close for most of the last year so it is not surprising to see it here again.

Georgia (16 ev): With two new polls added today, Romney’s lead in Georgia drops to 9.5%. Since this is below 10%, we move the state to “Weak Romney”. As with South Dakota, this is still a pretty substantial lead, and absent a major Romney collapse, it is unlikely to see Georgia actually become a competitive close state. But it is once again in the category where perhaps Romney shouldn’t take it completely for granted. Well, OK, he mostly can. But his margins do look a little bit less than they did before.

Ohio (18 ev): Along with Virginia, this is the other one that “matters” to the model. In my August 1st update the 5 poll average in Ohio jumped to 5.5%, moving it out of my swing state category. In today’s update we add a new poll… actually one that ended back on July 24th, prior to the last poll included in my last update, but which I just found (via Darryl at HorsesAss) so it counts for today*… and that new poll pulls Obama’s lead back down to 4.1%. So after the brief interlude as a blue state, Ohio is once again where it has been most of the year… with an Obama advantage, but not a huge one. So it is easy to imagine scenarios where Romney pulls it back over onto his side of the fence.

When you add up the changes in these four states, what do you get?

Well, South Dakota and Georgia really don’t change anything. For those two states, it isn’t about who will win, it is just about how much Romney will win by… which really doesn’t matter.

Virginia and Ohio on the other hand… they matter, and they are pretty big states. With both of these states on the table again, Romney’s best case improves considerably:

Romney Obama
Romney Best Case 291 247
Current Status 206 332
Obama Best Case 180 358

With this new configuration, Florida (29 ev) is a must win state. Romney can’t win without it. He could lose any one of Ohio (18 ev), North Carolina (15 ev), Virginia (13 ev) or Tennessee (11 ev), but only one of them. Colorado (9 ev), Iowa (6 ev), Nevada (6 ev) and New Hampshire are more flexible. There are a number of different “paths to victory” here now.

Now, most of these states (all but North Carolina and Tennessee) are ones where Obama has the lead at the moment, even if it is a small lead. To actually win, Romney has to actually start pulling ahead in some of these states rather than just reducing Obama’s lead.

That may be next. With a VP announcement “any time now” and the Republican Convention just around the corner, movement toward Romney should probably be expected. The questions will be: “How much movement?” and “Does it last?”.

(Spoilers: Convention bounces usually last about a week before things revert to where they were before, and VP choices only rarely end up making a difference.)

* If there is anybody who cares about the details and wonders why I didn’t do a retroactive adjustment of the historical graphs because I included an older poll that changed things, here is a long geeky explanation of my process: Basically, if you judge by the “end date” of the polls, polls come in out of order all the time. It takes pollsters a few days to compile and release their data, then sometimes it take a bit before it shows up on one of the three sources I use to collect poll data. If a new poll is within the “Last 5”, then I just treat it as current new data, regardless of the end date on the poll and if it is really the most recent to end. In this case, the poll wasn’t the newest, but it was the second newest. The last two polls had just gotten to me in reverse order, which happens pretty frequently. It is a little unusual that by the time I included it, the poll end date was about two weeks old, but it was still the second most recent poll. So it just got folded into the average normally. If I become aware of polls that are older than the Last 5, and those polls would have changed the category of any states, then I’ll fold a correction into my next update. Also while I’m giving esoteric details… The historical electoral college trend lines are based on the date new polls are included in my model (except when polls older than the most recent 5 are added), while the state polling trend chart uses the end date of the polls, which means they don’t always match exactly. So, for instance, the peak over 5% in Ohio has indeed disappeared with this new poll, instead now only peaking at 4.9%. The end dates of the polls are also used to determine just which polls are in the “Last 5” to begin with. In the case of multiple polls with the same end date, the tie breaker is the time they were added to my model.

Edit: 2012 Aug 8 08:15 to add that last parenthetical.

Edit: 2012 Aug 8 16:31 to add * note.

Edit: 2012 Aug 8 17:50 to correct one detail on the * note.

Electoral College: Indiana Gets Redder

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 change today, in a very sparsely polled state…

As far as I have found, there have only been THREE polls of Obama vs Romney in Indiana since the 2008 elections. To get my five poll average I actually include the 2004 and 2008 election results as proxies for real polls of the current candidates, just to “kick start” the state. Prior to today, the average was at an 8.7% Romney lead. That put Indiana in my “Weak Romney” category, meaning that Romney had a pretty good lead in the state, but not so much of a lead that he could take it completely for granted. With the right combination of events in the campaign, Obama could conceivably make it closer again… although winning might be a stretch.

Well, the newest poll shows a much more substantial Romney lead in the state, bringing the five poll average to a 10.1% Romney lead, enough for me to move it to the “Strong Romney” category. This means that Romney has a big enough lead here at the moment that he probably doesn’t even need to bother doing any defense in this state, and Obama would be wasting his time if he tried to contest it.

Now, since Indiana wasn’t and isn’t even remotely one of the “close” states, this does not change any of my models… Romney continues to win Indiana in all three…

Romney Obama
Romney Best Case 260 278
Current Status 206 332
Obama Best Case 180 358

…and continues to lose the election in all three too.

Electoral College: Romney’s Best Case Once Again to Lose (if the election was today)

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 moves today. A big state, an important state.

Ohio has 18 electoral votes. In the last year, Romney has never been ahead in the 5 poll average in Ohio, although there have been a smattering of individual polls showing him in the lead (the last one in June). But for most of the last year the polls have shown Ohio with only a narrow Obama lead… a less than 5% lead that put it within reach for Romney. The right things happen, good campaigning, bad news cycle for Obama, whatever, and you could see it pulling over the line to Romney.

The last few polls have been quite favorable to Obama though, and Obama’s lead in Ohio now climbs to 5.5%. So I paint the state light blue, and remove it from the list of close states that I include in Romney’s “Best Case”. Ohio may not stay here. The next poll could pull this back in Romney’s direction. But for the moment, Ohio looks like a blue state.

So where does this put us?

Romney Obama
Romney Best Case 260 278
Current Status 206 332
Obama Best Case 180 358

Yup, that is right. For the third time since I’ve been tracking*, if Romney wins all the states he is clearly ahead in, plus all the close states, including the ones Obama is ahead in… he still loses. Put another way, Obama can afford to lose every single state that is “close” in the polls, and he will still win 278 to 260.

In a quick comparison to 2008, McCain didn’t get to this bad a position in the polls until October, Romney has been there three times so far in my model. Now… each time he has subsequently improved his position… he hasn’t stayed in this kind of dire strait for too long. But rather than those being permanent moves to make the race more competitive, both times the gains Romney made have eventually eroded away, and we end up back here with his best case being to lose.

Yes, yes. We have three months to go. We have conventions coming up. Most “normal” people won’t start paying attention until the fall. Indeed. All this is true. It is not yet time to call a winner. Not by any means. But… Romney has a lot of work to do if he wants to win this. His current position just doesn’t look good at all.

(Or, as we’ve said on the podcast, Obama has to screw up badly, that will also do the trick.)

* The second time did not appear on my charts when it happened. My charts back then showed Romney with a slight lead in his best case, but this lead disappeared when I later added a Virginia poll I’d missed originally.

Edit 2012 Aug 1 15:40 to add the last parenthetical and the note about the second time Romney’s best case was to lose.

Electoral College: Wisconsin Blue Again, Romney’s Path Narrows

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 moves today:

In March Obama had a lead of over 10% in Wisconsin, but by May that was less than 5%, putting Wisconsin on our swing state list. It has bounced around the 5% line since then. Now Obama’s lead in the five poll average once again tops 5%, so Wisconsin moves to “Weak Obama” and takes the possibility of Romney winning it off the table for the moment.

Romney Obama
Romney Best Case 278 260
Current Status 206 332
Obama Best Case 180 358

Before the last couple of weeks, Romney had been steadily eroding Obama’s lead in a bunch of blue states. He kept pulling states out of the “Weak Obama” category into “Lean Obama” putting them into contention as swing states, with margins close enough that Obama’s lead could conceivably evaporate overnight if the news cycles were favorable to Romney.

Romney’s best case in my model went from losing 259-279 on May 16th* to winning 311-227 from Jun 29th to July 18th. Although none of them had yet gone over the line to his side, that was a move of 52 electoral votes into the zone where they were within reach.

The last two weeks has undone much of that… Michigan (16), Virginia (13) and Wisconsin (10) moved out of reach. This was compensated by Nevada (6) swinging again, but in terms of the net total, 33 fewer electoral votes are in the pool for Romney. This is not a good trend for Romney.

At his new best case of 278-260, Romney is only 9 electoral votes over the tie line. This means that of the close states, Florida (29), Ohio (18), North Carolina (15) and Tennessee (11) are now must win states. He could afford to lose one of Iowa (6), Nevada (6) and New Hampshire (4) and still win, but he can’t lose two of those.

If he wins every other close state, but loses Colorado (9) we would actually have 269-269, throwing things to the House. This is highly unlikely, but would be fun. (It would also likely lead to a Romney win in the House.)

Romney has been behind in the “Current” model all year long. The progress he had made in June in the “Romney Best Case” model has been evaporating. It isn’t looking great for Romney right now. We still have over three months to go though. Maybe at some point Romney will start gaining some real traction?

* At the time it looked like Romney’s best case was winning 272 to 266, but a later inclusion of a Virginia poll from April retroactively moved Virginia (13) out of swing state status and into “Weak Obama” for that date.