This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
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In terms of the categories I use to classify states based on the average of the last five polls, today was another brutal day for Obama. It just keeps getting worse. There had been some talk about the “bump” from the debate having bottomed. I’m just not quite seeing it yet. One state does move in Obama’s direction today, and I’ll get to that, but for the most part the theme today is states that had once looked pretty safe for Obama now once again looking competitive.
So lets look at the states, from smallest to largest in the electoral college:
Immediately before the debate, Obama’s lead in Wisconsin stood at 9.2%. As of today’s update, it has dropped to a 3.6% lead with 4/5 polls now from after the debate. Huge drop. This of course puts Wisconsin back in “Lean Obama” territory, meaning Obama is ahead, but by a small enough margin it is easy to imagine Romney taking the state. Wisconsin has been in this category before of course. But it is a big change from the time period right before the debate.
Michigan looks pretty similar to Wisconsin. Right before the debate Obama had a 9.0% lead. Now he has a 4.0% lead with all five polls in the average after the debate. So Michigan also returns to “Lean Obama” and I include a win here in Romney’s best case.
Does the pattern look familiar? Before the debates, Obama had a 8.6% lead in Pennsylvania. Now with all five polls in the average after the debate, Obama’s lead is down to 4.0%. So Pennsylvania also comes within reach for Romney. Yes, he is still behind. In all three of these states. But they are all close. Another bad new cycle for Obama, and seeing these states move over to Romney does not seem impossible.
The one move toward Obama today is the biggest state moving today, but Obama folks should not get too excited. The five poll average for Florida moves from a 0.2% Romney lead yesterday to a 0.2% Obama lead today. Those margins are negligible. Either way, Florida is incredibly close and could very easily go either way. Before the debates Obama had a 3.2% lead in Florida, so his drop has not been as large here as elsewhere. But in a state this big and this close, every little bit counts.
Florida is hyper close, but I have to classify it somewhere, and for the moment, for today, it goes back into the Obama column, where it has been most of the year. Just barely.
Which brings us to the new summary of the race:
|
Romney |
Obama |
| Romney Best Case |
333 |
205 |
| Current Status |
215 |
323 |
| Obama Best Case |
191 |
347 |
Romney’s best case is better than it has been all year. He beats his post-primary peak from the beginning of September, and he even passes all time peak from January. Obama’s lead in state after state has just been washed away in the aftermath of the first debate. Obama is still ahead in these states for the most part… but what once had been substantial leads are now very narrow.
This is clearly not where Obama wanted to be right now.
Now, the current status does improve for Obama compared to yesterday because of Florida flipping categories, but as I mentioned above, the margin in Florida is essentially zero. So the difference between today and yesterday isn’t really substantive on that front. Either way, Florida is a toss up at the moment.
So to try to get a little more insight, although I won’t do this every time, lets once again look at the actual current margins in all of the close states to see how they rank. With just the states he is ahead in by more than 5%, Romney starts out with 191 electoral votes. From there Romney needs 78 more electoral votes to tie, 79 to win.
Ranked in order of current polling, these are the current “close” states:
- North Carolina (15 ev): 3.5% Romney lead – 2/5 polls after debate
- Colorado (9 ev): 0.7% Romney lead – 5/5 polls after debate
- Florida (29 ev): 0.2% Obama lead – 4/5 polls after debate
- Nevada (6 ev): 1.6% Obama lead – 5/5 polls after debate
- Ohio (18 ev): 2.2% Obama lead – 5/5 polls after debate
- Virginia (13 ev): 2.2% Obama lead – 5/5 polls after debate
- Iowa (6 ev): 3.2% Obama lead – 1/5 polls after debate
- Wisconsin (10 ev): 3.6% Obama lead – 4/5 polls after debate
- Pennsylvania (20 ev): 4.0% Obama lead – 5/5 polls after debate
- Michigan (16 ev): 4.0% Obama lead – 5/5 polls after debate
That is a lot of “close” states. Before the debate, we were down to just a handful of close states. No more.
Anyway, if Romney pulls those states toward him “evenly” then a move of just over 2.2% more in his direction would get him all the states through Virginia on the list above, which would give him an over all win.
Obama is still ahead. It is worth repeating that. But this race is so much closer than it was before the first debate. And Romney has so many more “paths to victory”. The easiest route is though Florida, Ohio and Virginia. But there are now many more options available as well.
Are we now at a ceiling for Romney though? Has he picked up about all of the “persuadable” votes that he can? Is there really headroom to move higher? If not, then it still isn’t enough. Obama will win.
If the Obama folks screw up more, and the Romney folks effectively capitalize on it though… then maybe Romney ends up with more room to go up further.
The next event expected to have the potential to move numbers is of course the Vice Presidential debate… a few hours from the time I am posting this update. We probably won’t really start seeing any move from that debate in the state polls for a few days, but this is probably one of the last moments we’ll really be able to look at the poll numbers and attribute the motion directly to the first debate. Starting with the VP debate, things get more muddled again, and more factors are at play.
But looking at things right now, it is clear that the debate had a devastating short term effect. It was NOT enough to put Romney in the lead when you look at the electoral college. But it was enough to take what looked like an insurmountable lead for Obama and turn it into a tight race. The big question now is does it stay a close race, or does Obama start to claw back his previous lead. Or… of course the third option… does Romney/Ryan score some more big blows and actually start taking the lead in this race.
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.
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.
I apparently hit my daily tweet limit about 60 minutes into the 90 minute debate, so I’ll do things the old fashioned way and consolidate my thoughts in a blog post. I obviously watched a lot of the twitter reaction live, but I paused the Tivo so I could write this before listening to a lot of the talking heads on the networks and in the spin rooms.
Bottom line here is that Romney knocked this one out of the park. This was a brand new Romney that has not been visible at any time in the last year of campaigning. He was strong. He was confident. He completely controlled the conversation. He looked relaxed and comfortable. He looked at home. Dare I say it, he looked “Presidential”.
Meanwhile Obama looked uncomfortable and nervous. He played right into Romney’s narrative by actually apologizing at least once. He backed down when Romney kept telling him not to say a particular thing, with a meek resigned “OK”. He looked flustered. He looked distracted. He rambled. He did not defend well against attacks. He sat there and took it, and looked sheepish. He looked outmatched on the stage. He was not coming off well from the very first minutes, and after we were a couple of questions in, he knew it too, and it got worse as the evening progressed.
The fact checkers are going to go to town on this debate. As always, there will be a lot of inaccuracies and untruths, and probably some outright lies. There quite possibly will be a lot more of those from Romney’s side. We’ll see. But it won’t matter. As I tweeted during the debate, “A confident lie can come across better than a hesitant truth. Unfortunately.” What people will remember here is how Romney was in charge, and Obama looked harried and beaten.
Meanwhile, finally, finally, finally, we see Romney pivot to the center. This was a brand new Romney. As I also tweeted, “The Etch a Sketch finally arrives.” This was not the Romney who was pandering to all the right wing wackos. Suddenly we once again have the centrist moderate who could actually get elected in Massachusetts. He defended Romneycare! He didn’t run away from it as he has so many times in the past. He talked about bipartisanship and about working with Democrats. He tried to claim the mantle of defender of the middle class, and repudiate notions of him being an advocate for the rich.
Now, I actually suspect some of this is more like the “real” Romney, as compared to where he had to go to win the nomination. But this Romney has been missing for a long time. Suddenly, this Romney is back. And this is the Romney that could actually have a shot against Obama. The other Romney didn’t stand a chance.
And Romney scores a much needed change in the narrative. There have been comments going around for the past two weeks that whatever Romney needs, the MEDIA needs a change in the narrative to make things exciting again. The only thing the whole of the media (and yeah, probably me too) are uncontroversially and in 100% agreement on their bias about, is the bias toward the dramatic and the interesting rather than the boring and predictable. Walking to a clear Obama win is boring. A Romney comeback and surge is exciting. But a seed is still needed to go there. This debate will provide that seed.
For at least a few days, and quite likely straight through to the next Presidential debate in 13 days absent another big flub from Romney, or a major news event, the chatter will be all about Romney changing the momentum and about if Obama can find a way to get his mojo back for the second debate. Suddenly, for the first time this whole election cycle, Obama will look like he is on the defensive.
This was a very bad night for Obama.
Now, will it make any difference at all in the polls? In my Electoral College Analysis?
Maybe. My gut though is that the Political Scientists are pretty much right though, and with the exception of something much more dramatic than what we saw tonight, debates in the end don’t matter very much. The vast majority of the electorate has already made up their mind. There are really very few in the center who are truly undecided. And of those only a small portion will make up their minds based on a debate performance. Having said that, the nature of the spin cycle will move the polls some. Maybe just a few points. But some.
Now, in order to actually win, Romney needs a big move toward him. Not a little one. But even a relatively small move will start moving some states where Obama is ahead by more than 5% back into the zone where they are close. And it might pull a few states that are just leaning Obama over the line to where they are leaning Romney. That will improve Romney’s position in my model, but won’t actually put him ahead. Not for a small move anyway. Not for just a 2% or 3% shift. He would need a bigger move than that.
I don’t think this debate can give him that. But if this “new Romney” keeps showing up, and keeps hitting it out of the park, and this uncertain, tired looking Obama keeps showing up, then that will just build on top of whatever small gain Romney gets directly from this debate.
And then we could have a real race again.
On Curmudgeon’s Corner Ivan and I had said many times that Romney may not be able to do anything specifically to win this race, but Obama can certainly lose it if he screws up. Obama screwed up tonight. And on top of that Romney was on fire. If they had both been at their best it would have been a draw. But Romney ran the table tonight, and Obama looked like he wanted to go home.
This may just be the opening Romney needs. It may not be enough. It *probably* won’t be enough. My guess is that at best it will put Romney back where he was right after the Republican convention… which was still losing, just not by as much. Climbing past that point to win over states where Obama is currently ahead by huge margins is not going to be easy. I think Romney will hit a wall at about the same places he has peaked before.
But, but, it gives him a much needed opening.
 
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.
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