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Electoral College: Pennsylvania flips, Rubio now ahead of Clinton!!

This is probably the most significant update I’ve posted since launching this analysis in November. For the first time, one of the Republicans with significant amounts of polling is actually leading Clinton. Specifically, in Clinton vs Rubio, the “expected result” where each candidate wins all the states where they currently lead in my polling average, is now Clinton 268 to Rubio 270. That is a narrow win, but that is a win.

Since the spring, almost every update has been bad news for Clinton, but the collapse here has been more rapid than that. As recently as July, Clinton was leading Rubio by 156 electoral votes in my analysis. In less than three months, this lead completely evaporated. It is a long way until the election still. And some deterioration was expected. But this trend for Clinton is dramatic. Has she reached the bottom yet? Absent additional major negative revelations, she must be close to a floor… but there is no slowing of this trend visible yet. Things just get worse and worse for Clinton. (At least vs Rubio and Bush… for other opponents, either the trend is less dramatic, or there is just not enough recent state level polling data to draw good conclusions yet.)

Clinton vs Rubio

Lets look into the details. First of all, Pennsylvania:

chart-98

Pennsylvania has not been as heavily polled as some other states, the poll average still covers 6.6 months, but the trend here resembles the trend in many other states, with Clinton losing ground with almost every poll. With this last poll, the average was pulled over to Rubio’s side of the center line. Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes was enough to make Rubio the overall winner. This was the big change that caused today’s headline.

Between Pennsylvania’s move, and a smaller move in Ohio that didn’t cross category lines, the tipping point of course moved too:

chart-99

A year ago the tipping point was at 8.8% in Clinton’s favor. It is now Rubio by 0.1%. That is a razor thin margin, but it is a Rubio win.

Which brings us to the fact that there actually was one positive thing for Clinton in the latest Clinton vs Rubio results. Florida.

chart-100

The poll average in Florida actually moves a little toward Clinton with the latest poll, bringing it to a 4.6% Rubio lead. This once again puts Florida in the “could go either way” category based on my classifications, and so improves Clinton’s best case.

With all of these changes, here is the new “bubble”:

chart-101

One of the most surprising things about this chart, especially compared to how things looked a year ago, is just the height of that bubble… the range of possible outcomes that are reasonable given the current state of polling. Right now the summary looks like this:

Screen Shot 2015-10-08 at 21.31.16072

And the state spectrum:

Screen Shot 2015-10-08 at 21.38.26406

There are now TEN states where the polling is close. 136 electoral votes. Everything from Clinton winning by 156 to Rubio winning by 116 is plausible given only minor moves in the polls. This is a huge range of possible outcomes here.

Right now, the tipping point is right smack in the middle of those states, five on each side of the line… with a margin in the tipping point state of only 0.1% and Rubio ahead by only TWO electoral votes. The only way this could be closer is if we were actually looking at a 269-269 tie.

Right now, 13 months from the election, Clinton vs Rubio is as close to an even race as you could possibly imagine. But with the huge number of close states, it is “close” in the sense of too close to call, but we can’t rule out the possibilities of either candidate winning by a significant margin! There are just too many states that could go either way. (Having said that, results closer to the middle of the range are indeed more likely than those at the edges. Having ALL the close states go to one candidate or the other is extremely unlikely.)

A lot can and will happen in the next year… it is certainly possible that neither of these two candidates end up as the nominees. But this can’t be where Clinton hoped to be at this point. She wanted to be seen as not just inevitable for the Democratic nomination, but with a very healthy lead in the general election.

That is not what is happening.

The question now is if Rubio is able to start strengthening this into a clear lead, instead of just a toss up. Can he start flipping Ohio? New Hampshire? Michigan? If current trends continue, it would not be surprising…

Clinton vs Bush

Although the big news was in Clinton vs Rubio, there was also a change in Clinton vs Bush. It also favored the Republican.

chart-102

Bush is a bit behind Rubio in his Pennsylvania polling against Clinton, but it has also been consistently improving for months. With today’s new poll, Clinton’s lead drops to 2.4%, putting Pennsylvania in the swing state category, and improving Bush’s best case.

chart-103

Pennsylvania moving into the realm of the possible is that spike in the upper right. Bush’s best case is now to win by 104 electoral votes. The range of possibilities isn’t quite as wide as with Rubio, but at 101 electoral votes in play, it is still pretty wide.

None of this is a prediction of what will happen in November 2016. We are still too far away for that. It is just a snapshot of where we are today.

397.1 days until polls start to close. A lot of drama yet to come in those days.

Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. All of the charts and graphs seen here are from that site. Graphs, charts and raw data can be found there for the race nationally and in each state for every candidate combination that has been polled at the state level. In addition, comparisons of the best polled candidate combinations both nationally and each in each state are available. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for specific poll details as I add them. And like Election Graphs on Facebook!

Electoral College: Clinton not even close to Bush in Florida now either

Another day, another state moving away from Clinton. This time it is Florida moving toward Bush:

chart-95

In a pattern remarkably similar to Rubio’s, Bush has consistently been improving against Clinton in Florida for over a year. After a bit of a pause for a few months, that trend has now accelerated. As of the last poll the average goes to Bush +5.8%. This takes Florida out of the “close” category and out of what I consider to be Clinton’s “best case”.

chart-96

Florida slipping out of Clinton’s reach is that notch in the bottom right of the “bubble” above. Clinton’s best case is now worse for her than her WORST case was back in June 2014. Although I predicted back in November that Clinton was probably at her high water mark and would fall from there, the degree of the fall has been dramatic. The open question is of course, “When does the bleeding stop?”. Right now Clinton is still ahead, although it is much closer than it once looked. But she is only a state or two away from actually being behind. (At least against Bush and Rubio.)

403.4 days until polls start to close on Election 2016.

Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. All of the charts and graphs seen here are from that site. Graphs, charts and raw data can be found there for the race nationally and in each state for every candidate combination that has been polled at the state level. In addition, comparisons of the best polled candidate combinations both nationally and each in each state are available. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for specific poll details as I add them.

Electoral College: Clinton not even close to Rubio in Florida any more, slips against Bush too

Clinton’s deterioration against the Republican field continues. There are two changes of note today, both show Republicans getting stronger against Clinton.

Clinton vs Rubio

chart-81

Clinton has now not been ahead in a Clinton vs Rubio poll in Florida since June. And four of the five polls in the average show Rubio leads of 5% or more. With the latest one of these polls, my poll average now shows Rubio’s lead in Florida as 5.6%. That takes Florida out of the “close state” category. So Clinton’s “best case” no longer includes winning Florida.

The scale of this collapse in Florida is particularly striking. As recently as last October, Clinton had a greater than 10% lead against Rubio in Florida. This put Florida in the “Solid Clinton” category. But over the course of the last year, that lead evaporated. And now Rubio is not just ahead, but significantly ahead. Now, this chart itself is a perfect example of how much things can change in a year. We are too far away for election day for this to be predictive of what would actually happen in Florida in a Clinton vs Rubio race next year. But this still looks very bad for Clinton.

The new situation summary for Clinton looks like this:

Screen Shot 2015-09-23 at 14.37.55120

Clinton is still ahead… barely. But it is looking much more like a toss up. A tipping point of 2.4% could literally disappear overnight with the right events happening in the campaign. As recently as March, Rubio’s best case was to lose by 96 electoral votes. Now Clinton vs Rubio is too close to make a confident prediction, and even Clinton’s best case is deteriorating.

Florida is a big state, Florida is important. Clinton being this far behind in Florida is a significant issue for Clinton. Clinton doesn’t NEED Florida to win, but the paths without it are much tighter.

Clinton vs Bush

chart-83

The latest results in Michigan for Clinton vs Bush don’t change the category of the state. It was “Weak Clinton” before the latest poll, and is “Weak Clinton” after the poll. But the move from Clinton by 4.2% to Clinton by 2.2% moved Michigan past several other states when you order the states by Clinton vs Bush margin, including moving past Ohio, which had been the tipping point state. Without Michigan to the left of Ohio, the tipping point moved from Clinton by 3.8% in Ohio, to Clinton by 2.4% in North Carolina.

Screen Shot 2015-09-23 at 14.54.26348

Only four very close states, all with margins at 2.4% or less, need to flip to put Bush in the lead. In terms of tipping point, Clinton vs Bush is now tied with Clinton vs Rubio as the two of the five best polled candidate pairs that do the best against Clinton.

chart-84

(Walker has of course now dropped out, he will likely be replaced in this comparison chart soon.)

When looking at the tipping point across these five candidate matches, while all but Huckabee made significant gains over Clinton in the last year, it is clear that in the last few months only Rubio and Bush have continued that movement in the last few months… but they have moved things significantly. The picture for the general election is starting to look very different depending on which Republican is up against Clinton.

What about Trump? Carson? Fiorina? Or what about Sanders and Biden? The bottom line is that compared to the candidates above, they simply have not been considered “serious candidates” for long enough to have a significant amount of state level polling. In my ranking of the best polled candidate combinations, Clinton vs Fiorina is #21, Clinton vs Carson is #22, Clinton vs Trump is #23. The highest combination with Sanders is #9. The highest with Biden is #10. You can look at these combinations if you want, but frankly there simply has not been enough polling yet on the state level to get a good picture of what those races really would look like, so interpret anything you see there with extreme caution.

412.4 days until polls start to close.

Note: This post is an update based on the data on ElectionGraphs.com. All of the charts and graphs seen here are from that site. Graphs, charts and raw data can be found there for the race nationally and in each state for every candidate combination that has been polled at the state level. In addition, comparisons of the best polled candidate combinations both nationally and each in each state are available. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for specific poll details as I add them.

Electoral College: Bush joins Rubio in the “might beat Clinton” club, Clinton margins shrink

A bunch of changes today prompted by the latest Quinnipiac Swing State Poll. The TL;DR is that Clinton’s situation continues to deteriorate.

The Republicans are gaining on her, despite any talk myself or others have been doing about the Trump phenomenon hurting Republicans more generically. If that is going to happen, there is no good evidence of it yet, at least in state level general election polling.

Specifically, Rubio and Bush are nipping at Clinton’s heels. In today’s update, Bush’s best case moves into winning territory, Rubio’s already winning best case gets even better, both candidates improve their “expected” results and the tipping points are getting very close.

To actually win at this point, Rubio only needs to hold the states he already leads and flip North Carolina (Clinton +0.4%) and Pennsylvania (Clinton +2.4%). Bush has to flip a few states that are already leaning Rubio as well, but at this point he has his tipping point down to only a 3.8% Clinton lead. Easily within the reach of a campaign that goes his way.

Now the details for those who want them.

Clinton vs Rubio

Rubio moves states into better categories for him in Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio. A quick look at all three charts:

chart (44)

chart (45)

chart (46)

Now, an argument could be made that some of these new data points look like outliers. But we don’t know until we have follow up polls, and that is why we use poll averages and not single polls anyway, so we include the polls in the average and just see what that does.

Florida (29 ev) flips from Weak Clinton to Weak Rubio, improving Rubio’s expected result to Clinton 299 to Rubio 239. This is still a 60 point electoral point loss, but this is the best “expected case” we have seen on any Republican with a significant amount of state level polling against Clinton.

Meanwhile, with both Pennsylvania (20 ev) and Ohio (18 ev) moving from Strong Clinton to Weak Clinton, a very large chunk of electoral votes gets added into the “possible pick up” category for Rubio’s best case, which is now Clinton 227, Rubio 311… an 84 electoral vote WIN for Rubio. This is also the best “best case” we have seen for any significantly polled Republican so far.

This is what Rubio’s “bubble” looks like now:

chart (47)

Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio are huge electoral prizes. They make a massive difference on these charts. With a Republican in the lead in Florida, and competitive in Pennsylvania and Ohio, it really is a whole different ball game.

chart (48)

This is the Clinton vs Rubio map right now. With a map like this, Clinton still wins, but it is very very close, and the slightest issue would give the election to Rubio.

Clinton vs Bush

Looking at the Bush charts in FL/PA/OH:

chart (49)

chart (50)

chart (51)

Bush also flips Florida. This improves Bush’s expected case to Clinton 314, Bush 224. This is a 90 electoral vote loss, but better than Bush has looked since late 2013.

And Bush also moves Ohio from Strong Clinton to Weak Clinton. Unlike Rubio though, he does not quite bring Pennsylvania into this category. The trend is there. Pennsylvania has been moving toward Bush all year. But Clinton’s lead is still over 5%. Perhaps that will change with the next poll. But Ohio by itself is enough to improve Bush’s best case to Clinton 253, Bush 285, which is a 32 electoral vote Bush WIN.

So we get Bush’s new bubble:

chart (52)

And his new map:

chart (53)

At this point, Clinton vs Bush and Clinton vs Rubio are the only two of the five best polled candidate pairs where the Republicans have a winning best case. But are the trends heading there for anybody else? Lets take a quick look.

Comparisons

Sometimes the national charts can give good comparative insight, but this time since we’ve been concentrating on FL/PA/OH, lets just look at those comparisons for now.

chart (54)

chart (55)

chart (56)

So just at a glance, in Ohio and Pennsylvania all or most Republicans are improving against Clinton. They almost seem to be moving as a bunch. (Except maybe Huckabee.)

But it looks different in Florida. In Florida, Rubio and Bush have separated themselves from the rest of the crowd. They are the only two of these five making Florida competitive. The others are just wandering around in Strong Clinton territory, with no clear trend between them.

It is very hard to map a Republican win without Florida. Possible maybe, but very hard. The trends are clearly going toward the Republicans in many states. For Rubio and Bush, Florida is doing the same. If the general trend against Clinton continues, we should start seeing other candidates gain ground in Florida too, but it isn’t in evidence yet.

But overall, Clinton is losing ground, and the race is getting closer.

445.1 days until polls start to close.

Note: This post is an update based on the data on my 2016 Electoral College Analysis Site. All of the charts and graphs seen here are from that site. Graphs, charts and raw data can be found there for the race nationally and in each state for every candidate combination that has been polled at the state level. In addition, comparisons of the best polled candidate combinations both nationally and each in each state are available. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for specific poll details as I add them.

Electoral College: Clinton continues to weaken (mostly)

Today’s update (which included a Detroit News poll in MI and Quinnipiac polls in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania) brings seven changes of note to the five best polled candidate pairs. Plus Clinton vs Bush once again takes the top spot as the best polled candidate pair, but there isn’t much else to say about that. As usual, click on any of the charts for more details from election2016.abulsme.com or follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for detailed poll information as I add it.

Tipping Point Moves

Five of those seven changes are tipping point changes. (Reminder: The tipping point is the margin in the state that would put the winning candidate “over the top” in the electoral college.) The tipping point changed for all five of the candidate pairs, so instead of looking at them individually, lets look at the comparison:

chart (27)

Looking both at the most recent change, and also at the change over the last three months, Bush, Paul, Christie and Rubio have all improved vs Clinton. Only Huckabee’s situation has worsened. For the candidates that are improving, the movement seems to be accelerating.

Bush’s tipping point specifically is down to only 5.6%. This still translates into a “Strong” lead for Clinton according to the categories I have defined, but we’re getting pretty close to the 5.0% boundary. Just a few more good polls for Bush in the right states, and the tipping point could move into the “Weak Clinton” zone, meaning that if Bush managed to win all of the close states (including the ones where Clinton is a little ahead) he would win. At that point, we would have an actual competitive race. Clinton would still be ahead, but a Bush win would be within the realm of reasonable possibility.

Clinton vs Bush

In addition to the tipping point changes, a couple of states changed categories. First up, Bush in Florida.

chart (28)

Florida moves from just barely Bush, to just barely Clinton. Bottom line, in this paring, Florida is close. Right now this is true for only Bush and Rubio. The other three Republican candidates in the top five polled pairs trail Clinton badly:

chart (29)

For Bush though, for the moment, Florida slips off the list of states he is ahead in, and his “expected case” drops:

chart (30)

This brings Bush’s “expected” result back to Clinton 347 to Bush 191, a 156 electoral vote loss. (This is the same margin at the moment as Huckabee, Christie and Rubio… only Paul differs right now, losing by only 138 electoral votes because unlike the others, Paul is ahead in Colorado.)

Clinton vs Paul

The other category change is that in Clinton vs Paul, Ohio moves from Strong Clinton to Weak Clinton:

chart (31)

The last two polls actually show Paul ahead in Ohio. The average, which covers almost 8 months of polls at the moment, isn’t there yet, but it is moving in Paul’s direction. Ohio is looking closer and closer.

And that isn’t just Paul. If we do the comparison in Ohio, we see this movement is broader:

chart (32)

Once again, everybody except Huckabee is improving against Clinton. Or perhaps it would be better to say that Clinton is falling. Either way, Ohio is looking closer than it did. Paul is the first of these five candidates to move Ohio into the “potential win” category according to my classifications, but Bush isn’t far behind.

For Paul, this improves his “best case” where we give him all of the states he is ahead in, plus all the states where Clinton’s lead is less than 5%:

chart (33)

In his “best case” Paul now only loses to Clinton by 52 electoral votes. This is Paul’s best best case since I officially launched this analysis after the November election.

Pennsylvania

The polls this time around in Michigan didn’t change anything, but the ones in Pennsylvania are worth mentioning even though there were no category changes for any of the five candidate pairs.

Brandon Finnigan (@ConArtCritic) of the Ace of Spades HQ Decision Desk election tracking site tweets constantly about how Republicans should be targeting Pennsylvania as the keystone (get it?) to their election strategy. In his recent article “How The GOP Could Win Pennsylvania” he outlines the argument. So lets look at how the state is going given current polling. (Which of course will change a lot before we get to the election.)

Moves in Pennsylvania did contribute to some of the tipping point changes we talked about today, and when we look at Pennsylvania, we are seeing what looks like clear movement toward the Republicans, even though it isn’t quite switching categories yet:

chart (34)

All five candidates have improved against Clinton in the last three months, some of them by large margins. Paul went from down by 14.6% in March, to down by only 6.2% right now. That is a huge move!

Now, this probably isn’t because any of the candidates are specifically targeting Pennsylvania at this point, but more likely just a reflection of Clinton’s overall decline nationally. None of the candidates have made it close in my poll averages yet, but Clinton’s margins have been narrowing rapidly.

Finnigan is certainly right that if the Republicans can make Pennsylvania close, let alone turn it red, this probably means an overall Republican victory in the electoral college, because whatever they did that could flip Pennsylvania would almost certainly flip other blue states that currently are closer than Pennsylvania as well.

Now, does that mean targeting Pennsylvania specifically rather than going after those closer states first is the best strategy? I don’t know.

For Bush for instance, if you start with the states he is already ahead in and then see which states he would need to flip to win, you get this list (in order by how far behind Bush is right now in my poll averages):

  • Florida – 29 EV – Clinton ahead by 0.6%
  • New Hampshire – 4 EV – Clinton ahead by 1.2%
  • North Carolina – 15 EV – Clinton ahead by 2.9%
  • Iowa – 6 EV – Clinton ahead by 3.2%
  • Virginia – 13 EC – Clinton ahead by 3.6%
  • Colorado – 9 EV – Clinton ahead by 4.2%
  • Ohio – 18 EV – Clinton ahead by 5.6%

At that point Bush would have enough electoral votes to win. To get to Pennsylvania on this list, you’d have to also go past Minnesota, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Then Pennsylvania.

Would it be better to concentrate directly on the seven states above? Or is jumping forward to Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes somehow an easier path? If Pennsylvania is specifically more vulnerable due to some of the factors Finnigan mentions, then maybe.

I think Finnigan’s point is broader than that though. It isn’t that Pennsylvania is a better target than Ohio or Colorado, although maybe it is. It is more that if the Republicans took Pennsylvania seriously, and did everything they needed to do to win Pennsylvania, then those same things could be applied more broadly, and a lot of other states would move too, and the Republicans would not just win, but win clearly, not a “just barely” sort of win like they got in 2000 and 2004.

The movement we’re seeing so far does show that Pennsylvania is movable. Can it move enough to make it red? I have my doubts absent the Democratic candidate simply collapsing on a nationwide basis. But Pennsylvania might be worth watching anyway…

Bottom Line

Aside from Florida moving her direction but remaining pretty close, and Huckabee generally not doing well, Clinton seems to be continuing to weaken against most Republicans. This reflects the campaign beginning to get under way in earnest, and the name recognition gap slowly diminishing. The question is where this trend ends. After a few debates happen, do we reach some sort of steady state Clinton lead a bit narrower than it is today, or do the Republicans continue to gain on her until we really have a race that could go either way, or even with Republicans in the lead?

As usual, stay tuned. 507 days to go!

Note: This post is an update based on the data on my 2016 Electoral College Analysis Site. All of the charts and graphs seen here are from that site. Graphs, charts and raw data can be found there for the race nationally and in each state for every candidate combination that has been polled at the state level. In addition, comparisons of the best polled candidate combinations both nationally and each in each state are available. All charts above are clickable to go to the current version of the detail page the chart is from, which may contain more up to date information than the snapshots on this page, which were current as of the time of this post. Follow @ElecCollPolls on Twitter for specific poll details as I add them.

Edit 23:07 UTC to add some additional links to the election site and Twitter.

Electoral College: Bush pulls ahead of Clinton in Florida

On Thursday I mentioned that if the current trend continued, new polls would push Bush into the lead in Florida and North Carolina before long. Well, only a couple days later, we have yet to see it in North Carolina, but we have that new poll in Florida.

chart-10

Florida is big (29 EV), so this of course makes a big difference on the national trend chart:

chart-11

Will more states start flipping in Bush’s direction? Keep your eyes out over the next few months, the campaign is slowly getting into gear!

In the meantime, Clinton vs Bush looks like this:

Screen Shot 2015-02-07 at 17.59.34881

And we have just a tint of red down in Florida…

chart-12

(Three electoral college posts from me in one week! Hopefully this isn’t the new normal quite yet…)

Electoral College: Clinton vs Bush now “best polled” combination for 2016

Some new polling was added today from PPP in North Carolina. It didn’t change the status of any state for any of the top five “best polled” candidates, nor did it change the tipping points for any of those. However, it did move Clinton vs Bush ahead of Clinton vs Paul in the metric I use to measure how good the polling is for the various candidate combinations. This means that Clinton vs Bush is now the default view when you go to election2016.abulsme.com.

Now, this does NOT necessarily mean that Clinton and Bush are the front runners in their respective primary races… although there is a strong argument that they are… it just means that there is currently better state by state polling data for this particular combination than any of the others.

Given this, I thought a quick overview of the Clinton vs Bush combination was in order.

Screen Shot 2015-02-05 at 02.58.16706

So, as with all the other “top five” Republicans against Clinton, Bush is behind, even in the “Best Case” where you give him all of Clinton’s weak states.

chart-5

But, unlike some of the others, Bush’s “best case” has been steadily improving since last spring.

And while it hasn’t happened yet, there are two states right on the verge of flipping and improving his expected case as well…

chart-6

Florida, with 29 electoral votes, considered by many a “must win” for any Republican path to victory, has been trending strongly away from Clinton and toward Bush since bottoming out in the first part of 2014. Currently Clinton’s lead is 0.4% in my average. One more good poll for Bush, and Florida will move into his column.

chart-7

Ditto with North Carolina with 15 electoral votes, where Clinton’s lead is a minuscule 0.2%. Both these states are really neck and neck, but the trend has been in Bush’s direction in both.

Do not be surprised if these flip and Bush’s “expected case” starts moving in his direction soon.

Of course, to actually win, a lot of states need to move. The “tipping point” measures this.

chart-8

No significant movement here recently. Does this move Bush isn’t moving all the states he needs to? Maybe. But more likely, there just hasn’t been much new polling in the states near Bush’s current tipping point.

To start seeing movement in the tipping point for Clinton vs Bush, we need some new polls in states like New Hampshire (last poll in November), Wisconsin (last poll in April), Virginia (last poll in March), Minnesota (last poll in June) or Colorado (last poll in July).

The age of the polls in these states shows just how far away we still are from having a large enough volume of state level polling to have a good “real time responsive” sort of take on the situation. At this stage, polling is still slow and sparse in most states, and you have to interpret things accordingly.

Now, you can’t give a summary without the traditional map. So here is the current Clinton vs Bush map…

chart-9

And finally, here is how that looks as a spectrum of the states broken down into the various classifications:

Screen Shot 2015-02-05 at 03.32.45313

So there is our new “best polled” candidate combination… for the moment…

Electoral College: Nov 10 18:00 UTC – Florida finally called – For Obama – 56 of 56!

Just before 18:00 UTC today, Florida was finally “called” for Obama. Absent any faithless electors, this makes the final electoral college results Obama 332, Romney 206.

As those of you following my electoral college tracking this year know, not only was that the final state of my “Current” line on election day, but it is also by far the most common location of the race in the daily updates covering the whole year. As I’d said quite a few times, 332-206 just seemed to be where this race “wanted” to be. Sometimes events would move the polls slightly further in Obama’s direction, sometimes slightly further in Romney’s direction, but 332-206 seemed to attract the race like a magnet, and things would revert back to this state. When things “reverted to the mean” this is where they went.

Also of course, looking at the daily updates going back to January, Romney was NEVER ahead in this electoral college analysis… or any other electoral college analysis. Aside from a few days in October where Romney was threatening to take the lead (but never did) the question was never if Obama would win, but rather by how much. But yet reports are that the Romney campaign, and Romney himself, were shocked by the fact that they lost. They really truly did not believe the overwhelming consensus from the pollsters.

I guess to some degree to run a national campaign like this you HAVE to make yourself think you are winning, but still…

One final point. There are quite a few more complicated models out there doing electoral college analysis. They provide potentially more detail and more kinds of insight than mine, but part of my point in doing this exercise is that even a very simple “last five poll” average can get you very good results. The marginal value from added complexity doesn’t really seem to get you that much more. This isn’t to say that there isn’t value in that complexity. There is. And if I had more time, I’d certainly be tempted to make a more complex method of analysis myself.

But the simple average still got 56 out of 56 right. (That would be the 50 states plus DC, plus the congressional districts in Maine and Nebraska.)

That ain’t bad.

Note added Nov 11 00:25 UTC: I have some final clean up to do on it yet, but the archival wiki page with all the information from this general election season is here. The earlier wiki archiving the primary season is here.

Edit Nov 11 00:34 to change some awkward wording.

Electoral College: Final Update! Final surge for Obama!

This was supposed to be a day where not much would happen in the polls, the campaign is after all over, right? But my final scan of the polls showed a flurry of polls moving things toward Obama in some key states. Now, a lot of these last polls are internet tracking polls, which some folks question and don’t include in their averages at all. But I have always included them.

As usual, I’ll start by looking at the three states changing status today, and then we’ll take one final look at all the swing states.

For most of the last month Wisconsin has seen an Obama lead of less than 5%. A new poll with a 7% lead for Obama gets added in my last update, and pushes the five poll average up above 5% to 5.3%. So Wisconsin gets pulled out of the list of states that Romney could even conceivably win. There won’t have been a 5% move in the last day or two, and even if the polls were very wrong, they won’t be THAT far wrong.

Ohio, Ohio, Ohio! All the talk the last few weeks (if not most of the last few months) has been about Ohio. But look at that trend. After bottoming in the middle part of October… a bottom which by the way was still a lead… Obama has been gaining ground day after day for the last two and a half weeks. Today there were a couple of new polls showing Obama with really big leads in Ohio. Those MIGHT be outliers. We’ll know when the votes are counted. But with or without those new polls today, the trend is undeniable. Obama has been ahead in Ohio all along, and the last few weeks has been increasing his lead.

Perhaps Romney’s decision to throw resources into Pennsylvania and Michigan reflect the fact he knew he had already lost Ohio. There are still ways to win without Ohio, but they are much harder.

Ohio had been on one of Romney’s best paths to victory. It seems to have slipped away. With today’s update the five poll average jumps to a 5.5% Obama lead. I no longer include the possibility of Romney winning Ohio in his best case.

Florida has been bouncing back and forth. I have said each time that it was essentially too close to call, and we would know who wins once the votes are counted. Today I added some new polls, some of which show a substantial Obama lead. As with Ohio, these MAY be outliers. But they do look like possible movement. The five poll average not only goes above the line, but actually jumps to the highest point it has been since the 1st debate… up to a 2.3% Obama advantage. This might… MIGHT… actually represent real movement.

By my five poll averages, Florida is now the second closest state. (The first is North Carolina, where Romney only holds a 1.4% lead.) So it could go either way. It EASILY could. But right now, at the very end, the polls seem to give the advantage to Obama.

The votes start getting counted in the eastern part of Florida in less than two hours. I guess we’ll know soon enough.

But, Florida flipping at the very last moment to Lean Obama, even if it really is still too close to call, does make me smile, because when we look at the map and summary…

Romney Obama
Romney Best Case 310 228
Current Status 206 332
Obama Best Case 190 348

YES! That is right, 332-206 is back! As I tweeted a little while ago, “It is as if months and months of campaigning on both sides changed absolutely nothing…”

All year long, the “Current Status” of my five poll average has bounced around, but it has always returned to an Obama victory with a 332-206 margin. It has been like a magnet. It is as if this is where this race has “wanted” to be. This is the natural location of public opinion at the moment, with events temporarily pushing things one way or another, but this being the “normal” state that things return to.

Now, a few of the states are close. Nine states and two congressional districts have margins less than 5% at the moment. Four states have margins less than 2.5%. That would be North Carolina, Florida, Colorado and Iowa. If we see deviations from the “Current Status” those are the four states most likely to flip. And they very well might.

But time is running out, so let me jump to the summary of the close states as they stand in my five poll average today.

With the areas he is ahead by more than 5% in, Romney starts out at 190 electoral votes. Then we have the areas he is ahead in:

  • Nebraska 2nd (1): 3.8% Romney lead
  • North Carolina (15): 1.4% Romney lead

That gets Romney to 206 electoral votes. That is still 63 electoral votes short! So let’s start pulling in states in order of how far behind Romney is (and therefore how likely he is to flip them):

  • Iowa (6): 2.0% Obama lead
  • Florida (29): 2.3% Obama lead
  • Colorado (9): 2.4% Obama lead
  • New Hampshire (4): 2.8% Obama lead
  • Maine 2nd (1): 2.8% Obama lead
  • Virginia (13): 3.6% Obama lead
  • Michigan (16): 4.5% Obama lead

Now, if Romney does win Michigan, he can then afford to lose Virginia and Maine’s 2nd. So the “easiest” path to victory for Romney is now to keep Nebraska’s 2nd and North Carolina, then pull out wins in Iowa, Florida, Colorado, New Hampshire and Michigan.

But Romney is behind by 4.5% in Michigan right now. That looks like an incredibly unlikely outline unless all the polls are not just wrong, but outrageously wrong.

If Romney fails to get Michigan, what’s left of the close states are:

  • Pennsylvania (20): 4.8% Obama lead
  • Nevada (6): 4.8% Obama lead

Not much there to work with, unless, again, the polls are all just completely wrong.

So one last look at the chart of the margin in the tipping point state (which is now Michigan):

The trend toward Obama is unambiguous. The election is over. Romney won’t “move the polls” now. Romney’s only hope is that the polls were just very very wrong. At this point, for Romney to be ahead, the polls have to be showing a consistent 4.5% bias toward Obama. Not just specific pollsters, but some sort of bias that affected all the pollsters, left right and center.

This seems incredibly unlikely.

We’ll see in a few hours of course. I’ll bet that the pollsters are right though. This is an Obama win. The only question is how late in the evening things go before that is obvious even to the people who don’t want to believe it.

As I type this, the first polls close in less than 15 minutes. Those are only parts of states. The first full polls close in just over an hour, at 0:00 UTC (7 PM Eastern, 4 PM Pacific). That batch of states includes Virginia, the first close state to start reporting results.

If Romney looks like he is winning Virginia, then his odds for winning go up considerably. If Romney is losing Virginia, as the polls would predict, then it will confirm that things are heading as expected toward an Obama victory.

People have asked me a few times for my actual prediction for the race. Technically speaking the way I have organized the models I show here, all it really says is that Obama is ahead, but Romney can still win if he sweeps all the close states.

But I think it should be obvious the result I am predicting. It has been showing up in my model all year long.

My prediction: Obama wins 332 to 206.

I won’t be surprised if some of North Carolina, Florida, Colorado and Iowa go differently than my five poll average. But 332 to 206 is my prediction at the moment. And Florida, Colorado and Iowa are not enough to change the results, so I predict an Obama victory regardless.

Now it is time to just sit back and wait for the returns to come in.

I will be here and posting updates for most of the evening. My wife does need to go to the airport tonight, but we don’t need to leave home until 10 PM Pacific (1 AM Eastern). I am guessing the result will be obvious by then.

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: The Penultimate Update

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So looking at the tipping point margin graph:

The race has been stable for the last week.

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

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

…just pretty unlikely.

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

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

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

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

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

Note: Chart and map from the Abulsme.com 2012 Electoral College Prediction page. Both assume Obama vs Romney with no strong third party candidate and show polling as it currently exists. Things will change before election day. On the map red is Romney, blue is Obama, gold states are too close to call. Lines on the chart represent how many more electoral votes a candidate would have