This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
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Today’s update includes Wisconsin, Virginia and Florida all changing categories, all moving in Obama’s direction. But two of these three states need to have asterisks next to the status change, and one of them needs a big asterisk. So lets look at them:
We’re looking only at the last few weeks in these state trend charts now since the election is so close and there is so much polling. Of the three states moving today, Wisconsin looks the most like a real bonafide movement. There is a lot of spread in the polls, but this looks like a real trend toward Obama over the last few weeks. The five poll average goes over 5% today, to 6.3%, so I take it out of the “Lean Obama” category where I consider Romney winning the state to be possible.
Virginia is the state that requires the big huge asterisk. As I mentioned yesterday, there is a big ugly outlier point currently in Virginia. According to the process I defined months ago, it gets included. I won’t second guess that process to remove it based on my own judgement rather than any hard or fast rule which was determined BEFORE seeing the data. (I may change the inclusion rules in 2016 though.) In any case, I will however point out that it is a pretty unbelievable outlier.
Even without this outlier, there is movement in the last week toward Virginia. But with the outlier included in the five poll average, Obama’s lead in the state jumps to 5.6% today, changing the state’s category. Without the outlier, Obama’s lead has still increased, but only to 2.8%. At the current rate of polling in Virginia, the outlier should roll off the average before the election, quite possibly tomorrow.
But for the moment, I list Virginia as “Weak Obama” and take it out of Romney’s best case.
But I really don’t believe it.
Finally Florida. This one just gets the asterisk because we essentially just have Florida continuing to bounce around right near zero. If you eliminate the two most extreme polls in the last two weeks (one favoring each candidate) there does appear to be a bit of a trend toward Obama. But the state is still really close, and may continue to bounce back and forth before we are done.
So the new summary and map:
|
Romney |
Obama |
| Romney Best Case |
298 |
240 |
| Current Status |
206 |
332 |
| Obama Best Case |
190 |
348 |
So once again the “current status” is 332 to 206. It seems like we may have seen that before.
As usual since the range between the best cases includes the possibility of both candidates winning, it is time to look at the margin in the tipping point state:
The outlier in Virginia effects this chart as well, so I’ve added red x’s that show where the line would have been if I had excluded that data point.
With or without the outlier, Obama’s lead in the tipping point state is a little less than it was previously. With the outlier included, the tipping point is now New Hampshire, where Obama is ahead by 3.4%. If you excluded the outlier, the decline is more pronounced, the tipping point would be Virginia, where Obama’s lead would be 2.8%.
The degree of the dip is within the size of the swings this metric has shown over the last few weeks though. It may be the start of a trend toward Romney, or it may just be noise in this way of measuring things. Only a few more days left to find out.
If you look at each of the swing areas, you can find movement in both directions. Just comparing my data from yesterday to my data from today, we have Ohio (18), North Carolina (15), Colorado (9) and Iowa (6) moving toward Romney while Florida (29), Virginia (13), Wisconsin (10), Nevada (6) and New Hampshire (4) all move toward Obama. Pennsylvania (20) and Nebraska-2 (1) didn’t change as there were no new polls in either today. Daily numbers are noisy. You need to look at the overall trend.
The net effect right now: Obama is still ahead, but the tipping point (with or without the Virginia outlier) is getting a little bit closer than it was.
All eyes have been on Ohio. Ohio has gotten closer than it was. Obama’s margin is down to 2.3%. But with Ohio closer, other states like New Hampshire, Nevada and Virginia become the tipping point, and Obama still has larger margins there.
Romney still needs to get a significant movement in his direction to win. Or just hope that all the state polls are wrong.
Obama remains a heavy favorite for the electoral college, but a Romney upset COULD happen. If you were going to bet on this race though, you clearly should be betting on Obama.
Betting against Obama means you think either that Romney can make up an approximately 3% deficit in the key states in a matter of days, or that the state level polls in the key states are all biased toward Obama by the same margin.
Romney’s lead in the national polls seems to be diminishing in the last few days though, with things looking more tied than anything else. So the possibility of an electoral college / popular vote split may be slipping away. Oh well, that would have been fun!
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.
So yesterday I said:
As I’ve cautioned before with Florida (and a couple other states), the state is close, the five poll average has bounced back and forth across the line repeatedly. The average today moves slightly to the Obama side of the line. But it could easily go back to the Romney side of the line tomorrow. There have been no moves that indicate Florida is moving definitively toward one candidate or the other. Absent such a move in the next few days, we’ll basically just need to wait for the actual vote count.
Florida did indeed flip back to just barely Romney in today’s update, and I’ll just let my quote from yesterday on that stand for today as well, with the names reversed.
For reference, the chart of polling in Florida shows the situation there quite clearly:
Updated map and summary:
|
Romney |
Obama |
| Romney Best Case |
321 |
217 |
| Current Status |
235 |
303 |
| Obama Best Case |
190 |
348 |
Goodbye to 332-206 for now. Perhaps we will see you again soon.
And now to the “Tipping Point Margin”:
This looks like Obama continuing to increase his lead in the tipping point, while the tipping point moves to Virginia. But… I urge caution… this is due almost entirely to what looks like a clear outlier in the Virginia polls that showed Obama up by 17% in Virginia! 17%! That outlier pushed Obama to a 3.5% lead in Virginia. But that new poll is way out of line with every other poll in the state. A 17% Obama lead in Virginia is simply not believable. (This was a registered voter result rather than a likely voter result, but still…)
I don’t manually remove outliers, but if you did, then Obama’s lead in Virginia drops back to 0.5%, which is probably closer to reality. If you did this, the tipping point state would still be Nevada rather than Virginia, and the margin in Nevada is still 3.2%. So the chart above is showing a 3.5% lead in the tipping point state (actually 3.46% before rounding) rather than 3.2%. That last little gain is an illusion due to the outlier. The outlier will wash away soon enough, in the mean time, this isn’t really that big a difference given the noise in this metric.
Either way, the picture has stayed consistent for the last few weeks. Obama has a slight lead in the electoral college as predicted by current polling, and that lead seems to generally be getting more solid. But that lead is still by no means secure. A 3.5% (or 3.2%) lead in the tipping point state is much more solid than the 1.0% lead Obama had on October 10th.
But 3.5% is also not all that secure. A 3.5% lead could disappear in a day or two with a bad news cycle for Obama. That seems less likely as we get closer, but it is still quite clearly not impossible. And as Romney supporters have been particularly fond of pointing out lately, there is also the possibility of systematic error in the polling, even when you average across many pollsters. It has happened before (most recently in the 1996 Clinton/Dole race), and it will happen again. Maybe it will be this year.
If there are no major changes in the few remaining days before the election, we go into the election with Obama a heavy favorite, but with a Romney upset a long shot, but still within the realm of reasonable possibility… which is where we have been most of the last year.
Note: Eight hours or so between my daily poll sweep and the blog post today. Polls released during that time period will of course be included in tomorrow’s update.
Note: Chart and map from the Abulsme.com 2012 Electoral College Prediction page. Both assume Obama vs Romney with no strong third party candidate and show polling as it currently exists. Things will change before election day. On the map red is Romney, blue is Obama, gold states are too close to call. Lines on the chart represent how many more electoral votes a candidate would have than is needed to tie under several different scenarios. Up is good for Obama, Down is good for Romney.
One state changes categories today. It is Florida.
As I’ve cautioned before with Florida (and a couple other states), the state is close, the five poll average has bounced back and forth across the line repeatedly. The average today moves slightly to the Obama side of the line. But it could easily go back to the Romney side of the line tomorrow. There have been no moves that indicate Florida is moving definitively toward one candidate or the other. Absent such a move in the next few days, we’ll basically just need to wait for the actual vote count.
So, new map and summary:
|
Romney |
Obama |
| Romney Best Case |
321 |
217 |
| Current Status |
206 |
332 |
| Obama Best Case |
190 |
348 |
Hello old friend, it is nice to see you again! Once again we have a 332-206 Obama victory, which is where the “Current Status” line has been more often than anywhere else all year long. There have been moves above this, and moves below this, but so far, things have always come back here. I guess we’ll see if that holds through election day.
Once again though, lets dig deeper. Winning is possible for Romney here. But just how far away is he? Lets look again at the “Tipping Point Margin” chart I debuted yesterday:
What looked like a slight trend in Obama’s direction looks more significant today. With today’s update Obama’s lead in Ohio increased to 3.3%. This actually moved Ohio past Nevada, where Obama’s margin is now 3.2%. This makes Nevada the new “tipping point state”. Romney’s easiest path to victory is now holding on to all the areas he is ahead in, then erasing Obama’s advantage and taking the lead in Virginia (13 ev, 0.9% Obama lead), Florida (27 ev, 1.0% Obama lead), Iowa (6 ev, 1.2% Obama lead), Colorado (9 ev, 2.0% Obama lead), New Hampshire (4 ev, 2.2% Obama lead) and then Nevada (6 ev, 3.2% Obama lead).
Ohio may well return to the tipping point position tomorrow, but for now that is where we are.
The tipping point margin is a metric that looks pretty noisy over the past few weeks, so I would urge caution reading much into individual daily ups and downs. A lot of that is just going to be statistical noise. However, this represents the best margin in the tipping point state Obama has seen since October 7th in the midst of his downward plunge after the first debate. The upward trend in this measure of the state of the race is now looking more clear.
Tick tock. The time left for Romney to make a move in the polls is diminishing quickly. Will something gain traction? If not, then Romney’s main remaining hope is that all the polls, not just those from Democratic leaning pollsters, but all of them, are actually wrong and are systematically tilting toward Obama. This is not impossible, and along with the possibility of a last minute event that changes things, is likely a big part of why sites like 538 give Romney a 20%+ chance of winning. Views of this using just the raw polling data, like that done by Darryl at horsesass.org give a much lower chance of a Romney victory.
But then there is Sandy. Michael, A commenter on yesterday’s update, brought up the possibility of reduced voter turnout in areas of Pennsylvania affected by Hurricane Sandy making the state winnable for Romney. Unlike potential effects on popular opinion of Obama due to how he responds to the hurricane, turnout effects due to the storm may simply not be measurable by the polls. First of all, the degree to which any remaining issues from the storm may impact voting on Tuesday may not be clear until almost Tuesday. Second, because people in effected areas are busy dealing with the storm impact itself, they may be more reluctant to participate in polls, and some pollsters may not even bother trying.
Now, most people seem to think that the effects of the storm on actual voting next Tuesday will be minimal, as most services will have been restored by then, etc. But for argument’s sake, lets imagine that turnout in the Philadelphia area is significantly reduced, giving Pennsylvania to Romney despite Obama’s 4.6% lead in current polling. Let’s also give Virginia to Romney on the same basis… reduced turnout in Northern Virginia breaking what is essentially a tie in Virginia at the moment, and giving the state to Romney.
With those two states as well as the states he is already ahead in, we have Romney with 239 electoral votes. That is still 30 electoral votes short. If we start adding states in again based on how close Romney is… Florida… which is essentially tied right now… brings Romney to 268 electoral votes. Just one electoral vote short of a tie. Iowa would then be the tipping point state. With it’s 6 electoral votes, Romney would win 274 to 264. Romney is currently behind in Iowa by only 1.2% in my five poll average. (Only 2 of those 5 polls were concluded after the last presidential debate, and those last polls look better for Obama, but lets call it 1.2% for now.)
If Hurricane Sandy was indeed able to deliver Pennsylvania and Virginia for Romney, Obama would STILL be ahead… but it would be a LOT closer!
For the moment though, as long as that scenario does not develop, Obama’s position seems to be better now than it has been in weeks. He is increasing his lead in Ohio and other swing states. Even if you grant some movement toward Romney in Pennsylvania and Virginia that isn’t visible in the polls, it seems like Romney still needs something else to move things in his direction.
Before the hurricane, Romney’s camp seemed to be trying (but failing, at least in the critical states) to gain traction based on the Obama administration’s handling of the attacks in Benghazi on September 11th. Maybe a renewed push on that issue in the remaining days will do the trick? The Romney campaign has also been pushing hard in Ohio with an attack implying Obama’s policies are resulting in Jeep moving jobs from Ohio to China. Fact checkers have called these claims misleading at best, but that doesn’t necessarily stop the attack from being effective. Maybe that will start reversing the polling trend in Ohio? Or will there be some new event that moves things dramatically toward Romney?
Watch this space in the next few days. We’ll find out… :-)
(And of course, Romney’s apparent lead in national polls continues… so if the polling is correct and nothing changes before election day, the possibility of Romney winning the popular vote while losing the electoral college remains very strong.)
Note: I actually finished my daily sweep of the polls about 10-11 hours prior to making this blog post. I usually try to keep that gap shorter, but it is what it is. There have of course been new polls released in that time. Those will be included in tomorrow’s update.
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 category today, but before I get to those, let me highlight changes to the chart showing the trend over time. I’ve zoomed in to show only the time period since August and have annotated some of the notable events of the campaign in these last few months. So a few thoughts on what you can see here…
First of all, you can easily see that the two events that seem to have the most visible impact are the 47% video and the 1st debate. But it is also clear that Obama’s peak was quite a bit before the first debate. I searched for specific news events around the date of that peak, but I didn’t find anything particularly memorable. So one interpretation is simply that folks who had moved based on the 47% video started to bake that in and think maybe the whole thing was overblown, so movement back toward Romney began.
Second, it is pretty clear that Romney peaked between the VP debate and the 2nd presidential debate. Obama began to recover slightly before the 2nd debate. The overall trend has been toward Obama since then. (Even with today’s movement toward Romney on the “Current” line.) Romney’s October peak was beyond his beginning of September high, and therefore higher than I thought it would be. But at this point Romney has still NEVER taken the lead in my analysis. The “Current Poll” line has always shown an Obama lead. Romney has never been ahead in this race. Never.
Third, for all but a few short periods of time, Romney’s best case, if he were to win all the swing states, includes winning. Romney can indeed win. It is not out of the realm of reasonable possibility. It is close enough that either campaign events that move things in the last week and a half or just Romney over-performing the polls by a few percent on election day could result in a Romney win.
But Obama’s lead is real and persistent, and has been in place all year. If we just have a ho hum continuation of the campaign as it has been straight through election day, then Obama wins. Something has to happen to push Romney into the lead.
Obama has to make a big mistake, or Romney has to do something outstanding that is unexpected, or some news event has to make Obama look bad on the eve of the election. Something. With the status quo, Obama wins the electoral college. (As we mentioned Wednesday, the popular vote is another story.)
OK, now lets review the states changing categories today:
Not much to say here. The five poll average had briefly topped 10% in Montana. Now it drops below that line again. This puts Montana back into the category it has “normally” been in. Romney has a 9.0% lead in Montana. Romney will win Montana. This state is not in contention.
Same kind of thing here. Romney’s lead in the five poll average goes over 10% in Indiana. This is a big move compared to 2008, when Obama won the state by 1.0%, but Indiana has never been close in 2012. It is just an even bigger lead for Romney now. Romney is ahead by 11.0% in Indiana. Romney will win Indiana. Indiana is not in contention.
Unlike the others, Florida actually is moving from one candidate’s column to the others. And it is a big state. So this is significant, right?
No.
Prior to today’s update the five poll average had Obama up by 0.6%. With today’s new data, the five poll average has Romney up by 0.8%. These numbers both reflect the same thing… Florida is too close to call.
Florida has moved back and forth across the line many times this year. There has been no significant movement in either direction to indicate that Florida is moving definitively toward one candidate or another.
It is close. We’ll know which way Florida goes on election day.
So, this gives us a new map and summary:
|
Romney |
Obama |
| Romney Best Case |
301 |
237 |
| Current Status |
235 |
303 |
| Obama Best Case |
191 |
347 |
Once again, since the best cases include both candidates winning, we need to look at the specifics of the close states:
- North Carolina (15): 2.4% Romney lead – 2/5 polls after last debate
- Florida (29): 0.8% Romney lead – 5/5 polls after last debate
- Virginia (13): 0.2% Obama lead – 5/5 polls after last debate
- Iowa (6): 1.2% Obama lead – 2/5 polls after last debate
- New Hampshire (4): 2.2% Obama lead – 2/5 polls after last debate
- Nevada (6): 2.4% Obama lead – 5/5 polls after last debate
- Ohio (18): 2.5% Obama lead – 4/5 polls after last debate
- Colorado (9): 2.6% Obama lead – 5/5 polls after last debate
- Wisconsin (10): 3.2% Obama lead – 2/5 polls after last debate
Once again Romney starts at 191 electoral votes with no close states. Add in North Carolina and Florida where he is ahead and he is up to 235. That leaves him 34 electoral votes short.
Going in order by how easy it should be for Romney to pull ahead, add in Virginia, Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada… all of which Romney is behind in at the moment… and you get to 264. Still five electoral votes short.
And that brings us once again to Ohio. To win Romney has to get most of the states mentioned previously, but then also win Ohio. (If he wins Ohio, he could afford to lose some combinations of Virginia, Iowa and New Hampshire, but generally speaking if Romney wins Ohio, he will probably win those other states too.) Obama’s lead in Ohio has been increasing. On Tuesday Obama’s lead in Ohio was 1.2%. It is now up to 2.5%. Will that hold? Who knows.
But as we get closer to the election, 2.5% starts to morph from looking like a small number, to looking like a large number. In the last year Romney has NEVER been ahead in the five poll average in Ohio. It has usually been close. But Romney has never been ahead. Never. Ohio is indeed looking like a firewall.
A uniform move in the polls of any more than 2.5% toward Romney across the close states would give Romney the election. But Romney is running out of time, and most people have made up their minds.
This is once again looking like a steep uphill climb for Romney. Not impossible. It could happen.
But it is not looking good for Romney.
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.
[Edited 2012 Oct 26 23:58 to correct chart of Florida polls over time. While my text was correct, I inadvertently included a chart missing some recent polls. Fixed. I also slightly adjusted some of the arrows on the electoral college trend chart.]
One change today. It is Florida. It is big. It moves from Leaning Romney to Leaning Obama… but… there are a lot of reasons this move doesn’t represent anything that is actually significant. At least not yet. So lets get into into it:
So, according to my five poll average, Florida moves from an 0.2% Romney lead where it was yesterday, to a 1.8% Obama lead today.
But… there is plenty of oddness here. First off, I do a “last five poll” average, with “last five” based on the end dates of the polls in question. Well, the most recent end date we have for polls is Thursday October 18th. But we are reaching the time in the race where some states get polled a lot… and so in Florida I now have SEVEN polls in my spreadsheet that ended on the 18th. So how do I pick which ones to include in the five poll average?
You could imagine all kinds of tiebreaker criteria, or you could imagine including more than five polls in situations like this. I essentially go with what is simplest for me to process, rather than something that I can justify from a “this is logically the right way to do this because X”, namely, I use the order I found them and added them to my spreadsheet. So the ones I found out about first in my normal daily sweep of sources age out first.
I admit that is kind of questionable and other approaches might be more valid from a theoretical point of view. Some are more complicated, like looking at both the start and end dates of the polls, or looking at the sample sizes of the polls, or things like that. I haven’t been keeping the data necessary to do that, so that would be a bit time intensive. So, what can we look at quickly.
First of all, if we looked at all seven of the polls that ended on the 18th instead of just five of them… We would have an Obama lead of 0.1%.
OK, what if we looked at all of the polls that ended after the second debate (8 polls)… We would have an 0.6% Obama lead.
What about the last 10 polls instead of the last five? Now we would have an 0.7% Obama lead.
What about if we just took any poll ending in the last week? Now we would have an 0.9% Obama lead.
Well, OK, that is interesting, look at that. In all of these cases, we now have Obama leads. So maybe my choice of “last 5” isn’t really that important after all. The trend is indeed moving back toward Obama, and the chart of Florida polls shows that nicely. But…
Another thing to look at… the spread… of the 7 polls that ended on the 18th, we have a range from a 5% Romney lead to a 6% Obama lead. That is quite a spread. The average is slightly on Obama’s side… slightly… but there is a large variance.
And even if there was no oddness with how I choose which polls to include in the average, what do we have here? My straight five poll average gives a 1.8% Obama lead… which is still very very close. That is a sliver of a lead that could disappear with the very next poll.
Bottom line, Florida is too close to call. All of the states in my “Lean” categories could easily go either way, but Florida remains one of the closest.
So, where does this put us:
|
Romney |
Obama |
| Romney Best Case |
315 |
223 |
| Current Status |
223 |
315 |
| Obama Best Case |
191 |
347 |
I won’t delve into all the details because I’m slightly behind schedule today, but Romney’s easiest path to victory is pull Florida back into his column and then win Ohio. This has been the primary scenario for a little while now. We’re off a bit from Romney’s highs, but Obama hasn’t yet started pulling states firmly back into his column. So this could still go either way.
We’ll start seeing the final view of what this election will look like once the post 3rd debate polls start coming in. By the time we get a full picture on that though, election day will be upon us. And of course early voting has been going on for weeks now. We’re right up against the end now, with Obama remaining a favorite, but by a slim margin.
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 changing categories today. All three moving toward Romney. As usual, lets look at them from smallest to largest in electoral college strength:
First up, New Hampshire. Before the first debate Obama was up to a 9.9% lead here. Now with 4/5 polls after the debate, that lead slips to 4.6%. This is in line with the drops we’ve seen in a bunch of other states. Obama still has a lead here, but it is now small enough that it could easily slip away. New Hampshire has been here before. It had only spiked to a big Obama lead a few weeks ago, when Romney was at his nadir. So this is perhaps New Hampshire just returning to form as a close state leaning slightly toward Obama.
Last time Virginia changed status, I noted that it had been bouncing between Lean Obama and Weak Obama, but perhaps it was ready to break out of that pattern. Indeed it has. This time Obama’s lead continued to drop. After peaking at 5.1% a few days before the debate, Obama’s lead slowly disappeared, and with today’s addition, the five poll average now stands at a 1.0% Romney lead. Romney has been ahead before in Virginia, but it was very short lived. The question of course is if this time he can hold the lead or if Virginia will revert to “normal” which is a narrow Obama lead.
Just yesterday Obama had retaken a very slight lead in the Florida five poll average. Today that slips away, and with some relatively strong polls, Romney ends up with a 1.8% lead at the moment. Florida is still very close. All the states we have talked about today are very close. But the momentum here, as in most other states in the last week and a half, has been toward Romney.
So, the revised summary:
|
Romney |
Obama |
| Romney Best Case |
337 |
201 |
| Current Status |
257 |
281 |
| Obama Best Case |
191 |
347 |
We are still seeing what is fairly obviously fallout from the first debate. It has just taken different amounts of time for there to be enough polling in different states to show it. All considered, it looks like we have seen one of the biggest debate effects ever in a presidential election. The level of self-inflicted damage by Obama is amazing.
Of course, when this started, Obama had a substantial lead. So even after all of this, Obama is still ahead and is still the favorite. Surely we must NOW be close to a ceiling for Romney, right? Well, maybe not if Obama doesn’t redeem himself in the next debate. But assuming the absence of another catastrophic fail, it seems like sometime soon we’ll need to start seeing some reversion to the mean, which in this case would mean a bit of strengthening for Obama.
I don’t have the time today to again do a rundown of the current margins in all the swing states, but suffice it to say that if Romney holds on to all of the states he is currently ahead in, Romney only needs 13 more electoral votes to win. He can get that in a number of ways at this point. The easiest way is still to win Ohio (18 ev). Romney is currently behind in Ohio by only 2.2%. Ohio is within reach. Romney just needs to convince a few more people, or energize greater turnout.
Alternately, and a lot more fun, Romney could win Iowa (6 ev) where he is currently behind by 3.2% and Nevada (6 ev) where he is currently behind by 1.6%. That would result in a 269 to 269 electoral vote tie. Assuming no faithless electors, that would throw the election into the House of Representatives, where Romney would almost certainly win.
The last time a Presidential election was thrown to the house was 1824. That would be so much fun to watch happen!
It is still unlikely though. But a guy can hope!
Bottom line though, right now Obama is ahead, but only by the very slimmest of margins. If Romney can hold on to his gains from the last couple of weeks (Obama actually peaked a little before the first debate) and move things just a LITTLE more, then he can win this.
I am quite sure Obama would like the Romney “debate bounce” to be over now.
We’ll start seeing polls that factor in the VP debate any time now. It is unlikely to have as profound an effect as the first debate and therefore I don’t anticipate Obama erasing Romney’s recent gains. But perhaps the bleeding will finally stop.
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.
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.
 
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.
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.
The title on this post is perhaps a bit hyperbolic, but only a little bit. Romney is way behind in the Electoral College race. He has been all year. He has NEVER been in the lead. As of yesterday’s update even if Romney won every close state he would still lose. With today’s update two more previously close states move toward Obama, making Romney’s best case an even bigger loss and putting him in the worst position he has ever been in… by far.
Both changes today just barely take states out of my competitive zone, so new polls in the next few days could easily reverse today’s changes. But even if that happens, the picture for Romney remains bleak.
He needs a massive turn around in his fortunes to make this race competitive again, let alone to win. Impossible? No. But increasingly unlikely? Yes. To come back and win at this point Romney needs something huge that turns everything on its head. Could a big black swan event happen? Maybe. But aside from that, he is done. This is over.
Lets look at the details. From lower electoral college weight to higher:
Iowa (6 electoral votes) had consistently shown a small Obama lead in the five poll average. Always close. Always a state Romney could potentially flip. But then the convention happened, and 4 out of the 5 polls since then have shown Obama with a lead of more than 5%. (The one outlier is a poll actually showing Romney ahead by 3%.) Today the five poll average hits 5% (exactly) and so I move the state from “Lean Obama” to “Weak Obama”. If the election was held today, this isn’t a state where you would think Romney had a chance. It is now out of reach.
As usual, I must say this is “for the moment”. The five poll average now sits at exactly 5%. The next poll could move the state back into competitive territory.
And now the big one…
Florida, with 29 electoral votes, was by far the largest of the close states. It has gone back and forth between a Romney lead and an Obama lead in the five poll average, although most of the time there has been a small Obama lead. But it has been close and competitive nearly all year. With today’s update Obama’s lead hits (exactly) 5%. So the state moves from Lean Obama to Weak Obama. As with Iowa, Florida is just barely in this category. The very next poll could make things look more competitive. And we probably should expect some “reversion to the mean” as we go forward. For the moment though, this means that even in Romney’s best case where he wins all the close states, he still loses Florida.
Without Iowa and Florida as Romney possibilities, where do things stand?
|
Romney |
Obama |
| Romney Best Case |
225 |
313 |
| Current Status |
191 |
347 |
| Obama Best Case |
191 |
347 |
Ouch. Ouch. Ouch.
Yesterday I said:
So how lopsided does this matchup need to look at this stage in the game to start just saying outright that absent an event of cosmic proportions the race is over and Obama will certainly win? We are very very close. It is tempting to just say so right now. But I will hold off a little bit.
But if Romney’s best case gets ANY worse… or if there is no major move in Romney’s direction starting in the next week or two… then it will be very difficult to construct Romney win scenarios with a straight face…
I still feel a little hesitant about outright saying this is over. There is still after all more than a month for Romney to turn things around.
But Romney’s best case DID get worse. Yesterday Romney already would lose even if he won all of the close states. Today, with Iowa and Florida also moving out of reach, Romney’s best case is starting to look like not just a loss, but a very comfortable Obama win.
Iowa and Florida today, and Ohio from yesterday, and maybe some of the other “Weak Obama” states, could move back and get closer before the election. This would not be surprising at all. In fact it would be surprising if Romney slipped too much further behind. At some point he has to rebound a bit, right? But even if he starts closing the gap and stops the free fall, it looks like a really tall order to actually pull ahead.
Even at his best point this year the most Romney could say was that if he flipped a few more states from Leaning Obama to Leaning Romney he could win. He was never actually ahead. Even if he does well in the next few weeks, is there anything that indicates he could improve on his position from the beginning of September when he last peaked? Because even then, he was losing. Just by less.
Yes, there could be more bad economic news. Yes, Obama could start making huge mistakes and somehow screw this up. But the magnitude of what would be necessary to reverse this gets larger by the day and the scenarios less likely.
At this point Romney needs Obama to catastrophically implode. That is unlikely.
This is done. Obama wins.
Uh… umm…. unless Obama himself screws it up, or something completely unexpected of epic proportions happens.
Gotta always add the caveats. :-)
Note: Chart and map from the Abulsme.com 2012 Electoral College Prediction page. Both assume Obama vs Romney with no strong third party candidate and show polling as it currently exists. Things will change before election day. On the map red is Romney, blue is Obama, gold states are too close to call. Lines on the chart represent how many more electoral votes a candidate would have than is needed to tie under several different scenarios. Up is good for Obama, Down is good for Romney.
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