This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon

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Curmudgeon’s Corner: Three with Me

In the latest Curmudgeon’s Corner Sam talks about:

  • Graduation / Travel
  • Syria Intervention
  • Romney 1144 / Pivot / Close?
  • Large Sugary Drinks

Recorded on 31 May 2012

Length this week – 53:32

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Electoral College: Colorado Weakens for Obama (plus North Carolina Correction)

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

One state changes status today, and it is once again a move in Romney’s direction:

Colorado has been polled less frequently than one would expect. Since April 11th I have classified it as a “Weak Obama” state as the 5 poll average has been over 5%. It now looks clear that this was mostly on the strength of one PPP poll in April showing an Obama 13 point lead which now very much looks like an outlier. With the most recent polls, Obama’s lead falls back under 5%, so I move it back to “Lean Obama” again and it is now once again considered to be a state that could go either way. This improves Romney’s “best case”.

Romney Obama
Romney Best Case 278 260
Current Status 206 332
Obama Best Case 159 379

This move opens up some additional paths to victory for Romney. He can now afford to lose Iowa (6) if he wins the rest of the swing states. Or he can win Iowa (6) and lose Colorado (9) and still tie 269-269 and pull out a win in the House. But Florida (29), Ohio (18), North Carolina (15), Arizona (11), Tennessee (11), Missouri (10), and Wisconsin (10) are all still must win states. If Romney loses any one of them, he loses the election.

And now, as I continue to go through data provided by Darryl at HorsesAss I have another correction to the old historical time series. In this case I was missing an old North Carolina poll from last September. This changed North Carolina’s status at the very beginning of the year from very slightly leaning Obama to very slightly leaning Romney.

The old timeline had been:

  • Jan 1 -> Jan 12: Lean Obama
  • Jan 12 -> Apr 12: Lean Romney
  • Apr 12 -> Apr 14: Lean Obama
  • Apr 14 -> May 2: Lean Romney
  • May 2 -> May 18: Lean Obama
  • May 18 -> Present: Lean Romney

Now it is simply:

  • Jan 1 -> Apr 12: Lean Romney
  • Apr 12 -> Apr 14: Lean Obama
  • Apr 14 -> May 2: Lean Romney
  • May 2 -> May 18: Lean Obama
  • May 18 -> Present: Lean Romney

This only changes what the status should have been at the very beginning of the year. Current status remains the same. The historical chart is corrected starting with today’s update. It is important to note that regardless of the flips back and forth from leaning one way to leaning the other way, North Carolina has been in the “swing state” status the whole time… it is just plain too close to call and has been the whole time.

Electoral College: Michigan Weakens for Obama (plus New Hampshire Correction)

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

One state changes status today, and it is a move toward Romney:

Michigan was in my “Strong Obama” category starting on April 10th. Today the five poll average drops to only a 9.7% lead for Obama, so the state drops to “Weak Obama”. As I’ve described this category many times before, this means that while Obama has a healthy lead, it is not so strong a lead that he can ignore the state. He has to play defense here, otherwise strong efforts from Romney (or big mistakes on his part) could make the state competitive again. As recently as February the five poll averages were such that Michigan was categorized as a swing state. It could go there again.

Since this does not change the inventory of swing states, the summary remains the same:

Romney Obama
Romney Best Case 269 269
Current Status 206 332
Obama Best Case 159 379

In addition to the change in Michigan today, I have a correction to the historical timeline for New Hampshire. Based on data provided by Darryl from HorsesAss I found a typo in one New Hampshire poll from March, and a few older polls from 2011 that I had missed when booting up these charts in January. The end result is that New Hampshire’s timeline changes slightly.

Prior to today I had this timeline:

  • Jan 1 – Apr 19: Lean Romney (Swing State)
  • Apr 19 – May 16: Lean Obama (Swing State)
  • May 16 – Now: Weak Obama

With the corrections, the timeline should have been:

  • Jan 1 – Feb 4: Weak Romney
  • Feb 4 – Mar 31: Lean Romney (Swing State)
  • Mar 31 – May 16: Lean Obama (Swing State)
  • May 16 – Now: Weak Obama

These changes only effect the historical timeline, the current position remains the same. The chart showing the race over time has been updated with this correction starting with today’s update.

2012 Republican Delegate Count: Texas pushes Romney over the Top

Charts from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page. When a candidate gets down to 0%, they have clinched the nomination. If they get above 100%, they have been mathematically eliminated. The first chart is by date, the second is by “% of Delegates Already Allocated”. These numbers include estimates of the eventual results of multi-stage caucus processes which will be refined as the later stages occur.

This is what we have been waiting for seemingly forever. By the beginning of March it was clear that no other candidate than Romney had the ability to get to 1144 absent a miracle. By the beginning of April it was clear that the non-Romney’s also were not going to be able to collectively block Romney absent a miracle. But Romney still needed to actually get to 1144. Slowly but surely he did so through April and May. Today he finally goes over the top. (At least with the count I use, which uses the Green Papers soft count plus the DCW Superdelegate Count. Other counts may differ.)

Since this is “the end” lets include a couple of additional graphs with two other views of the race:

All of these charts show how Romney completely dominated this race from the very beginning. There was NEVER a point in the entire campaign where Romney was not ahead in delegates. It was only even close for a few days after Gingrich won South Carolina. The rest of the time, this whole campaign has just been a story of Romney slowly but surely pulling further and further ahead.

Now lets look specifically at today’s results from Texas.

Prior to today, none of Texas’s 155 delegates had been allocated. As of this update we have Romney 105, Paul 18, Santorum 13, Gingrich 7, Bachmann 2, TBD 10. Yes, that is right, at this late state, Michelle Bachmann mounts a comeback it seems. In any case, an overwhelming Romney win.

Romney also picked up two super delegates from Colorado today.

So net for the day: Romney +107, Paul +18, Santorum +13, Gingrich +7, Bachmann +2. Romney gets 72.8% of the delegates awarded today. This is way more than the 12.9% of the remaining delegates he needed to be on track to get to 1144 before “the end”. This was actually enough to push him over the edge.

My count now has the totals as: Romney 1159, Santorum 268, Gingrich 150, Paul 143, Bachmann 2

Now, by the Green Papers “hard count” that only counts delegates that are officially bound to Romney and theoretically have no discretion or ability to change their mind, we have Romney 1012, Santorum 245, Gingrich 143, Paul 93, Bachman 2, Huntsman 2… so by that count Romney still has a little bit further to go. The soft count also includes estimates for how delegates with discretion will vote and for how the remaining processes that are not yet final will play out. I also add in the super delegates who have publicly stated a preference. This is all reasonable. So I feel confident having using the count we have used all along, and considering Romney to have gotten to the 1144 magic number as of today.

Since we are hitting this major milestone today, I’ll take advantage of this time to highlight the comparisons with the 2008 races. More comparisons with 2008 can be found here.

First, to make comparisons easier, the 2012 race on a full 0%-100% scale:

Then what the equivalent graph looked like in 2008:

Looking at these two, in 2008 McCain had two non-trivial opponents compared to the 3 Romney had this time. In 2008, McCain pulled away from the other candidates starting around the 10% mark. In 2012 Romney was ahead from the very beginning. By the the 5% of delegates awarded mark (after Florida), Romney opened up the gap and none of the others ever came close again. Both Romney and McCain got to the “40% of remaining needed to win” mark at almost exactly the point where 50% of the delegates had been awarded. These two years look pretty similar.

Another view comparing Romney 2012 to McCain 2008 looks at % of total delegates earned by the eventual winner vs % of total delegates allocated. This was originally prompted by a post at Enik Rising. Looking at both candidates on the same chart we see this:

Despite all the talk at various points in time about Romney having problems closing the deal by comparison to 2008, this shows clearly that no such thing was happening. Any perception to that effect was due only to the fact that the calendar was more spread out this year than in 2008. Comparing the two curves, sometimes Romney was ahead, sometimes McCain was ahead, but for the most part these two lines tracked each other closely.

Finally, just for completeness, here is what an actually close race looks like on the “% of remaining delegates needed to win” chart… specifically, the Democrats in 2008:

With that, we wrap up the regular coverage of the Republican delegate race for 2012. There may be additional updates for specific milestones… if Paul manages to pass Gingrich in the delegate count… the final totals once all the state delegate selection processes are actually over… or the final roll call count at the convention… but as for regular updates this is it.

Thanks for everybody who has been reading and enjoying these updates over the last five months.

From here on out, it is all about the Electoral College

Edit 2012 Jun 5 12:49 UTC: Fixed affect/effect typo.

Electoral College: Florida and Virginia move toward Obama

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

Two states changing status today, both moving toward Obama:

First up Florida (29). Bottom line is Florida is too close to call. It has been too close to call for almost all of the last year. (The exception was two whole days in April where Obama’s lead in the five poll average went over 5%.) The rest of the time, one of the swingiest of swing states. Most recently, from May 10th until today, Romney was every so slightly ahead in the five poll average. Now Obama is ever so slightly ahead (0.3% actually). The next poll could move it back over the line to Romney. Bottom line, don’t put too much weight on what side of the line the too close to call states are on at any given moment. There is a reason I color them all the same on the map.

Next we have Virginia (13). Obama’s lead in the five poll average gets up to 5.0% which means by my classification it is no longer a swing state, but now gets listed as a “Weak Obama” state. Generally speaking that means he has a healthy lead at the moment, but not so big a lead as would allow him to take the state for granted and ignore it.

Virginia no longer being a swing state takes the possibility of winning it out of Romney’s best case in the summary, which leaves us in a fun place…

Romney Obama
Romney Best Case 269 269
Current Status 206 332
Obama Best Case 159 379

Yes, we are once again in a situation where even if Romney won all the states he is ahead in, plus all the states Obama is ahead in by less than 5%, the result would be a TIE in the electoral college, which would throw the election to the House. In such a scenario, given the makeup of the House, Romney would almost certainly win.

It is a fun scenario to think about. It is however an unlikely scenario. My model doesn’t produce odds, but Darryl’s at HorsesAss does, and in his latest analysis he has the odds of a 269/269 tie at just about 0.05%. So about 1 in 2000. So pretty long odds.

Which is a shame, because that would be really fun to watch. It hasn’t happened since 1824, isn’t it about time?

More to the point though, Romney is back to the very weak position he had in mid-April, and it seems that a lot of the gains he had been making in May have evaporated.

For now anyway.

Electoral College: Georgia goes Deep Red, Arizona Swings Again

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

Two states change status today. One moving toward Romney, one moving toward Obama:

First up, Georgia with its 16 electoral votes. Like Texas a couple days ago, Georgia is one of those states that nobody thinks will be a swing state, but some polling was showing it closer than one might expect, leading one to think that Romney might have wanted to spend at least a little time and money on shoring it up. The latest polls though have Romney’s lead there in my five poll average going over 10%. This moves it into the “Strong Romney” category which generally are quite safe for Romney and therefore can effectively be ignored in the campaign. These moves from Weak to Strong don’t change the range of outcomes in my model, but they do show Romney’s consolidation of his base states.

Second we have Arizona. This has been bouncing back and forth, over and under the Romney 5% lead line in the five poll average. With today’s update, the 5 poll average drops below 5% again, so we once again classify it as a Lean Romney Swing State. Now, the five poll average in Arizona has never shown Obama actually ahead in Arizona (although a couple individual polls in the last year have), so Arizona is not as swingy as, say, Florida or North Carolina, where the actual lead keeps changing hands. But it is close enough that the lead could be wiped out in a few days depending on the news cycle. So, for the moment, Arizona swings again.

In terms of our summary, since Georgia was never considered a real Obama possibility, only Arizona causes a change, improving Obama’s best case by 11 electoral votes:

Romney Obama
Romney Best Case 282 256
Current Status 235 303
Obama Best Case 159 379

Note 2012 Jun 8 15:00 UTC: A correction noted June 8th moved a Tennessee change from “Weak Romney” to “Lean Romney” from March 2nd to May 24th, which would have been the day before this post. Updates between March 2nd and this post therefore incorrectly classified Tennessee.

Electoral College: Texas goes Dark Red (plus Wisconsin Correction)

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

One state changes status today, and once again it is a move in Romney’s direction.

Texas, which was never a swing state by any means, but which for awhile looked like it might be a state where Romney would at least need to watch his back and play a little defense just to be sure it didn’t surprise anyone by starting to get competitive, is now moving back into the “Strong Romney” camp as Romney’s lead in the five poll average jumps to 11%. This is a surprise to precisely no one. :-)

Since Texas was never a swing state, this does not change the summary.

Romney Obama
Romney Best Case 282 256
Current Status 235 303
Obama Best Case 170 368

The general trend in Romney’s direction which I mentioned last time continues. But to make a big positive difference in his situation, Romney needs to be pulling current “Weak Obama” states into the swing state category. Strengthening his lead in states he is already nicely ahead in may feel good, but it doesn’t have an impact on the election.

Unfortunately, I also have a correction to make regarding some older Wisconsin data. Thanks to a tip from Darryl at HorsesAss I found that I had mistakenly included a Washington State poll from February in the Wisconsin data (as well as in the Washington State data). The end result of this is that prior to today on the chart showing the history of the race so far, Wisconsin had been classified as a “Strong Obama” state from March 2nd to April 19th. With the erroneous poll backed out, Wisconsin should only have been “Strong Obama” from March 30th to April 19th. Starting with the chart in today’s post, the light red line indicating the number of excess electoral votes Romney would have if he won all swing states plus all of Obama’s weak states has been corrected to reflect this. Notes have also been placed in the March 2nd and March 30th updates to point out this correction.

In either case, since May 17th I have classified Wisconsin as a “Lean Obama” swing state.

Sorry for the error. It happens every once in awhile. :-)

2012 Republican Delegate Count: Arkansas, Kentucky and an update from Minnesota

Charts from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page. When a candidate gets down to 0%, they have clinched the nomination. If they get above 100%, they have been mathematically eliminated. The first chart is by date, the second is by “% of Delegates Already Allocated”. These numbers include estimates of the eventual results of multi-stage caucus processes which will be refined as the later stages occur.

Updates for three states today.

First of all, Minnesota. The state convention was Friday and Saturday, but our source The Green Papers didn’t update their counts until a few hours after I did my daily scan of the delegate counts on Tuesday. I did my scan at 02:41 UTC yesterday, GP updated their counts sometime between then and 07:00 UTC. If I’d done my scan a little later as I sometimes do, this would have been its own update yesterday, but I didn’t, so it gets included in today’s update instead.

Regardless, based on the results of the state conventions, the estimates for Minnesota change. Previously, the estimates were Paul 24, Santorum 8, Romney 2, Gingrich 2, TBD 4. Now, after the convention: Paul 32, Santorum 2, Gingrich 1, TBD 5. Notice Romney now has no delegates in Minnesota at all. Wow. (Although some of the TBDs may go that way when they eventually choose.) Net for this update in Minnesota: Paul +8, Gingrich -1, Romney -2, Santorum -6. This would be great for Paul except for the fact that he is so far behind that it doesn’t matter. But fun stuff in Minnesota none the less.

Now we get to the two states that voted in primaries on Tuesday. Both are Romney shutouts.

Arkansas: Romney gains 33 delegates. New totals: Romney 35, TBD 1

Kentucky: Romney gains 42 delegates. New totals: Romney 42, TBD 3

So, the total take for the day: Romney +73, Paul +8, Gingrich -1, Santorum -6

New overall totals by our count: Romney 1052, Santorum 255, Gingrich 143, Paul 125.

Romney only needs 92 more delegates to win. That is 12.9% of the remaining delegates (down from 21.0% before today’s update).

Texas is Tuesday and has more than enough delegates to push Romney over the edge.

Tuesday should be it.

Curmudgeon’s Corner: Driving and Walking

In the latest Curmudgeon’s Corner Sam talks about:

  • Obama on Gay Marriage
  • Candidate Ancient History
  • Ron Paul Out? / PCO / Americans Elect / Third Parties
  • Regulations / Too Big to Fail

Recorded on 14 May 2012

Length this week – 1:32:40

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Electoral College: North Carolina Flips Back to Romney

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

One state changes status today:

North Carolina moves from Obama up by 2.0% to Romney up by 0.6%. Either way, this is too close to call. North Carolina remains a swing state. Now, the latest poll actually has Romney ahead by 8%. This might be the start of a larger move toward Romney. Or maybe it is an outlier. It is too early to tell. For now, North Carolina is now a swing state that leans ever so slightly to Romney.

Since North Carolina remains too close to call, this doesn’t change either candidate’s best case scenarios, which represent the range of reasonably possible results based on current state polling. The current line drops a nice ways in Romney’s direction though.

Romney Obama
Romney Best Case 276 262
Current Status 235 303
Obama Best Case 170 368

Glancing at the chart, it looks like there has been a nice move in Romney’s direction lately. Lets look at some specific numbers and compare to one month ago. One month ago was the first time that the state polls showed Romney’s best case being to lose. Things clearly look much better for him today.

On April 18th, Romney’s best case showed him losing 260 to 278. Now he wins 276 to 262. He has moved 16 electoral votes (net) back into contention that a month ago seemed out of reach.

On the current line, a month ago Obama was winning 328 to 210. Now he is only winning by 303 to 235. Over the last month Romney has pulled a full 25 electoral votes (net) over the line toward him.

As for Obama’s best case… no change. The needle hasn’t moved at all. Obama hasn’t managed to pull more electoral votes into being competitive, nor have any moved out of reach.

So the movement has definitely been in Romney’s direction. If he keeps it up, we’ll start to see the map looking much more competitive soon.

By comparison, look at 4 years ago… the two best cases were much more symmetric around the tie line. The candidates were more evenly matched and the range of possibilities was not really favoring either candidate. It was clearly a wide open race four years ago. Having a lot more swing states helped.

The “current” status looked very similar to today’s though… we had McCain 302, Obama 236. Reverse the parties, and we are almost exactly in the same place we are today. Of course McCain did not go on to win. One should look at Obama’s current lead in the model with that in mind. There is still a long time until November.

Edit 2012 May 20 06:39 UTC – Fixed Map, SC was incorrectly colored as a swing state, it is now correctly colored as “Weak Romney”.