Abulsme.com: Wisconsin

Electoral College: Huckabee continues to slip (vs Clinton)

Today’s update was new PPP polling in Wisconsin. PPP polled 11 candidate combinations. Of these only one produced a notable change in one of the “5 best polled candidate pairs” I track most closely here.

Specifically, this was the second poll of Clinton vs Huckabee in Wisconsin (the last was also by PPP, back in April 2014). This poll did not cause a category change in the average, it was Strong Clinton before, and it is Strong Clinton now:

So with no category change, why am I bothering with a post?

Well, Wisconsin slipping further into Clinton territory (from a 6.7% Clinton lead to a 8.0% Clinton lead) reshuffled the ordering of the states when sorted by margin and Wisconsin slipped past Minnesota (where Clinton leads by 6.8%). Minnesota had been the tipping point state. So Clinton doesn’t necessarily need Minnesota any more, because it is easier to get Wisconsin. This means the tipping point shifts to 8.0% in Virginia.

The last time the tipping point moved even briefly in Huckabee’s direction was last August, but as you can see, the general trend has been that the more polling there is on this combination, the worse it looks for Huckabee.

Since this is an otherwise short update, a quick look at how the tipping point looks across all five “best polled” candidate combinations at the moment:

All of the Republicans are running way behind Clinton, but the trends are different.

Basically, we can group the five candidates (all vs Clinton) into three categories based on the last six months or so of tipping point movement:

Republicans gaining strength against Clinton: Bush
Republicans basically flat against Clinton: Paul and Ryan
Republicans losing ground against Clinton: Christie and Huckabee

Ryan has said he is not running of course. There is also lots of talk about Walker, and sometimes of Cruz or Rubio, or even of combinations involving Democrats other than Clinton occasionally, but polling at the state level on all of those other combinations is still significantly more sparse than the five combinations here, and therefore the data less reliable, so we leave them out for now.

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.

Edit 2015-03-16 17:44 UTC to add standard note to end.

Electoral College: 04:15 – Romney’s Paths Gone, Obama Wins!

	Romney	Obama
Romney Best Case	264	274
Current Status	206	332
Obama Best Case	205	333

A bunch of states were called between 04:00 UTC and 04:15 UTC:

Obama: CA, HA, WA, WI, IA NM
Romney: ID, MT, NC

Only one of these mattered. Iowa. Iowa was a close state. Romney needed every close state he had left in order to win. Without Iowa, even if Romney swept every other close state (and Maine’s 2nd) he would only get to 264.

When CNN called Iowa at 04:09 UTC, I called the race on twitter in these two tweets. Nine minutes later when some more states came in, CNN called the election for Obama. They were slow. More on those next states in the next update.

Anyway, Obama wins reelection!

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: A bunch of states get closer, but not the right ones for Romney

As election day approaches, the number of polls coming in each day has increased dramatically, and that means some states will be jiggling just from the higher volume of polling, although some of it may represent actual movement too.

Today according to the five poll average, five states change categories today, and they all move toward the center, toward being more competitive. But when we look at them, it turns out none of these (with one possible exception) look like they will be in a position to make any difference in this race. Let’s take a look at each of them anyway:

Missouri had been trending further toward Romney, but the last poll looks like Obama may be gaining a bit of support there. It doesn’t matter though, Romney is going to win Missouri.

Wisconsin had bounced up to over a 5% Obama lead. It now falls below that level to a 4.5% Obama lead. This is close enough that I once again classify Wisconsin as “Lean Obama” and therefore a state that Romney could win. But of all the close states, this is the one with the second largest Obama lead. There are many closer states that are better Romney targets as he tries to claw his way to 270.

Ever since Thursday I have been mentioning the big ugly outlier in Virginia. Well, today it finally rolls off the five poll average. With this the average drops to a 3.6% Obama lead. Virginia would never have left the “close state” category without the outlier, but even without the outlier, Obama has been making gains in Virginia. A week ago all the polling indicated a tied race in Virginia. No longer. It is still close, but now Obama has a clear lead.

Of the states changing status today, Virginia is currently the closest, and it is also the only one with a history of actually being very close. At the moment, Virginia isn’t close enough compared to the other close states to actually be part of Romney’s “easiest path to victory” which I’ll cover later in the post, but given the history of polling in the state, it could easily get closer again before we are done, so it still has a chance of making a difference in the race if Romney can win it.

This state is “getting closer” only because the outlier is rolling off the average though. Without the outlier, the trend is actually toward Obama in Virginia. Virginia seems to be slipping away from Romney.

I am showing a chart since August to show a bit more context for Georgia. The five poll average moved to a greater than 10% lead for Romney due to what is a clear outlier in September. Polling has been sparse in Georgia, because it hasn’t been in contention this cycle, so that outlier only rolled off the average today. I now have Romney with a 7.5% lead in Georgia.

So this “gain” for Obama doesn’t matter. Romney will be winning in Georgia.

Michigan has been hovering right around the 5% Obama lead mark for the last month or so. Usually Obama’s lead is slightly more, with today’s update it is slightly less… 4.7%. This is due to one recent poll that actually shows Romney ahead in Michigan! This is out of line with all other recent polling, but as usual, I do not manually remove outliers, I let the averages do their thing. (Although I keep thinking that maybe in 2016 I should use a median, which is less sensitive to these things.)

Anyway, at 4.7%, Michigan has the biggest Obama lead of any of the current crop of “close states”. Like Wisconsin, this means that there are a lot of other states that would be easier for Romney to take the lead in that Michigan. If Romney actually pulls ahead in Michigan, this means it is very likely that he has already pulled ahead in all of the other close states… at which point he would not only have won, but be heading for a pretty comfortable victory.

So while it might be a bit closer than it was (maybe), Michigan is still quite unlikely to end up flipping to Romney, or to be one of the critical states in the last days.

This brings us to the new map and summary:

	Romney	Obama
Romney Best Case	338	200
Current Status	206	332
Obama Best Case	190	348

Romney’s best case now actually is the best it has been ALL YEAR LONG, exceeding his best case at the peak after the 1st presidential debate. In a sense, this does represent a Romney comeback in the last few days. He *is* making a bunch of states closer. He has taken a bunch of states where Obama had been ahead by more than 5%, and pulled them back so they are somewhat close. This may help him in the popular vote, but in the electoral college, it doesn’t look like he has moved any of these states ENOUGH. He may be making states closer, but he is NOT pulling them over the line to him.

Meanwhile, while Obama hasn’t been pulling ahead by more than 5% in more states, and he hasn’t managed to pull any more states to his side either, he actually has been increasing his lead in some of the most critical states.

Time to take a look in more detail by comparing the five poll average now to the five poll average 7 days ago:

Nebraska 2nd (1): 3.8% Romney lead a week ago, 3.8% Romney lead now (no change)
North Carolina (15): 2.4% Romney lead a week ago, 2.4% Romney lead now (no change)
Colorado (9): 2.8% Obama lead a week ago, 0.4% Obama lead now (2.4% move toward Romney)
Florida (29): 0.8% Romney lead a week ago, 1.1% Obama lead now (0.3% move toward Obama)
New Hampshire (4): 1.0% Obama lead a week ago, 2.6% Obama lead now (1.6% move toward Obama)
Ohio (18): 2.0% Obama lead a week ago, 3.4% Obama lead now (1.4% move toward Obama)
Iowa (6): 1.2% Obama lead a week ago, 3.4% Obama lead now (1.2% move toward Obama)
Virginia (13): 0.4% Obama lead a week ago, 3.6% Obama lead now (3.4% move toward Obama)
Pennsylvania (20): 4.6% Obama lead a week ago, 3.8% Obama lead now (0.8% move toward Romney)
Maine 2nd (1): 6.1% Obama lead a week ago, 4.2% Obama lead now (1.9% move toward Romney)
Nevada (6): 2.8% Obama lead a week ago, 4.2% Obama lead now (1.4% move toward Obama)
Wisconsin (10): 3.8% Obama lead a week ago, 4.5% Obama lead now (0.7% move toward Obama)
Michigan (16): 6.5% Obama lead a week ago, 4.7% Obama lead now (1.8% move toward Romney)

That is a lot of close states! But what can be seen here? Out of 13 close areas, only FOUR moved toward Romney in the last week. Colorado, Pennsylvania, Maine’s 2nd congressional district, and Michigan. Of these only Colorado is in Romney’s easiest path to victory. I listed the states above in order by the level of Romney support from highest to lowest.

That means the states he NEEDS to be improving in the most in order to win are Colorado, Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio and Iowa. Looks like Colorado is almost tied now, so I guess whatever Romney is doing there is working and is time well spent. But the rest of these critical states are moving the wrong direction for Romney.

There has been speculation that Romney is trying to do a “hail mary” of some sort, trying to actually win Pennsylvania and Michigan as an alternate path to victory. The states he is ahead in, plus Florida, Colorado, Pennsylvania and then Michigan is certainly another path to victory. But given Obama’s current leads in those states, going through New Hampshire, Ohio and Iowa certainly seems like an easier path than Pennsylvania and Michigan. Perhaps Romney’s internal polling shows Obama’s support is “softer” in these states though.

For the most part though, this looks like effort put into the wrong places, while Obama consolidates his leads in the states more likely to be the tipping point. And that is the cue for today’s tipping point graph:

The Virginia outlier is gone, so now the chart can be interpreted directly. (I’ve removed the little x’s showing what things would have looked like if I had manually removed the outlier.) Iowa is now the tipping point state, and Obama is ahead by 3.4% in Iowa. There was a dip in the past few days (which was slightly more without the Virginia outlier) but Obama’s popped up again. If Romney manages to move the polls in all the close states by at least 3.4%, he can win. But that is a tall order at this point. A very tall order.

As I type there are 48 hours and a few minutes left until the first polls start closing on election night. 3.4% is a huge move in such a short time. Something incredibly dramatic would have to happen to move opinion that much in the final moments.

Romney’s only real hope at this point is that all the polls are wrong.

Absent that, Obama wins a second term.

Electoral College: Three states move toward Obama, but two only sorta

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!

Electoral College: Mixed changes, but mostly more Obama bleeding

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.

Electoral College: Minnesota and Tennessee move toward Romney

Two changes in category today, and bucking the recent trend, they are both moves toward Romney. In reverse order of electoral college weight:

Minnesota (10 electoral votes) had been pretty sparsely polled before the conventions, and the five poll average had shown an Obama lead as high as 11.7% in July. With the batch of new polling in September, Obama’s lead has now dropped to only 7.9%. “Only” is of course relative. 7.9% is still a pretty substantial lead. Minnesota is not in play right now. The only question is how much Obama is going to win by. It looks like Obama’s margin will be less than it once looked like it might be. But this should still be an easy win for Obama.

Tennessee (11 electoral votes) is another state that hasn’t been polled all that often. The last set of polls, back in May, had moved the five poll average to a Romney lead of less than 5%, specifically a 4.2% lead. That had put Tennessee into the set of states my model thought could go either way. After all, a 4.2% lead is pretty slim. The right set of things happening, and perhaps Obama could have actually taken the lead there.

Well, the new set of polls added this week, which are actually two related results from YouGov, moves the average to a 5.8% Romney lead. As far as my model is concerned, that pulls Tennessee out of reach for Obama. Tennessee always seemed like a big stretch for Obama. It always seemed a bit odd that it was showing up in the “close states” category. Well, it now resumes a more natural looking position as a “Weak Romney” state, meaning that Romney has a big lead there, but maybe not so big a lead that he should completely ignore it.

Of course it will get ignored, because Obama doesn’t need it to win. Any scenario that has Obama winning Tennessee is probably an Obama landslide. So Obama isn’t going to pay attention to it. Meanwhile, if Romney is in a position where he is really fighting to win Tennessee, he has already lost. Given he is way behind right now, he needs to be concentrating on states where Obama is ahead to try to bring them back over to his side of the line. Spending time shoring up a state like Tennessee would be a waste of resources for Romney too. So, no attention for Tennessee. Poor Tennessee.

So where does this put the summary? Minnesota has no effect because it was never close. I no longer consider winning Tennessee to be a possibility for Obama, so Obama’s “best case” gets a little worse:

	Romney	Obama
Romney Best Case	278	260
Current Status	191	347
Obama Best Case	191	347

The interesting thing here is of course that the current status is now the same as Obama’s best case. This is because there are no longer ANY close states where Romney is ahead. Tennessee is no longer close because it is now more solidly Romney. So that is good for Romney. Two states moved TOWARD Romney today. This is GOOD for Romney compared to yesterday.

But the overall situation remains very very difficult.

The remaining close states… Florida (29), Ohio (18), North Carolina (15), Colorado (9), Iowa (6), Nevada (6), and New Hampshire (4)… are all states where Obama is ahead.

Now, all of those states are close, and some of them are very close, with Obama’s lead no more than a sliver. Romney could retake the leads in one or more of these states with a little bit of a good news cycle and just one or two good polls.

But what this effectively does is put Obama at his ceiling. Previously, there was headroom above the “current” situation. You could imagine Obama doing a bit better and moving one or more states that were close but leaning Romney to being close but leaning Obama. Now there are no more Romney states that are close… states that one could easily imagine Obama picking up.

To do any better than a 347 to 191 win… which is where the state by state polls put him right now… Obama would need to start picking up states where Romney is ahead by more than 5% (but ones where he is ahead by less than 10%, because we need to retain at least some realism).

The areas in this category are now Georgia (16), Arizona (11), Indiana (11), Tennessee (11), Missouri (10), South Carolina (9), Montana (3) and Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District (1). With the possible exception of Nebraska’s 2nd, which is very infrequently polled but where a poll this week showed the race tied, all of these seem like BIG stretches right now. Even if Romney collapses further and Obama expands his national lead, one could maybe see some of these getting closer again, but they have a long way to go to actually end up in the Obama win column.

As he was looking at the wiki between my update there and this post, a reader asked a question: Has this happened before?

I knew it hadn’t happened in this cycle, but I had a vague memory of there being some time in 2008 where all the close states were leaning in one direction. But I was wrong. Looking at my 2008 analysis, this didn’t happen then either. (I wasn’t doing this in 2004 or before, so I can’t speak to those years.) So indeed,with my method of classifying states… with leads in a five poll average less than 5% being considered “close” states that could go either way… this is the first time in two election cycles where ALL of the “close” states have leaned toward one candidate.

The positive spin for Romney is that Obama has reached a top. It will be very hard for him to do any better in the electoral college than where things are right now.

Of course, the flip side of that is that at the moment Obama is pretty far ahead, and to win Romney has to win almost all of the close states… all of which he is behind in at the moment.

This is not where a candidate wants to be in late September.

It isn’t quite time to just call the race for Obama and go home.

But it is getting close.

Last time around I “called the race” on October 3rd. In 2008 that was the first time we had a situation where McCain’s “best case” in my model was still losing. I didn’t actually think that situation would be sustained through November, but it the end it was. From October 3rd onward, the state by state polls showed a clear Obama win.

This time around, Romney has already been in that “best case is to lose” situation in my model three times. Each time he has recovered, but if Obama increases his lead in one or two key states, he could end up there again pretty easily. Unlike the last three times, there will be very little time to recover if he falls that far behind again. Of course, he would have to not just improve from that point, he would have to get to a point better than he has been at any time this year to actually pull into the lead.

At this very moment, his “current” line is well behind where McCain’s was four years ago too. Four years ago today it looked like McCain would get 256 electoral votes if the election was held then. That wasn’t enough to put him in the lead of course, but it was a lot better than the 191 Romney has in his column at the moment.

Romney needs some major game changing event to make this an interesting race again. He is running out of time for it.

He must wake up every day hoping that Obama will make some major mistake. Instead though, in the last few weeks anyway, it seems like it is Romney putting his foot in his moth over and over again. That isn’t what he needs to be able to start closing the gap, let alone to take the lead.

Note: With a new poll that I added to my spreadsheet today, the date that Wisconsin moved from Lean Obama to Weak Obama shifts from September 20th to September 21st. The trend chart at the top of this post reflects that adjustment.

Electoral College: Virginia and Wisconsin slip out of Romney’s reach

Lots of polls in lots of states, but two changing status today, and they are both important moves… so lets get right to them:

Polling in Virginia has gone into overdrive. In the last month there have been 11 polls added to my spreadsheet for Virginia. Eight of those have been just in the last week. The five poll average now only goes back four days. Things really are speeding up. On September 12th the five poll average in Virginia actually moved to an 0.3% Romney lead. On the 14th Obama took the lead again. Since then Obama’s lead has increased each day there have been new polls.

Today the five poll average goes above 5%. Obama is now ahead by 5.2%. This is just barely past my category boundary, so it would be easy for the next poll to reverse this move, but for the moment, Virginia gets colored blue as it moves from “Lean Obama” to “Weak Obama” in my models. This means that my “Best Case for Romney” model no longer includes the possibility of winning Virginia.

Polling has not been quite as prolific in Wisconsin. The five poll average goes back to August 23rd. At the end of August there were a bunch of polls trying to gauge reaction to the Paul Ryan pick for VP. And indeed, those polls showed Obama’s lead in the state dropping from 5.9% at the end of July, to a low of 1.7% at the end of August. There have only been two new polls since then, one showing a 6% Obama lead, and the other a 14% Obama lead.

The 14% poll seems like it would represent an extrodinary amount of movement, and it may well prove out in the end to be an outlier. We need more polls to validate the true post-Convention situation in Wisconsin. It seems clear there has been movement back toward Obama, but if the 14% poll proves to be an outlier, then the degree of that movement will be exaggerated.

For the moment though, the five poll average moves to an Obama lead of 6.1%. So like Virginia, Wisconsin moves out of Romney’s reach in my models. Even in the case where Romney sweeps all the “close” states, I don’t consider the winning in Wisconsin as part of the picture.

So, the new model summary:

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

Now, the first thing I want to point out, as I often do, is that this represents “if the election was held today”… which of course it is not. The time left is vanishing quickly, but there is still plenty of time for big movement in the polls and the state of this summary. Things WILL change plenty before election day.

But as of right now… I had mentioned yesterday that we had a “hard map” for Romney. With Virginia and Wisconsin out of play, it becomes even harder. If Romney wins every single close state, he would win by a very slim margin. Only 9 more electoral votes than needed for a tie.

This means Florida (where Obama is ahead by 1.6%), Ohio (where Obama is ahead by 4.2%), North Carolina (where Romney is ahead by 3.6%), Tennessee (where Romney is ahead by 4.2%) and Colorado (where Obama is ahead by 1.4%) are now all must win states for Romney. If he loses any of those five states, he loses the election.

Tennessee looks pretty safe. Romney’s lead is less than 5%, but Obama has never been ahead in the five poll average.

North Carolina looks kinda safe too, but not quite as much. Obama has occasionally been ahead in the five poll average in North Carolina. It has usually been Romney though. A comeback for Obama might be possible there, but the recent trend has been toward Romney, not away from him.

In Colorado, Romney has never been ahead in the five poll average. He has been pretty close though, at one point only being behind by 0.2%. And at the moment that 1.4% is looking well within reach. The recent trend has been toward Romney.

Florida is looking iffier though. The lead in the five poll average has gone back and forth a bit, but for most of the last year, it has shown a very narrow Obama lead. It is a very close state. It could go either way. It is certainly not out of reach for Romney, he can win Florida. But he is behind there now, and has been most of the last year with just a few short spikes where he has been ahead.

Then there is Ohio. Although occasional individual polls have shown Romney ahead, at absolutely no time in the last year has Romney led in Ohio. Romney’s best performance in the five poll average was only being behind by 1.4%. His current 4.2% deficit in Ohio is not an impossible deficit. We call it a close state for a reason. A move that size CAN happen. But Romney has to really move things to get there.

Winning all five of these states will be quite a task. Not impossible by any means, but quite a task.

But remember, even if Romney sweeps these five “must win” states, it only gets him to 262 electoral votes. He would still need 7 more electoral votes to tie, or 8 more to win outright. That means he needs to win two out of three of the remaining close states… Iowa (where Romney is behind by 1%), Nevada (where Romney is behind by 3.8%), and New Hampshire (where Romney is behind by 2.4%).

Romney’s winning scenarios are possible. The paths are just very narrow at the moment.

Romney needs something big to shake up the race and start moving things in his direction. We’ll see what he comes up with. (Or what comes his way via luck or missteps by Obama.)

Note added 2012 Sep 25 12:09 UTC: Polls added to my data on September 25th moved the date Wisconsin moved from Lean Obama to Weak Obama from September 20th (the day of this post) to September 21st.

Electoral College: Ryan’s Home State Gets Closer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fun stuff ahead.

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

One state moves today:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Electoral College: Huckabee continues to slip (vs Clinton)

Electoral College: 04:15 – Romney’s Paths Gone, Obama Wins!

Electoral College: Final Update! Final surge for Obama!

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Electoral College: Mixed changes, but mostly more Obama bleeding

Electoral College: Minnesota and Tennessee move toward Romney

Electoral College: Virginia and Wisconsin slip out of Romney’s reach

Electoral College: Ryan’s Home State Gets Closer

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

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