- MT @parislemon: Racing against my inbox. Losing. #
- Reading – Mystery Man Behind The Anti-Muslim Film Blamed For Attacks (Eric Lach) http://t.co/O2kZiIuJ #
- Reading – Verizon iPhone 5 Will Not Offer Simultaneous Voice and Data (Jordan Golson) http://t.co/gEdPc5OR #
- Reading – In Fact It’s Cold As Hell: Mars Isn’t As Earthlike As It Might Look (Jason Major) http://t.co/rU02enEj #
- Reading – Conservatives bash media for being mean to Mitt Romney (Greg Sargent) http://t.co/qIe9rN4V #
- Reading – Apple Promises iPhone 5-Compatible HDMI and VGA Cables Coming Soon (Jordan Golson) http://t.co/sH4VHj1T #
- Reading – Poll Analysis: The post-convention story (Darryl, HorsesAss) http://t.co/uFLBB86U #
- Reading – How will Republicans respond to Fed action? (Greg Sargent) http://t.co/mvgUsCXR #
- Reading – To Be Presidential, Romney Must First Be Truthful (Jonathan Alter) http://t.co/zNMWzeOv #
- EC Update for Fri Sep 14 Done. Polls added in MN VA OH FL MO NH CO. VA changes categories again. Blog post soon. #
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If this one stays as close as it is, it will be annoying to catalog the flips between now and election day between just barely one way and just barely the other way. In any case, Virginia, which moved from Leaning Obama to Leaning Romney in my five poll average on Wednesday, now moves right back where it was with the next new poll:
This represents a move in the five poll average from a Romney lead of 0.3% to an Obama lead of 0.3%. I can’t emphasize enough that both of these results just mean a super tight race in Virginia at the moment. It is too close to call. In general I say that any state where the lead is less than 5% should be considered a toss up, simply because that small a lead can disappear quickly. This is why I color all those states the same color on the map, regardless of who is slightly ahead. But 0.3%? For all intents and purposes, the state is tied at the moment. Of course, you have to keep in mind what “the moment” is. My five poll average in Virginia currently goes back almost exactly a month. A lot has happened in that month. But we’ve only had five polls in Virginia. Two of the five polls have been since the conventions. If you average only those two… you get an 0.2% lead for Romney. Still too close to call. Virginia really does look like a toss up at this point. Never the less, since the five poll average is slightly on Obama’s side at the moment, we move it to Obama’s side for the “Current” line of our summary, which assumes the candidates win every state where they lead even slightly in the five poll average.
And where does this put us? It puts the current line right back at a 332 to 206 Obama win… Right where the model has been for all but a few scattered weeks since the beginning of April. More specifically 124 of the 167 days since April 1st have had the model at a 332 to 206 Obama win. That’s 74% of the time. The other 26% of the time things have looked a bit better for Romney, or a bit better for Obama… more often a little bit better for Romney… but then we’ve reverted right back to good ol’ 332 to 206. Even when states have come and gone from the set of close states, changing either Romney or Obama’s “best case” where they win all the close states, the model line in the middle has stayed remarkably stable. Compare this to my analysis exactly four years ago. If you look at the center line of that chart (a double pink/blue line rather than this year’s purple) you’ll see that between March and September it was moving all over the place. (In interpreting the old charts, keep in mind that last time around down was good for Obama, this time up is good for Obama.) This year things are just remarkably stable in comparison. It is also interesting to note that by this time four years ago the “lead” in the race had changed hands five times. (And it would change hands two more times before the election.) In comparison this time the lead has changed hands… well, never. Obama has been ahead from the start. But to show how things can change in the final stretch to November: On September 14th 2008, the current state of the polls was actually showing a 269-269 tie. Obama of course went on to win 365 to 173. In the last month and a half of the campaign, 96 electoral votes moved onto Obama’s side of the line. So big movements are possible in relatively short amounts of time. Even having said that though, if I had to make a bet right now, I’d bet on a 332 to 206 Obama win. This time around even when the polls move from that spot, they seem like they keep wanting to go back there. :-) 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 change today. After flirting for awhile with the idea of being a close state that might actually be in contention this election, Obama’s lead in Michigan is once again starting to open up:
Obama’s lead in the state is now just barely over my 5% threshold, so I move the state from “Leaning Obama” to “Weak Obama” and color it light blue on my map. Basically, Obama is now far enough ahead in Michigan that it looks like a pretty safe bet that he will take the state in November. But his margins aren’t so high that he should be taking the state completely for granted. Given the right opportunity, Romney could still make it close again. This means that I take the possibility of winning Michigan back out of Romney’s best case. This leaves the new model summary as follows:
At this level, Romney’s best case has him with 32 electoral votes more than he needs to win. Looking at this, he still has no “must win” states mathematically. Theoretically he could lose Florida (27) and still win if he won every other close state. Realistically speaking of course, if he is in a position where he loses Florida, it is highly unlikely that Romney would simultaneously win the rest of the close states. His paths to victory are a lot narrower without Michigan as a possible win. Although there was the move toward Romney in Virginia in yesterday’s update, so far my prediction from last week that the beginning of September would be Romney’s post-primary high water mark is holding. (I updated my post from yesterday to add a note that my original accidental implication that I had already been proved wrong was incorrect.) It has only been a week though. And it has not been a great week for Romney. Romney may still have some good weeks left in him before this is all said and done. Obama has a big advantage at the moment. Romney has a really hard road to go to make this really competitive. Being in a spot where you essentially have to sweep all of the close states (most of which you are behind in at the moment) in order to win is not where you want to be in mid-September. Especially as a challenger. But it is not over yet… 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 status today and it moves in a surprising direction given the overwhelming talk of the Obama bounce following the Democratic Convention. Virginia moves from just barely Obama, to just barely Romney:
Since the Conventions ended, I’ve added polls in AL, AZ, FL, IL, MA, MN, NC, NJ, NM, OH, VA and WA. Twelve states. Eleven of these states didn’t change categories. Now the first one does, and it is Virginia. Not moving toward Obama, but moving toward Romney. But what about the bounce?? Aren’t all the polls showing a massive movement toward Obama right now? What is going on? Well, the national polls have been showing that kind of move. The expectation is that the state polls will naturally follow. If the “bounce” lasts awhile and does not immediately fade, then they probably still will. But so far that just isn’t showing up. Now, since I use a five poll average, even if there is a move on one new poll, it might not cause a category shift right away. In most of these cases though, the new polls at the state level have been right in the same general range as the polls from before the conventions. Perhaps there has been some movement, just none that has moved any state to a new category in my model. Until Virginia. Moving toward Romney. The five poll average moves from an Obama lead of 1.6% to a Romney lead of 0.2%. As usual when states move from “leaning” one way to “leaning” I will point out that any lead under 5% can disappear overnight with the right set of things in the news. I color all the states where the lead is less than 5% the same color on my map. These states really are close. They could go either way. And the states where the margin is less than 2%? Even more so. You might as well flip a coin. So one should be very careful ascribing too much significance when one state flips back and forth across the line. The “current” model does move in this case… where every state goes the way the five poll average stands today. But I list the two “best case” scenarios here for a reason. To see where we really are, you need to look at that full range of possibilities. (Although of course we’re more likely to get a result “toward the middle” than near the edges of this range where one or the other candidate sweep all the close states… itself an unlikely scenario.) In any case, the new update to the models:
Bottom line, Obama is still ahead. He has a much stronger position. But Romney does have multiple ways to win. If the conventions have produced a bounce that improves Obama’s position substantially, it isn’t showing up in the electoral college yet. My prediction from my last update that the beginning of September was going to be Romney’s peak in my model looks like it hasn’t come to pass though. My model shows Romney in a bit better position now than he was at the time of that update. Oh well! (Edit 2012 Sep 13 16:25… actually, my prediction was that the beginning of September would mark Romney’s peak. Although Virginia flipping did improve Romney’s position over the last update, it still isn’t as good as it was at the beginning of September, so my prediction has actually held so far…) Conventional wisdom is that you have to wait for a couple weeks after the convention for public opinion to “settle down”. Add to that the fact that if you are looking state by state you have to wait for the critical states to get polled and you realize we’ve still got very incomplete information at the state level. Since the conventions ended, of the close states Florida (29), Ohio (18), North Carolina (15) and Virginia (13) have been polled. Of these, only Ohio has been polled more than once. No new polls at all yet for Michigan (16), Tennessee (11), Wisconsin (10), Colorado(9), Iowa (6), Nevada (6), or New Hampshire (4). So… we still need to wait for a bit more polling to see where things really stand in this post convention stage. Polling should be continuing to accelerate as we approach November, so with luck we won’t have to wait too long. 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 Sep 12 11:13 UTC to correct the list of states with polls added since the convention to include AL and NJ, which I’d forgotten. As of the moment this posts, at 10:05 UTC (3:05 AM Pacific, 6:05 AM Eastern) Alex will be exactly three years old! Once again it is amazing just how the time has flown by, and all the new things he is doing every day. I last did a post like this six months ago. Since then, here are some of the new developments…
Anyway, as usual there is tons more, but I figure that it enough for now. Alex is three! Wow!
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