This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Comments here or emails to me at abulsme@abulsme.com are encouraged... or follow me on twitter as @abulsme.
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Just before 18:00 UTC today, Florida was finally “called” for Obama. Absent any faithless electors, this makes the final electoral college results Obama 332, Romney 206.
As those of you following my electoral college tracking this year know, not only was that the final state of my “Current” line on election day, but it is also by far the most common location of the race in the daily updates covering the whole year. As I’d said quite a few times, 332-206 just seemed to be where this race “wanted” to be. Sometimes events would move the polls slightly further in Obama’s direction, sometimes slightly further in Romney’s direction, but 332-206 seemed to attract the race like a magnet, and things would revert back to this state. When things “reverted to the mean” this is where they went.
Also of course, looking at the daily updates going back to January, Romney was NEVER ahead in this electoral college analysis… or any other electoral college analysis. Aside from a few days in October where Romney was threatening to take the lead (but never did) the question was never if Obama would win, but rather by how much. But yet reports are that the Romney campaign, and Romney himself, were shocked by the fact that they lost. They really truly did not believe the overwhelming consensus from the pollsters.
I guess to some degree to run a national campaign like this you HAVE to make yourself think you are winning, but still…
One final point. There are quite a few more complicated models out there doing electoral college analysis. They provide potentially more detail and more kinds of insight than mine, but part of my point in doing this exercise is that even a very simple “last five poll” average can get you very good results. The marginal value from added complexity doesn’t really seem to get you that much more. This isn’t to say that there isn’t value in that complexity. There is. And if I had more time, I’d certainly be tempted to make a more complex method of analysis myself.
But the simple average still got 56 out of 56 right. (That would be the 50 states plus DC, plus the congressional districts in Maine and Nebraska.)
That ain’t bad.
Note added Nov 11 00:25 UTC: I have some final clean up to do on it yet, but the archival wiki page with all the information from this general election season is here. The earlier wiki archiving the primary season is here.
Edit Nov 11 00:34 to change some awkward wording.
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.
Today was by far the biggest update I’ve ever done. New polls in 31 states plus the Maine congressional districts. Absolutely exhausting checking all my sources and entering in all the data today. After all that though, the result is three states changing status, with none of those status changes making a big difference in the race. Time for a quick look before we get to the meatier stuff:
On Saturday Romney’s lead in the South Dakota five poll average dropped below 10%. With today’s update is is once again slightly more than 10%. Romney’s going to win South Dakota. (Graph shows a year since polling has been so sparse here.)
Some story in Missouri. Just yesterday Romney’s lead in the five poll average dipped below 10%. Today it is above 10% again. Romney will win Missouri.
Finally Florida. While the other two don’t really matter much to the state of the race because Romney is clearly going to win both, Florida isn’t all that significant right now because the fact that Florida has once again bounced across the line, and now has Romney narrowly ahead, does not actually give any additional insight into the state of the race in Florida. Florida has been bouncing back and forth close to the line. Small fluctuations up and down are just sampling noise. The best we can say about Florida is that it is tied, and there is no indication that the state is breaking one way or another. As I’ve said several times before, we’ll know which way Florida goes once all the votes are counted. We may not even know on election night depending how it goes.
So, the current state of the race with just about a day to go before the polls start closing:
|
Romney |
Obama |
| Romney Best Case |
338 |
200 |
| Current Status |
235 |
303 |
| Obama Best Case |
190 |
348 |
So goodbye to 332-206 for the moment, and perhaps for good. There isn’t that much time left after all.
Fundamentally, we have no significant change to the race today in terms of the three main lines in my summary. Obama is still heavily favored, but Romney can still win if he manages to defy expectation and win in a bunch of the close states.
So, here we go again, looking at those close states.
With just the states he is ahead in by more than 5%, Romney starts at 190 electoral votes. Then if we go in order…
- Nebraska 2nd (1): Romney ahead by 3.8%
- North Carolina (15): Romney ahead by 1.4%
- Florida (29): Romney ahead by 0.4%
That is all the states (and CDs) Romney is actually ahead in based on my five poll average. That gets him to 235 electoral votes. 34 electoral votes short. If you continue to bring the states in order of Romney’s support level…
- Colorado (9): Obama ahead by 1.2%
- Virginia (13): Obama ahead by 1.6%
- Iowa (6): Obama ahead by 2.0%
- New Hampshire (4): Obama ahead by 2.8%
- Maine 2nd (1): Obama ahead by 2.8%
- Ohio (18): Obama ahead by 3.1%
Ohio is once again the tipping state. If Romney pulled all of these in, he would have 286 electoral votes and therefore win the presidency. Now, if Romney does indeed win Ohio, he could then afford to actually lose Iowa, New Hampshire and Maine’s 2nd.
This leaves Romney’s current “easiest path to victory” to be holding on to the three states he is ahead in, and then pulling ahead and winning in Colorado, Virginia and Ohio.
There are other paths involving the remaining close states, which are:
- Pennsylvania (20): Obama ahead by 4.2%
- Wisconsin (10): Obama ahead by 4.3%
- Michigan (16): Obama ahead by 4.5%
- Nevada (6): Obama ahead by 4.8%
There are certainly ways some of those states could be part of a path to 270 (or 269) for Romney, but since Obama is even further ahead in those states, that kind of movement seems even more unlikely.
So looking at the tipping point margin graph:
The race has been stable for the last week.
Romney is out of time. If there was going to be a last minute move toward Romney in the swing states, it needed to have been happening over the last few days. There is nothing. States appear to be jiggling around a bit due to the sheer volume of polling that is happening right now, but there is no real indication of any movement that makes any sort of difference to this race.
The best bet for the Romney team remains that all the polls are just systematically wrong, and the reality is that a lot of the states I listed above are actually at least 3% better for Romney than they look from the polling. There HAVE been presidential election years where the state polls were off by that much. So this is not impossible….
…just pretty unlikely.
Absent a miracle for the Romney folks, this looks like Obama getting reelected.
Before I close for the day, just a quick note.
The plans for abulsme.com for the next 48 hours had been one final update to these polling charts before the polls start to close less than 24 hours from now. After that I was planning to do what I did in 2008, which was updates to the website every 15 minutes or so as states get called one way or the other by the major networks. The networks usually only call the election itself when one candidate actually gets to 270 electoral votes, but really, you will probably know well in advance of that, as one can already assume how many states will go. You do not have to wait for the polls to close in California to know that Obama will win California for instance.
The plan above may still happen, but life may get in the way. I just got word within the last two hours that my mother-in-law is getting released to go home after having had major surgery a couple of weeks ago… which is great, because it means she is doing well, but my wife needs to be there when she gets discharged, and to help her during the first week or two home. So my wife may need to be flying out of here, possibly as soon as tomorrow. Is she does, depending on exact schedules, I may not be able to do “election night coverage” after all as I’ll be needing to deal with things at home. If so, I might post the occasional comment on twitter, but won’t be furiously updating graphs all night long.
I should know better about what my plans will be by the time I post my final update tomorrow. Thanks for you patience!
Note: Chart and map from the Abulsme.com 2012 Electoral College Prediction page. Both assume Obama vs Romney with no strong third party candidate and show polling as it currently exists. Things will change before election day. On the map red is Romney, blue is Obama, gold states are too close to call. Lines on the chart represent how many more electoral votes a candidate would have
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.
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