| Romney | Obama | |
|---|---|---|
| Romney Best Case | 258 | 280 |
| Current Status | 206 | 332 |
| Obama Best Case | 205 | 333 |
At 04:49 UTC CNN called Nevada for Obama. The five poll average still hasn’t missed, but there are still a few states left.
|
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:
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.
Two states change categories today. One moves toward Obama, the other moves toward Romney. Lets take a look:
Last Friday the five poll average moved to a 5.2% Obama lead in Nevada. With today’s update, it drops back down to 4.6%. With that I put Nevada back in the list of “Lean Obama” close states. In the last year, Romney has NEVER held a lead in Nevada in the five poll average. Winning Nevada would be a stretch for him. But it is once again somewhat close. There ARE situations you could imagine, even with less than two weeks to go, that would erase Obama’s advantage in Nevada. As we get closer though, a 4.6% lead looks a lot bigger than it might have a month ago.
After a brief dip into Romney territory in the middle of October, Virginia returns to where it has been for most of the last year… a small Obama lead. As of now, the five poll average has Obama with a 1.0% lead in Virginia. This moves Virginia back to Obama’s column. The lead is narrow, this could change, but the movement lately has been toward Obama. If you look specifically at the state charts such as the two above, this is actually the picture in most of the states that are in contention. You see an Obama decline starting about a week before the first debate, which accelerates into more of an implosion after the first debate. That decline hits bottom sometime between the VP debate and the second presidential debate, and then Obama has been trending upward ever since, but is still quite a long way from his highs at the end of September. Now where does this put our summary?
That is right. Our old friend is back. Obama winning by 332 to 206. This is where the “Current” line has been more often than any other position. If you look at the chart showing the history of the race for the entire year you can see that the most time has been spent here, and while there have been occasional movements in both directions away, time after time things have just reverted to 332 to 206. This just seems to be where this race “wants” to be. This seems to be the “mean” that the race always reverts back to after one event or another moves it away. This looks like a pretty strong position for Obama, right? Romney is only ahead in ONE of the close states at the moment. He has to move several back over to his side to win. This does not look great for Romney. Well, no, this isn’t great for Romney. His situation is considerably worse than it was right before the second debate. He clearly peaked and is now declining again… at least in terms of the electoral college. There have been some people saying that they are seeing Romney momentum right now. Uh, no. But… it is still close. Time to look again at the individual close states:
We still have Romney with 191 electoral votes without any close states. Add in the one close state he is ahead in, North Carolina, and you get to 206 electoral votes. That is 63 electoral votes short. In yesterday’s update if you moved all states toward Romney by more than 1.2%, you would have a Romney win. The tipping point was Ohio. The tipping point is still Ohio. The easiest way for Romney to win is to hold North Carolina, then pull Florida, Virginia, New Hampshire, Colorado… and Ohio… to his side of the fence. This is looking like a much harder job than it was before. More states are slipping away from Romney… but they are still close… they are not out of reach. Not as close as they were though. Obama’s lead in Ohio is increasing. It is now 1.6%. But 1.6% is still tiny. You can easily imagine events that would cause a 1.7% or 2.0% move in the polls across all the close states. If Obama pulls ahead by a bit more in Ohio, then maybe we can say he starts to look like a clear winner. But at the moment, it is still close. Obama is ahead. If the election was held today, he would be the favorite by a decent margin. As of today, FiveThirtyEight has Obama at a 68.1% chance of winning. I’ve seen higher estimates elsewhere, up to 93.4%. My gut says it is somewhere in between. Maybe 80%. But there is another interesting possibility percolating that I’ll mention before I close. For the last two weeks or so, most of the places doing poll averaging of national polls have shown Romney ahead. I don’t believe ANY of the sites that I track that are doing analysis of the electoral college have shown Romney ahead at any point. Obama has always been ahead. If this situation persists through election day, we may have a repeat of 2000, but with the parties reversed and the key state being Ohio instead of Florida. Romney wins the popular vote, but Obama wins the electoral college and therefore the presidency. This kind of situation happens when you have something like Romney building up increasingly large margins in states he was going to win anyway, like Texas. These additional gains make no difference to the electoral college, but they do matter to the electoral vote. I would find this extremely entertaining for no reason more than being able to watch all kinds of people in both parties suddenly have a completely opposite opinion on the value of the electoral college than they espoused 12 years previously. This is still not necessarily an expected outcome… FiveThirtyEight puts the odds of the scenario above at 6.5%. (For completeness, they give 1.8% odds to the reverse scenario where Romney wins the electoral college and Obama wins the popular vote.) 6.5% isn’t exactly super likely, but it is nothing to sneeze at. If there was a 6.5% chance of a hurricane hitting your city, you would be starting to make preparations. Meanwhile though, other analysts put these odds much higher… specifically, Sam Wang puts the chances of this at 25%. I normally say you can basically ignore the popular vote except as an early indicator to moves in the states… but this is a situation where watching the popular vote is worth it. If we continue to see a popular vote / electoral vote split it will make for a very interesting election night. Note: Chart and map from the Abulsme.com 2012 Electoral College Prediction page. Both assume Obama vs Romney with no strong third party candidate and show polling as it currently exists. Things will change before election day. On the map red is Romney, blue is Obama, gold states are too close to call. Lines on the chart represent how many more electoral votes a candidate would have than is needed to tie under several different scenarios. Up is good for Obama, Down is good for Romney. Edit 2012 Oct 24 18:53 UTC to fix a few wording issues.
Two states move today, one toward Obama, one toward Romney. As usual, in order of Electoral College strength:
In the last three months Nevada has usually been “Leaning Obama”, meaning Obama has the advantage, but not by very much. In September Obama’s lead headed higher for a little bit, then dove again after the debates. Now it heads up again, with Obama’s lead in the five poll average now at 5.2%. Given this, Nevada now is classified as “Weak Obama” meaning it would take a pretty significant move for Romney to take the lead and win the state. So Nevada is no longer included in Romney’s “best case” scenario.
Pennsylvania is a bit odd. Three days ago Obama’s lead topped 5% in the five poll average. But today we add a new poll that arrived out of order. It was still in the five most recent polls by the last day of polling, so it counted as a “recent poll” for us, but it was also the first poll since February showing Romney ahead in Pennsylvania, and showing him ahead by a relatively substantial 4% at that. This is way out of line with other recent polling in the state, so certainly LOOKS like an outlier. Especially since by the time it was released there were already polls taken after it that did not show that kind of movement. But I don’t do any outlier removal here. I just let the five poll average do what the five poll average does. For the moment, this means that Obama’s lead in Pennsylvania is now down 2.8%, with the peak above 5% erased. Because this was still a “current poll” I do not retroactively adjust the overall historical trend however. This potential outlier is now the 5th oldest poll I have in Pennsylvania, so it will age out with the very next Pennsylvania poll. Pennsylvania may or may not pop back to “Weak Obama” at that point depending on the results of that next poll. So this puts Pennsylvania back in play, with the possibility of Romney winning the state now back in his best case scenario. Which brings us to the updated summary:
We still have a close race. Obama is ahead, but Romney only needs to pull 21 more electoral votes over to his side to win. Right now the easiest way to get there is to hold North Carolina (15 ev, 3.8% Romney lead), Virginia (13 ev, 2.6% Romney lead), Florida (29 ev, 0.4% Romney lead) and then to pull ahead and take New Hampshire (4 ev, 0.5% Obama lead) and Ohio (18 ev, 2.8% Obama lead). There are many other combinations that will do it too. That just looks like the easiest to me at the moment. Note: Chart and map from the Abulsme.com 2012 Electoral College Prediction page. Both assume Obama vs Romney with no strong third party candidate and show polling as it currently exists. Things will change before election day. On the map red is Romney, blue is Obama, gold states are too close to call. Lines on the chart represent how many more electoral votes a candidate would have than is needed to tie under several different scenarios. Up is good for Obama, Down is good for Romney.
Two states changing status today, and both are bad news for Obama. Lets get right to it:
Prior to the debate last week, Obama’s lead in the five poll average in Nevada was 5.9%, which was a substantial enough lead for Obama that Nevada was not in the list of states that were within reach for Romney. We now have the first post-debate poll, and it shows a tied race in the state. This is just one poll out of five, but it causes the five poll average to drop to a 4.1% Obama lead. So once again I list Nevada as just “Lean Obama” and it contributes to Romney’s best case. Although it is a drop from where the state was before the debate, “Lean Obama” is actually where Nevada has been most of the last year, so to some degree this is reversion to the mean. Obama had a bunch of strong polls in September, but those are now in the rear view mirror, replaced by the worst numbers he has had in the state all year. (It is important to point out that some of these bad numbers were from polls taken BEFORE the debate.) The five poll average is still buoyed by some strong late September polls. Unless Obama gets a quick bounce back in the next few polls, I expect Obama’s lead in Colorado will diminish further as those polls age off.
In Colorado before the debate Obama was 3.3% ahead in the five poll average. There have now been four polls that ended after the debate and the state flips to a 1.3% Romney lead. This is the first time in the last year that Romney has been in the lead in Colorado according to the five poll average. Unlike Nevada, where the state was down from a spike toward Obama, but had so far only returned to well traveled territory, in this case Romney is breaking new ground. Romney adds what had been a narrow but consistent Obama state to his column. So, the new summary:
Before any discussion, time to eat some crow. On September 6th I said:
So what is the comparison between now and the beginning of September?
Well, OK. I never specified how exactly to judge this, but two out of three of the lines being better than they were seems like it should qualify, especially since one of them is the “current” line. By that mark, Romney is now at the best point he has been since the very beginning of January. To be fair to myself, from that moment onward, in almost every update, I did mention that there was one way for Romney to come back again, and that was for Obama to majorly screw up. I perhaps stated this most clearly in my update from September 27th, which turned out to be Obama’s peak:
If you believe the most hyperventilating reports out there, a catastrophic Obama implosion is indeed what seems to have happened at the first debate. It seems it was not as unlikely as I expected. I presumed both Obama and Romney would put in not great but competent debate performances and the net effect would be essentially zero. Instead we saw a brand new Romney, hitting his stride in a way he never had in the previous year, and an Obama who looked like he didn’t want to be there and was phoning it in at best. Although Obama peaked before the debate, as each post-debate poll comes in, what a couple of weeks ago seemed like an insurmountable lead for Obama is getting transformed into a genuinely close race. A number of people doing detailed analyses of the polls have pointed out that if you look carefully at the dates on both state and national polls, there is tentative evidence that Romney’s debate bounce may have already peaked and is now starting to recede. So this may be a good time to do another detailed look at where the swing states stand, and what it would take for Romney to win. First thing to point out… despite the fairly significant drop Obama has seen since his peak… he is still ahead! (For the moment anyway.) Some national polling averages now show Romney ahead in the popular vote, but remember we do not have a national election, we have 51 smaller elections. Looking at the states using my five poll average, here is where we now stand, looking not just at my categories, but also specifically at the magnitude of the candidate leads in the close states. With only the states where Romney is ahead by more than 5%, Romney gets to 191 electoral votes. Then we add in the close states where he is ahead:
That gets Romney to 244 electoral votes if he can hold his lead in those three states. You need 269 electoral votes to tie (a situation Romney would probably win in the house) or 270 electoral votes to win outright. So Romney needs 25 more electoral votes to tie, 26 to win. To get there he needs to start pulling ahead in states where Obama is currently ahead.
There are a number of combinations that will get Romney to 270, and any of those four close states could easily flip. They are all close enough that the lead can disappear overnight. With the current state of the polls though, the easiest way for Romney to win seems to be to flip Ohio and Virginia, both of which are now looking exceptionally close. Prior to the debate, Obama had a 7.8% lead in Ohio… now down to 0.4%. That is a massive move in such a short time. Prior to the debate, Obama had a 4.3% lead in Virginia, now down to 1.0%. That’s a smaller move, but not insubstantial. If Romney can move each of those just a LITTLE bit further, then it would put him ahead in my “current” electoral college model for the first time ever. For almost all of the last year, while Romney’s best case was to win, I’ve been able to repeatedly say that hitting the best case was difficult. Romney would have to almost sweep the close states, and during most of that time, Romney was behind in most of those close states. It was a tall order. Not so much any more. Romney is still behind. But both Ohio and Virginia are in easy spitting distance. A very slight move in those states, and he pulls ahead. Then if he manages to stay ahead, perhaps even consolidating those leads, then he wins on election day. For the first time since January, this looks like a close race. The question of course is how long lasting this “debate bounce” is. Can Romney hold onto his gains… and extend them a little further to eke out a narrow win? Or do we start reverting back to where the race has been most of the year? Do we end up back at the “everybody wins the states they are ahead in” line being at Obama 332 to Romney 206 where it has been more often than anywhere else? The “feel” of the race has certainly changed. Obama was knocked on his heels and is now on defense. At long last, Romney has repositioned himself toward the center, making a play for the voters he needs to win over to win. To win though, he needs to not just hold his gains so far, but pull things a bit further toward him. If Obama on the other hand can just hold on and prevent any further losses, he wins. If Romney’s bounce recedes (as some say is already happening) then once again Obama wins. It seems likely that we will indeed see some reversion to the mean, which would favor Obama. But if Obama has another bad debate, or in general if he can’t shift the narrative back in his favor in the next few weeks, he is in big trouble. Romney isn’t in the lead yet according to my classifications… but a few more good polls and he is there. He is close. Really close. Note: Chart and map from the Abulsme.com 2012 Electoral College Prediction page. Both assume Obama vs Romney with no strong third party candidate and show polling as it currently exists. Things will change before election day. On the map red is Romney, blue is Obama, gold states are too close to call. Lines on the chart represent how many more electoral votes a candidate would have than is needed to tie under several different scenarios. Up is good for Obama, Down is good for Romney.
Three states change categories today. Two states move toward Obama, one state moves toward Romney. But Romney’s state is bigger than the other two combined, so he wins the day. Lets look at them each, from smallest to largest:
The five poll average in New Hampshire had been generally sticking at an Obama lead less than 5%, but with two related polls (both from WMUR/UNH with and without pushing leaners to express a preference) showing Obama with a 15% lead in the state, the average spikes upward These data points may well prove to be outliers, they certainly seem like it initially, but for the moment they move Obama’s lead well out of the “Leaning” category, and indeed almost all the way to the “Strong” category. For the moment though, Obama’s lead stands at 9.8% and we put New Hampshire into the “Weak Obama” category. (Note that even if we’d only counted one of these two polls, the state would still end up as Weak Obama.) This has the effect of moving New Hampshire out of Romney’s reach for the moment.
In Nevada things look less like they are being influenced by an outlier. Instead three of the last five polls in the state now show leads over 5% and the average now jumps to a 5.7% Obama lead. There does seem to be some real movement toward Obama in those last few polls. Will it last? Who knows. But for the moment Nevada also moves out of Romney’s reach as well. This would all look pretty bad for Romney today, except for the third state:
Florida, where the five poll average had just hit 5.0% exactly last Thursday causing me to move Florida to “Weak Obama”, now drops back below 5% again, putting Florida back into the much more familiar “Weak Obama” category where it has been for most of the last year. The spike upward appears to be over, and Florida has reverted to form as being a close state. Well, sorta close. The five poll average still has Obama at a 4.1% lead in Florida, which is not insubstantial. And he has been “slightly ahead” in the state for most of the year. But this is still a small enough lead that given the right sorts of events it could disappear quickly. So once again, I list Florida as being in play. And that makes the current status:
So Romney’s best case if he wins all the close states… now once again including Florida… is still to loose, but now by a pretty small margin. Obama 275 to Romney 263. If he can get Nevada back in play and win that, we could have a 269-269 tie, which would probably end up going for Romney in the House. A tie would be a lot of fun. Still an unlikely scenario though. In general, to win, Romney has to win Florida (29), North Carolina (15), Virginia (13), Colorado (9) and Iowa (6) for sure. All of those are “must win”. And Romney is currently behind in all of them to various degrees. They are all pretty close though and flipping them is not unrealistic. On top of that he then needs to get at least one of the big states in the “Weak Obama” category, or two of the smaller ones. Those are all states where Romney is behind by more than 5%. Although the map looks a bit better than it did a few days ago, it is still a very bleak picture for Romney at the moment. Note: Chart and map from the Abulsme.com 2012 Electoral College Prediction page. Both assume Obama vs Romney with no strong third party candidate and show polling as it currently exists. Things will change before election day. On the map red is Romney, blue is Obama, gold states are too close to call. Lines on the chart represent how many more electoral votes a candidate would have than is needed to tie under several different scenarios. Up is good for Obama, Down is good for Romney. Edit 2012 Oct 3 09:44 UTC to add final note.
Chart and map from the Abulsme.com 2012 Electoral College Prediction page. Both assume Obama vs Romney with no strong third party candidate. Both show polling as it currently exists. Things will change before election day. On the map red is Romney, blue is Obama, gold states are too close to call. Lines on the chart represent how many more electoral votes a candidate would have than is needed to tie under several different scenarios. Up is good for Obama, Down is good for Romney. We haven’t had an update to the status of any state in my model since June 29th. This is the longest stretch without an update since I started tracking this year’s electoral college race at the end of January. Now, the July 4th holiday was in the middle of that, and so polling was sparse for awhile, but still, there were plenty of polls, they just didn’t actually move states into new categories. Until today. We finally get three states moving today. Two move in Romney’s direction, one moves toward Obama. So, in order by electoral weight:
I added three new polls to the database for Virginia (13 ev) today and between them the five poll average pops up to exactly 5.0%, which puts Virginia back in the “Weak Obama” category, but just barely. The next poll could easily knock Virginia back into a less than 5% lead for Obama and make the state a swing state again. But for the moment, we take Virginia off the list of states where Romney has a shot. One thing to note about the Virginia results. One of the new polls I added today was a PPP poll that ended July 8th that included the Constitution Party Candidate, Virgil Goode, who took 9% of the vote, mostly from Romney, which of course improves Obama’s position. Generally I find out about polls quicker than that, but today is the first day this one popped up in one of the sources I use regularly. My policy generally is to use polls that include third parties as long as the people they include are definite candidates and not speculative. Goode was named the candidate for the Constitution Party back in April, so he counts. Because of this I also retroactively added another Virginia poll from April that included Goode. This changes the historical chart slightly, as that old poll expands Virginia’s previous experiment with being “Weak Obama” from having covered just May 26 to June 4th, to covering the longer period May 4th to June 8th. One should note of course that support for third party candidates typically collapses as election day approaches.
Next up is Nevada (6 ev). Recent polls show Obama’s lead slipping below 5%. So Nevada once again drops into swing state status. Obama’s lead in the five poll average is now 4.0%, which is not insubstantial, but is potentially within reach for Romney if events and the campaign narrative go his way. A 4% lead can disappear overnight with the right events in the news. So winning Nevada is once again considered part of Romney’s best case.
And finally New Mexico (5 ev). Obama’s lead in the five poll average drops under 10%, so I move it from “Strong Obama” to “Weak Obama”, but it is still not particularly close. Obama’s lead has to drop a lot more before it gets into swing state territory. Having said this, the last two polls in New Mexico are a very significant drop from earlier polls, and show things getting a lot closer. Both of these polls are from PPP though, one including Libertarian Gary Johnson, and one not including him. Since both polls are from one source, taken from the same underlying sample I believe, there is a chance they are outliers. We’ll have to wait for more polls to confirm. If this turns out to be real movement rather than sampling error, then this could be a pretty significant movement away from Obama in New Mexico. So what does all this do to the overall situation? Well, New Mexico’s change does not effect the inventory of swing states, so it doesn’t affect the three main lines in our model at all. Nevada moves into swing status, but Virginia leaves it. Virginia is bigger, so today’s net effect is to make Romney’s best case worse by 7 electoral votes:
So, as a whole, Obama wins today’s updates. But Romney still has a variety of paths to victory. Over the course of June, he took a lot of states Obama was ahead in by more than 5% and made them close. Virginia has hit 5% again, but just barely. That may be ephemeral. We have a ton of states that are close right now. True, most of them are still on Obama’s side of the line, and Obama still wins handily if he takes every state he is ahead in. But you have to make states close before you make them yours, and Romney has slowly but surely been doing that. Romney did have a bad week last week, but state polls are sparse enough, it takes more than a few days of bad news for a trend to start showing up in the electoral college models. If the current status in Virginia gets confirmed by more polls, and other states start going that way too, then perhaps this is a start of a movement back away from Romney and toward Obama. But for the moment it is too early to tell. Edit 2012 Jul 20 14:04 UTC: Actually updated the historical chart with the Virginia correction, which I’d neglected to do when this was first posted. Sorry!
Charts from the Abulsme.com 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page. When a candidate gets down to 0%, they have clinched the nomination. If they get above 100%, they have been mathematically eliminated. The first chart is by date, the second is by “% of Delegates Already Allocated”. These numbers include estimates of the eventual results of multi-stage caucus processes which will be refined as the later stages occur. You may have heard reports of a big Ron Paul win in Nevada this weekend. Ron Paul supporters win 22 of the 25 delegate spots in Nevada and all that. Well, yes. True. However, in Nevada the delegates are still bound on the first ballot at the convention to vote proportionately to the caucus results, and the delegates can be removed and replaced if they attempt to do something different. So the slate of delegates elected in Nevada doesn’t actually change the delegate counts. Something else does however. According to Green Papers the delegates will be awarded proportionally between the candidates still actively in the race, so by suspending their campaigns Santorum and Gingrich lose their delegates and those delegates get reallocated. So the previous estimated allocation in Nevada had been: Romney 14, Gingrich 6, Paul 5, Santorum 3. This now becomes: Romney 20, Paul 8. So net from Nevada for today: Romney +6, Paul +3, Santorum -3, Gingrich -6. Meanwhile, Romney picks up two more supers, one from Alabama and one from Arkansas. So for the day: Romney +8, Paul +3, Santorum -3, Gingrich -6. So of course Romney continues to walk toward the nomination, despite some delegate gains for Paul as well. Wait, but what about Maine? Paul won there over the weekend too, right? Yes. It looks that way. But Green Papers hasn’t updated their “soft count” for Maine yet. I’m sure they will soon. When they do, we’ll update here too. In any case, for now, in terms of “% of remaining needed to win”:
Despite winning some delegates, Paul’s “% of remaining needed to win” remains significantly higher than 100% at 114.4%. The delegates he is accumulating right now are not anywhere near enough to catch up and win… or even to block Romney in combination with Santorum and Gingrich delegates. Sorry. They may let him cause the convention not to go quite the way the Romney folks would like due to some unscripted deviations from the plan, but it won’t be anywhere near what would be needed to actually derail Romney.
Chart and map from the Abulsme.com 2012 Electoral College Prediction page. Both assume Obama vs Romney with no strong third party candidate. Both show polling as it currently exists. Things will change before election day. On the map red is Romney, blue is Obama, gold states are too close to call. Lines on the chart represent how many more electoral votes a candidate would have than is needed to tie under several different scenarios. Up is good for Obama, Down is good for Romney. There are two states changing category today. In order by number of electoral votes:
Nevada moves from a “Lean Obama” swing state into “Weak Obama” territory as Obama’s lead in the five poll average goes above 5% to 5.6%. This is still close enough to 5% that a poll or two in Romney’s direction could easily move this back into swing state territory. For the moment though, this means I no longer consider this one of the states Romney could win in his “best case” scenario. So that best case scenario gets slightly worse for Romney, now with Romney winning by just 278 to 260.
Next, Montana moves from “Strong Romney” to “Weak Romney” as Romney’s lead in the five poll average drops below 10% to a 9.6% lead. Now, make no mistake, a 9.6% lead is still very substantial. Montana is a long way from being a swing state. But with a lead under 10% and a trend moving in Obama’s direction, Romney may want to deploy some resources to defend the state even if Obama’s odds of actually flipping the state are very slim (and they are). Now, Montana is only 3 electoral votes… so maybe Romney won’t bother. But with all of Romney’s paths to victory currently being very narrow ones, every electoral vote counts, so Montana will probably get some attention. Because Montana was not and is not a swing state, this does not however change anything in our summary.
With this new status Romney’s path to victory is holding all of his current Strong and Weak states, then from the swing states winning all of: Florida (29 ev), Pennsylvania (20 ev), North Carolina (15 ev), Virginia (13 ev), Arizona (11 ev), Tennessee (11 ev) and Missouri (10 ev). If he lost ANY of those states, he would lose the election overall. Of the current swing states, he can only afford to lose Iowa (6 ev) or New Hampshire (4 ev)… but not both. If this was the polling in late October, the chances of Romney pulling off a victory would be pretty slim. (Not zero, a Romney win would still be possible, the odds would just be very strongly against it since it would require a near sweep of the swing states, including many where he is behind.) It is of course not late October though. Romney has plenty of time to campaign and plenty of time to move critical states toward him. Edit 2012 May 4 14:05 – Adding in my boilerplate intro paragraph, which I had forgotten.
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