- RT @BuzzFeedAndrew: Sometimes you need to take a moment to just relax http://t.co/S8TTDCCw #
- Reading – iPhone 5 Pre-Order Sells Out 20X Faster Than 4 And 4S, Highlighting Apple’s Dominance (Billy Gallagher) http://t.co/xPEeS9GW #
- MT @ppppolls: Possible we won’t poll PA again until last week before election when we poll everything- wouldn’t have expected that year ago #
- MT @dangillmor: Google: no to WH video takedown request http://t.co/dEBfFeGq Too bad Visa PayPal et al didn’t show same courage re Wikileaks #
- RT @brendanbaker: This is perhaps the most exciting chart for anyone building new products, or funding them. http://t.co/DzSAmpdG #
- RT @daveweigel: RT @PatrickRuffini: Raise your hand if you think a sequester wouldn’t be so bad. #
- RT @noeljackson: Ugh – can we just call it for Obama now and find more productive / entertaining ways to occupy time until Nov. 6? #
- Reading – Romney Death Spiral Beginning? (Ben Jacobs) http://t.co/WytY8dLO #
- RT @DouthatNYT: Seems like there’s a big difference between being behind in the polls and being in a “death spiral”: http://t.co/u851cJgv #
- MT @DouthatNYT: R’s pos is slightly better than Kerry’s at the same point in 2004: http://t.co/AWHIZSla. Was Kerry in a “death spiral”? No. #
- RT @DouthatNYT: Like Kerry at this point in ’04, Romney is on track to lose. But like Kerry, he’s still very much in contention. #
- RT @mattyglesias: To win in November, Romney has to do a bit better than he is currently. Or run into some good luck. #boring #accurate #
- Reading – A solar eclipse… FROM MARS! (Phil Plait) http://t.co/m1Ir6sUQ #
- RT @owillis: i keep seeing cons says they expect undecideds to break for the challenger. im sure president kerry agrees. cmon, guys. #
- Reading – The Foreign Relations Fumbler (Nicholas D. Kristof) http://t.co/GPS64pLr #
- RT @dandrezner: Ouch, @NickKristof: “Mhe essential problem is that every time Romney touches FP, he breaks things.” http://t.co/GPS64pLr #
- MT @philipsturner: @jricole: ‘Obama Plays Hardball&Morsi Folds’ I had same thought, the ‘ally’ stiff arm was no gaffe. http://t.co/JCx0xcZQ #
- Reading – Obama Plays Hardball and Egypt’s Morsi Folds (Juan Cole) http://t.co/JCx0xcZQ #
- Reading – Drone Flying Over Washington, D.C., Neighborhood Goes Missing (Ritika Singh) http://t.co/EN71bGUw #
- Reading – In-Person Voter Fraud: Not Really a Matter of Opinion (Kevin Drum) http://t.co/cuiNZZNr #
- Reading – The Obama Turnaround (Drew, Votamatic) http://t.co/vWOOORCD #
- Reading – The Obama campaign takes on the `are you better off’ question (Greg Sargent) http://t.co/lUirZN8t #
- RT @AntDeRosa: “You guys know YouTube has a comment section right?” – Seth Meyers on Muslim protests #snl #
- Reading – My Problem With Rasmussen (Andrew Sullivan) http://t.co/whsM9tTf #
- Reading – Twitter Might Be Looking To Kill Off Third Party Image Hosts (Eric Limer) http://t.co/4xWZCrej #
- Reading – Party polarization as seen through two Romney gaffes (Seth Masket) http://t.co/QWMbxeoV #
- Reading – They have to go all in on every front—class warfare, culture, and foreign policy. (Michael Tomasky) http://t.co/CRKr1sOr #
- Reading – If Bush Had Said That About Egypt (Michael Tomasky) http://t.co/XbYrSfha #
- Finished recording CC for this week. I will get it out later in the week as time allows. #
- RT @ZekeJMiller: RT @AlexNBCNews: Ambassador Rice on #MTP calls Romney’s reaction to attacks in Libya/Egypt a “vacuous charge of weakness” #
- Watching – Obama vs Romney Cold Open (SNL) http://t.co/b6DC9boW #
- EC Update for Sun Sep 16 Done. New poll added for MI. Also added older NV poll I’d missed. MI changes status. Blog post soon. #
- RT @mattyglesias: A fifty-something couple with a $200,000 household income and a single 29 year-old with the same income aren’t the same. #
- RT @mattyglesias: A friend went from a top-tier Philosophy PhD program to a hedge fund: Overnight transformation from lower to upper class? #
- RT @morganwarstler: @abulsme we treat them the same, because @mattyglesias will fuck up deciding what to value. @mattyglesias is the reason #
- MT @ggreenwald: Often out of the same mouth: 1-Free speech doesn’t extend to advocating violence; 2-I want my country to attack & bomb them #
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So that didn’t last long. Three days ago Michigan topped a 5% Obama lead in my five poll average… just barely, at 5.1%. Now with a new poll, that drops back down to 4.4%. So, once again, I consider Michigan in the “could go either way” category.
We’re still right around my arbitrary 5% line, so the next poll could easily move this back above 5%. Or of course it could move things further in Romney’s direction. For the moment though, back to being close enough that we consider it within the realm of possibility that Romney takes the state in November. Having said that, although a few individual polls have shown Romney ahead, at no time in the last year has Romney been ahead in Michigan in the five poll average. This is not one of the “closest of the close” states where the lead has gone back and forth all year. This is a state that is relatively close, but Obama has been ahead all along. With Michigan now once again included in Romney’s best case, the new summary is:
So pretty much where we’ve been for awhile: Obama with a substantial lead. Romney still able to win if he sweeps almost all of the close states, most of which he is currently behind in. To win Romney needs something big that changes the dynamics of the race. More of the same from both sides just ends up with a fairly comfortable Obama win. 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.
As of when this posts at 19:17 UTC (12:17 PM Pacific, 3:17 PM Eastern) I will be exactly 41 years old. Woo!? Now, nominally my birthday is the 16th, not the 15th, but with properly taking into account leap days and the exact proper length of a year, etc, this is where it ends up. So I get to celebrate a day earlier than folks would perhaps normally think. Exciting, huh?
If this one stays as close as it is, it will be annoying to catalog the flips between now and election day between just barely one way and just barely the other way. In any case, Virginia, which moved from Leaning Obama to Leaning Romney in my five poll average on Wednesday, now moves right back where it was with the next new poll:
This represents a move in the five poll average from a Romney lead of 0.3% to an Obama lead of 0.3%. I can’t emphasize enough that both of these results just mean a super tight race in Virginia at the moment. It is too close to call. In general I say that any state where the lead is less than 5% should be considered a toss up, simply because that small a lead can disappear quickly. This is why I color all those states the same color on the map, regardless of who is slightly ahead. But 0.3%? For all intents and purposes, the state is tied at the moment. Of course, you have to keep in mind what “the moment” is. My five poll average in Virginia currently goes back almost exactly a month. A lot has happened in that month. But we’ve only had five polls in Virginia. Two of the five polls have been since the conventions. If you average only those two… you get an 0.2% lead for Romney. Still too close to call. Virginia really does look like a toss up at this point. Never the less, since the five poll average is slightly on Obama’s side at the moment, we move it to Obama’s side for the “Current” line of our summary, which assumes the candidates win every state where they lead even slightly in the five poll average.
And where does this put us? It puts the current line right back at a 332 to 206 Obama win… Right where the model has been for all but a few scattered weeks since the beginning of April. More specifically 124 of the 167 days since April 1st have had the model at a 332 to 206 Obama win. That’s 74% of the time. The other 26% of the time things have looked a bit better for Romney, or a bit better for Obama… more often a little bit better for Romney… but then we’ve reverted right back to good ol’ 332 to 206. Even when states have come and gone from the set of close states, changing either Romney or Obama’s “best case” where they win all the close states, the model line in the middle has stayed remarkably stable. Compare this to my analysis exactly four years ago. If you look at the center line of that chart (a double pink/blue line rather than this year’s purple) you’ll see that between March and September it was moving all over the place. (In interpreting the old charts, keep in mind that last time around down was good for Obama, this time up is good for Obama.) This year things are just remarkably stable in comparison. It is also interesting to note that by this time four years ago the “lead” in the race had changed hands five times. (And it would change hands two more times before the election.) In comparison this time the lead has changed hands… well, never. Obama has been ahead from the start. But to show how things can change in the final stretch to November: On September 14th 2008, the current state of the polls was actually showing a 269-269 tie. Obama of course went on to win 365 to 173. In the last month and a half of the campaign, 96 electoral votes moved onto Obama’s side of the line. So big movements are possible in relatively short amounts of time. Even having said that though, if I had to make a bet right now, I’d bet on a 332 to 206 Obama win. This time around even when the polls move from that spot, they seem like they keep wanting to go back there. :-) Note: Chart and map from the Abulsme.com 2012 Electoral College Prediction page. Both assume Obama vs Romney with no strong third party candidate and show polling as it currently exists. Things will change before election day. On the map red is Romney, blue is Obama, gold states are too close to call. Lines on the chart represent how many more electoral votes a candidate would have than is needed to tie under several different scenarios. Up is good for Obama, Down is good for Romney.
One change today. After flirting for awhile with the idea of being a close state that might actually be in contention this election, Obama’s lead in Michigan is once again starting to open up:
Obama’s lead in the state is now just barely over my 5% threshold, so I move the state from “Leaning Obama” to “Weak Obama” and color it light blue on my map. Basically, Obama is now far enough ahead in Michigan that it looks like a pretty safe bet that he will take the state in November. But his margins aren’t so high that he should be taking the state completely for granted. Given the right opportunity, Romney could still make it close again. This means that I take the possibility of winning Michigan back out of Romney’s best case. This leaves the new model summary as follows:
At this level, Romney’s best case has him with 32 electoral votes more than he needs to win. Looking at this, he still has no “must win” states mathematically. Theoretically he could lose Florida (27) and still win if he won every other close state. Realistically speaking of course, if he is in a position where he loses Florida, it is highly unlikely that Romney would simultaneously win the rest of the close states. His paths to victory are a lot narrower without Michigan as a possible win. Although there was the move toward Romney in Virginia in yesterday’s update, so far my prediction from last week that the beginning of September would be Romney’s post-primary high water mark is holding. (I updated my post from yesterday to add a note that my original accidental implication that I had already been proved wrong was incorrect.) It has only been a week though. And it has not been a great week for Romney. Romney may still have some good weeks left in him before this is all said and done. Obama has a big advantage at the moment. Romney has a really hard road to go to make this really competitive. Being in a spot where you essentially have to sweep all of the close states (most of which you are behind in at the moment) in order to win is not where you want to be in mid-September. Especially as a challenger. But it is not over yet… Note: Chart and map from the Abulsme.com 2012 Electoral College Prediction page. Both assume Obama vs Romney with no strong third party candidate and show polling as it currently exists. Things will change before election day. On the map red is Romney, blue is Obama, gold states are too close to call. Lines on the chart represent how many more electoral votes a candidate would have than is needed to tie under several different scenarios. Up is good for Obama, Down is good for Romney.
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