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Today we are at Alex’s very first birthday party. (Other than just us celebrating his own at home.) One of his friends from school is turning THREE and he invited Alex. Alex spent the first 20 minutes clinging to my neck with all his might, but is now playing and having a good time.
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. One state changing categories today. Virginia.
As you can see, The 5 poll average once again drops below 5%, moving the state from “Weak Obama” to “Lean Obama” and making Virginia once again one of the states we consider to be a swing state. The big effect here is the March 2nd Marist poll which showed Obama up by 17 in Virginia rolling off the 5 poll average. That poll was clearly an outlier. Even without it, we see a trend toward Obama around that time, but it wouldn’t have been large enough to move the average over a 5% lead without that one poll. In addition, the more recent polls have been moving in Romney’s direction. In any case, as of now the new 5 poll average has Obama up in Virginia by 2.4%. Clearly in the swing state category. This change improves Romney’s best case scenario (where we give him all the swing states):
Since Santorum dropped out on April 10th, there have been 11 changes to state categories. In the case of Florida (29 ev) and North Carolina (15 ev), they changed categories, but already changed back to where they were… so no net change. Ohio (18 ev), Arizona (11 ev), Colorado (9 ev) and New Hampshire (4 ev) moved toward Obama. Pennsylvania (20 ev), Virginia (13 ev) and Wisconsin (10 ev) moved toward Romney. The main net effect is slightly more electoral votes in the swing state category, so a bit larger range between Obama’s best case and Romney’s best case. Comparing to my last update before Santorum dropped out…
All in all, the main result here is the race opening up since the last small doubts of Romney being the nominee were put to rest. The polls are tightening and more states are up for grabs. Obama still has a big advantage in the electoral college… for the moment. It has only been 17 days since Santorum dropped out. My expectation is that this race becomes closer as events play out over the next few months. Edit 2012 May 2 13:10 UTC – Adjusted horizontal scale on Virginia Graph
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. First of all, I just updated Wednesday’s post to add a correction. I had made the mistake of doubting Green Papers. I thought they had missed a delegate in their count. In fact, I had misinterpreted their statement about the change. I read their new total as a delta from the election, leading me to add an extra non-existant delegate to Romney’s total in Pennsylvania. My bad. Not theirs. Worse, my first draft of Wednesday’s post actually had it right, but I switched it to the wrong answer right before posting. Bleh. Today’s updates build off the corrected numbers for Wednesday rather than the original incorrect numbers I posted. (OK, it was only off by one delegate, which is tiny in the big scheme, but still, I’m annoyed at myself. :-) ) Anyway… Three states with updates today, all via Green Papers as usual:
So total for the day: Romney +17, Paul +2, Gingrich -1 In terms of “% of remaining delegates needed to win”:
More updates from Pennsylvania and other locations as they come in. Next batch of actual contests are North Carolina, Indiana and West Virginia on May 8th. I’m guessing Romney will get the 29.7% of delegates he needs there. Yawn.
You may have heard some reports that this already happened back at the beginning of April (CNN reported it for instance), but I can’t figure out any math to back that up other than someone mistakenly thinking that since more than 50% of the Republican delegates had been allocated, the same must have been true for the Democrats. Not true. Different calendars. Anyway, while the fun has been on the Republican Side I have been diligently tracking the Green Papers numbers for the Democrats too. Their soft count does not include Democratic Superdelegates, but I think it is a pretty safe bet that 100% of the Democratic Superdelegates will vote for Obama at the convention, so I have been including those in my own counts for the Democrats. Given that assumption, plus Green Papers’ tally of the results from primaries and estimated results from caucuses, as of yesterday’s contests we have this delegate count:
Sorry Randall and Jim. I don’t think this year is going to be your year. Anyway, 2776 delegates are needed to win the nomination on the Democratic side, and as of today, Obama exceeds that number. This is of course no surprise to anybody. If anything, it is surprising 10 delegates went to someone else. The chart’s of Obama’s walk to victory follow, but they aren’t as interesting as the equivalents on the Republican side this year.
And two bonus charts I include for the Republicans on the 2012 Republican Delegate Count Graphs page but not on my blog updates…
Of course, nothing is actually official until the convention. But I think we have a Democratic nominee. :-) Note added 16:28 UTC: To be absolutely strict, if you look at Green Paper’s “Hard Count” which only includes delegates officially bound to Obama, and not estimates from caucuses, and not officially uncommitted delegates who unofficially are identified Obama delegates, and not any of the super delegates, Obama only has 1940 delegates, so still has some ways to go. But I think including the superdelegates, estimates from caucuses, and officially uncommitted delegates known to support Obama is completely reasonable. So I’m willing to call this clinched. :-)
Not much to say here. The small gap between Romney’s rate of accumulating delegates compared to McCain’s in 2008 has completely closed. It is absolutely clear that any differences in perception on how fast Romney was “closing the deal” vs McCain were 100% due to the elongated calendar. When you look at things by % of delegates accumulated vs % of delegates allocated, the two years track each other very closely. In the early days of the campaign (before about 20% of the delegates) Romney was actually a bit ahead of McCain’s pace. From there though 50% or so, Romney was slightly behind McCain’s pace. The key word being slightly. And now they once again very closely match. So that whole narrative about Romney not matching McCain’s performance in 2008… just completely not true in terms of the delegate races. It just seemed that way because everything happened in a comparatively compressed timeframe in 2008.
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. First big primary day in awhile, and of course Romney dominates.
So, for the day… Romney +157, Paul +9, Gingrich +4, Santorum +3. Romney gets 90.8% of the delegates today. Way more than the 40.2% he needed to stay on track to get to 1144. And with this, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich are both mathematically eliminated. More specifically, if they were now to get 100% of the remaining delegates they would still not get to 1144. In order to get to 1144, they would actually need to take delegates away from the other candidates, either through final results in caucus states being better for them than earlier estimates, or through actual defections. Both are possible. However, neither will happen in large enough numbers to change anything, absent something catastrophic that causes Romney to actually drop out. Uh, which is highly unlikely. For the remaining two candidates, in terms of “% of remaining delegates needed to win”:
So, theoretically Santorum could still catch up and win by getting 95% of the remaining delegates. Needless to say that won’t happen. His already long odds were made worse by suspending his campaign. Meanwhile, neither Gingrich or Paul have suspended their campaigns. There are indications Gingrich might do so soon despite previous vows to stay in until Tampa. Paul has shown no signs of stopping. The 31% of the remaining delegates Romney needs to wrap this up should be very easy for him to get. But we still have to wait for the calendar. So the march goes on… Update 2012 Apr 27 12:34 UTC: I was incorrect about the Pennsylvania count above and had misread Green Paper’s statement. In fact the new total in Pennsylvania was indeed Romney 11, not Romney 12. There were 10 new Romey delegates added to the count, not 11. They did not forget the one superdelegate. I just got twisted around thinking the 11 was a delta from the election instead of a new total, which would have left one delegate out. But it was indeed the new new total. This makes the total for this day Romney +156, Paul +9, Gingrich +4, Santorum +3. That gives Romney 90.7% of the delegates for the day instead of 90.8%. This also changes Romney’s “% needed to win” to 31.0% instead of 30.9%. Santorum’s becomes 94.4% instead of 94.5%. These changes are too small to be visible on the graph above, but will be reflected on future updates. |
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