Somebody's Going to Be Really Disappointed

Three days out, and it's still the same, although the polls have moved slightly toward President Obama, it still appears to be a dead heat.

There is no question that the polls are skewed, the question is are they skewed right or left.   Too many Democrats, not enough Hispanics?  The problem as I see it is that a many pollsters are. historically off by 2-4 points in their final tally (and a couple are dead on usually.)  But in that case a poll that is +1.9 for Obama and actuals are +0.1 for Romney, are not really wrong.  We've talked about it before but if the Margin Of Error is even as low as 2 on a poll, that means there could be up to a 4 point swing and still be in the MOE.

This is why in today's RealClearPolitics Roundup, the partisans are still predicting victory.

Here's a sample of the headlines:
Mitt's Many Mistakes Will Doom Him - Robert Shrum, The Daily Beast
Bottom Line: Romney 315, Obama 223 - Michael Barone, DC Examiner
Time Is Running Out for Mitt Romney - Charles Blow, New York Times
Gallup Points to Very Long Election Night for Dems - Michael Franc, NRO
Obama in Good Shape With 3 Days Left - Greg Sargent, Washington Post
Au Revoir, Mr. President - Emmett Tyrrell, The American Spectator

Meanwhile two polls in Florida show different results:  Mason Dixon Romney +6 NBC/WSJ Obama +2.

I had planned to make a prediction, but I have no idea at this point.  And with very few National Polls this week, especially tracking, because of the storm, this Election Night could be very interesting.  But whatever the result, there are going to be lots of surprised and disappointed people on Wednesday as both sides are truly believing in the victory of their guy.

Silly Week

It gets sillier and sillier every day.  This Presidential Election is impossible to predict because the polls don't have a consistent trend to one side or the other.  Add to that the interruption by Super Storm Sandy which caused two tracking organizations to suspend polling for at least 2 days, and we may not have a conventional "Final" poll next Monday.    Gallup uses 7 days, and will either have a Wed-Sun mix, or Sun-Mon-Wed-Sun final poll.  Investor's Business Daily suspended for 3 days, and so could have a final 4 day poll, but not a track.

So with that, much speculation has occured on a split Popular/Electoral verdict, with the Right arguing why the National Polls are the trend, and the Left touting the state polls as disproving the National Polls.

I do have to credit Obama partisan Joe Klein with a level-head approach:  anyone who claims to know who is going to win is blowing smoke.

In the meantime, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and yes Minnesota apparently are getting more spotlight from the campaigns.  Stay tuned...

It's Over, He's the Winner!

The propaganda stepped up today with partisans from both sides seemingly seriously claiming indisputable victory 11 days out from the election.  Mostly they do it by throwing out polls that they don't like and using the ones that they do like.

But much of this is more propaganda, or put more nicely--Spin.  The trend continues to be that Romney leads among independents, but the big question is how much?    The answers from the poll vary by about 2% up to 20+%    Some polls show Romney getting more support from Women closing the so-called
"gender gap"  which is a misnomer, but it's not worth getting into the semantics.

It is generally agreed that Obama has a more solid ground game especially in Early Voting, but both sides are also claiming better numbers for themselves over 2008, and worse numbers for their opponent.

After November 6th, we will be able to look at the results and compare the poll results, but it's obvious that many polls will be "wrong" but it's still possible to be within their Margin of Error.  Somebody will also claim victory as the best result compared to actuals, but this year more than most, I think they are all off at one point in the campaign.  

10/25 Poll Watch

5 Polls released today nationally, and Romney is in the lead in 4 of them.  IBD shows Obama ahead by 2, while Gallup and Rasmussen have Romney ahead by 3.  ABC also has Romney +3 which is a 6 point movement towards Romney since 10/13.   In addition the AP shows Romney +2, a 3 point move in Romney's direction since mid-September.

In the States, Public Policy Polling shows a tie in North Carolina, which was enough for RealClearPolitics to push North Carolina back into the tossup category.  This poll comes at the same time that the Obama campaign has pulled their ad buy in the state.

PPP also shows Obama up by 4 in Colorado.  Rasmussen shows Romney up 2 in Virginia and Gravvis has Romney up 1 in Floriday.  Rasmussen also shows Obama up 5 in Pennsylvania.

The Wild Ride

With less than two weeks left in the 2012 Campaign, the polls are not helping in making things clearer.  As mentioned earlier, Gallup and IBD have tracking polls running on opposite sides of the race (Currently Romney +5 and Obama +2 respectively), while other National polls are showing points in between, although most are slightly toward Romney or Tied.

State polls are no better.  For example in New Hampshire the current RCP average includes 5 polls, with Romney leading 3 of them, one Tied, and the 5th from UNH showing Obama up 9.  Is the trend toward Romney, with UNH an outlier, or is the UNH poll the true one?

Meanwhile 7 Ohio polls are showing the race anywhere from tied to Obama +5 (none favor Romney at this point.)  Virginia is tied in the average, but shows Romney ahead in 3 polls +3, +1, +1, and Obama +5 in the 4th.  Florida ranges from Romney +5 to Obama +1.  Colorado ranges from Romney +4 to Obama +3.  Iowa goes from Romney +1, to Obama +8 with two ties.   Wisconsin all favor Obama from +1 to +6.  Nevada may be the most stable at this point only ranging from Obama +2 to Obama +4.

If the polls remain this way, this election may become the most difficult to project prior to the election.  Election Night could become another wild ride, similar to 2000.

Can IBD and Gallup Both Be Right?

Today's polls brings more confusion than ever, because they now show the widest range between any two polls, and show the race moving in opposite directions.

Investor's Business Daily has a tracking poll Sunday in which Obama took a 5.7% point lead, up 4 points from Saturday.  Now this is a tracking poll over 6 days and has 913 people in it's sample.   One week ago, Obama had a 0.7% lead in the poll.

Meanwhile Gallup Tracking has moved Romney back to a 7% lead after slipping a point on Saturday.  Gallup uses a 7 day tracking model and has a sample of 2700 people.

So who is closer to the truth?  We really won't know until hte election, but it does show the volatility of some o fhte pools.

Meanwhile NBC/Wall Street Journal today released a poll showing the race tied.   This sampling was entirely after the 2nd debate and shows movement of 3 points towards Romney from the end of September. Unfortunately they did not release a poll after the first debate, so we have no idea of whether there was any movement after hte first debate.  We only know the net movement.

If you are a partisan, you have a poll to quote today and declare the race over.  However in the end, both polls cannot be right.  But which one IS right?

The Gallup Critique and the Margin of Error.

There have been several people who have jumped onto the Gallup tracking result (which currently shows Romney ahead nationally by 6.)

Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com offered a critique on Thursday, and several others have jumped into the fray.

Silver discusses Gallup's recent history:

Usually, when a poll is an outlier relative to the consensus, its results turn out badly.

You do not need to look any further than Gallup’s track record over the past two election cycles to find a demonstration of this.

In 2008, the Gallup poll put Mr. Obama 11 points ahead of John McCain on the eve of that November’s election.

That was tied for Mr. Obama’s largest projected margin of victory among any of the 15 or so national polls that were released just in advance of the election. The average of polls put Mr. Obama up by about seven points.

The average did a good job; Mr. Obama won the popular vote by seven points. The Gallup poll had a four-point miss, however.

Everything he says about the past is true.  But how do we know Gallup is an Oulier this year?

In the final RealClearPolitics average in 2008, the Average was Obama +7.3, while the final result was Obama +7.6.  But Gallup (and Reuters the other poll that was Obama +11) made up part of that average.  Without them they would have been further off (by about 0.3 for each poll).

Another point is that this was the final poll results vs. the final results.

Looking at the 2008 polls roughly two weeks before the election (on or about Oct 20th).   The average was still around 7.1 and Gallup was right at 7.   In fact at that point Pew Research was showing Obama ahead by 14.  (Pew's final number was Obama +6).

In the 2008 final 15 Polls that made up the RCP final average, 5 of them were at Obama +7 or Obama +8.   5 more were at +6 or +9 (1 point off in either direction).  The other 5 were +11, +11, +5, +5, and +2.

But here's the key fact:  THE FINAL RESULTS WERE INSIDE THE MARGIN OF ERROR OF EVERY SINGLE POLL IN THE FINAL AVERAGE.

We look a lot a the actual result margin, but the Margin of Error applies to each statistic, not the margin of victory.  So if Candidate A gets 54% and Candidate B gets 43% in a poll, but the margin of error is 2%, then the final results can be A 52-56% and B 41-45%.   That was the final Gallup poll and although Silver calls it a disaster, technically they had it within the Margin of Error.

So looking at the Current Gallup Survey, it shows Romney with 51% to Obama's 45% with a MOE of 2%.  This means it could be as close as Romney 49% Obama 47% or as wide as Romney 53% Obama 43%.   At this point Romney is beyond the MOE for victory.  Let's see if that is true on November 7th before calling Gallup out on it.



 

The Electoral Map Reality

In the end it all comes down to the Electoral Vote.  And in the Presidential election of 2012, it is all going to come down to takeaways by Romney from Obama.

In 2008, John McCain won 22 states and a total of 173 Electoral Votes while Barack Obama took 28 states plus DC and gained 365 EV's.

With the 2010 Census and the reapportionment that followed, if Romney took the same states as McCain, he would have 179 EV's to Obama's 359.  In order for the challenger to win, he must swing 91 Electoral votes to his column while not allowing any of McCain's winning states to change to the President.  

On the latter point it looks likely that Romney will win all 22 states that McCain won.  Of those 22 states none are currently in the toss up category, while Arizona, Montana and Missouri, are in the Leans Romney category.  The closest RCP average is Arizona with a 5.3 advantage to Romney.  Montana is at 9.3% and Missouri just went over the 10% mark, putting it near the likely Romney status, after being toss up as recently as a week ago.

So let's stipulate that Romney will not lose any of the McCain States.  Now he needs 91 pickups to overtake the President and win the election.

On that score Romney has already brought over Indiana as Likely.   RCP average is over 12.    That's 11 EV's.  

North Carolina has just recently gone over to the lean column.  If this holds, then that is an additional 15 EV's bringing the total up to 26 and Romney would now need 65.

The next likely state to go for Romney currently is Florida with 29 EV's, and is the biggest prize left in the tossup categories.  If Romney takes Florida it brings his needed total down to 36.

Obviously taking Ohio would give him half the remaining EV's he needs, but that at the moment looks just as likely for Obama as Florida looks for Romney.  So let's take Ohio out of the mix along with Pennsylvania (20 EV's) and Michigan (16 EV).

That leaves the following states to pick from:
Virginia (13)
Wisconsin (10)
Colorado (9)
Nevada (6)
Iowa (6)
New Hampshire (4)

Total of this group is 48.  Without Ohio, this means Romney must take Virginia (without it, Romney can only get to 35 which would still be a tie and throw it into the House for the tiebreaker).

But with Virginia, Romney would only need 23 EV's and he can accomplish this by taking Wisconsin, Colorado, and any of the other 3 states.   Clearly he would need Wisconsin OR Colorado in addition to Virginia, but he would also have to take all 3 of the remaining states (or a surprise state like Oregon or New Mexico which looks unlikely at this point.).

But let's take another look at the lose Virginia scenario, and taking the remaining 35 votes.  Romney still has an Ace in the hole in Nebraska.  In 2008 President Obama took the 2nd Congressional district in Nebraska by 3,000 votes and because of how Nebraska assigns it's electors, he picked up 1 of the 5 Nebraska Electoral Votes.  If Romney takes the 5 EV in Nebraska as well as Wisconsin, Colorado, Nevada, Iowa, and New Hampshire he would win, 270-268.

It's always fun to play what if's, and I don't really expect it to be close in the end, but this is just a few of the many possibilities at this point.

RCP Sends North Carolina to Romney

Real Clear Politics moved North Carolina to the Leans Romney column which now puts the former Governor of Massachusetts in the Electoral Vote lead 206-201 with 131 toss ups in 10 states.

The lead may be short-lived however as both Pennsylvania (20) and Michigan (16) are closing back in on +5 for Obama and may be put back in the President's column which would then swing 237-206.

Many of the Senate races also seem to be in doubt with RCP currently showing 11 Tossup races and the Democrats holding a 48-43 lead in the Leans or Likely races.  Of the 11 toss ups, there are 7 races where the incumbent is not running, and 2 of each party where the incumbent is not running.    In all there will be a minimum of 12 new Senators in 2013.

In the House, RCP projects the GOP to keep their majority by at least a 226-183 margin (currently 241-194) and 218 are needed for the majority.  There are 26 races at the moment which are considered toss ups. 16 of the toss ups are Republican, 7 Democrat, 1 is new (CA41) and 2 are redistricting losses where two incumbents from different parties are running against each other (IA3) and (OH16).  
 

Presidential Debate Round 2

True to form partisans on both sides are calling victory for their guy.  Once again, it probably comes down to how the independents feel about it.

Obviously, Obama did a much better job than he did in the first debate, but it was difficult to  be worse.  On that point he probably matched Romney and maybe got a few more jabs in than Romney did.  For Romney's part he was probably on a consistent level with his first debate, but probably was perceived as being a little worse because the President did so much better than last time.

My biggest take from this debate is that neither side has any respect for the rules of the debate and add to that Moderator Candy Crowley's infliction of fact-checking at best incoherently in the middle of responses and not making any attempt at times to try to cut them off on their alloted times, and then cutting them off again at inappropriate times, in order to get all the questions in.

It's clear after 3 debates that these two tickets cannot stick to a formatted time limit.  It's also clear that they both spew a lot of muck and untruths, but there are bits of truth in there.  I'm not sure we are going to learn anything new in the 4th debate, as there are more concerns about domestic issues and the economy than Foreign Policy.  But it appears that Libya could be a hot topic in the final debate.

I'm taking a checkpoint on where the polls are this morning and will look to see movement from there over the next week before Monday's final debate.

10/16 Poll Watch: Romney Overcomes Favorability Deficit

Although Gallup Tracking showed Mitt Romney with a 4 Point Lead, pretty much all National and Battleground State Polls showed more of a dead heat.  Included were polls in New Hampshire (Tie) Colorado (R1), Pennsylvania (O4), Iowa (O3).

The big change however has come in the favorable ratings, where Romney now has surpassed Obama 5.4 to 5.0 in the RealClearPolitics Average.  At the time of the first debate on Oct 3rd, President Obama had a +5.4 favorable rating (51.6-46.2) while Romney was -1.2 (47.0-48.2).

For the next week Romney with a negative rating until the 10th when he finally got a positive number +1, followed by the 11th +2.7, 14th +3.4, and today at +5.4.   Obama meanwhile has stayed fairly steady staying between +5.0 and +5.4 the entire time.

Does this translate into more votes for Romney?    It would make sense, but the National polls moved toward Romney while he was negative, but have kind of stayed steady while he has moved to a positive rating.  But looking closer at the demographics, many state polls are showing that Romney is gaining with Women, Hispanics and Independents.    

10/15 Poll Watch Dead Heat

Back to the weekdays and several polls released, and the big takeaway is that the race is virtually a dead heat.  

5 National Polls show the race anywhere from Romney +2 to Obama +3, much of it depending on Democrat  vs. Republican Turnout which we've discussed before.

5 non-Partisan State polls were released from Pennsylvania, Iowa, Colorado, Florida and Virginia, all within the margin of error.  

USATODAY offers analysis today, showing that Obama's large advantage in the vote of women, has all but disappeared in the 12 swing states, although he maintains an 8 point advantage in the other 38 states and DC.  

"In every poll, we've seen a major surge among women in favorability for Romney" since his strong performance in the first debate, veteran Democratic pollster Celinda Lake says. "Women went into the debate actively disliking Romney, and they came out thinking he might understand their lives and might be able to get something done for them."

While Lake believes Obama retains an edge among women voters, the changed views of Romney could be "a precursor to movement" to the Republican candidate, she says. "It opens them up to take a second look, and that's the danger for Obama."

I think it misses the point somewhat in only applying to Women, for certain, the undecided or at least the soft vote for the candidates is larger than most analysts have been thinking as the poll results have shown much swing in the 10 days since the first debate.  Instead of 3-5% undecided (or 95-97% firm), it may be 10-15% of the voters that can move this election, that would include much more than just women voters.  Two Polls from Florida over the weekend show Obama losing some of the edge in Hispanic Voters with one actually showing Romney ahead in that demographic..  

The conventional thinking on October 3rd was that Obama had this election pretty much won, however the two weeks since the first debate have shown much of an uncertainty in the final results coming 3 weeks from tomorrow. It's pretty obvious that one debate did matter, now we get to see whether another one or two will keep it unsettled or move it decisively one way or the other.

10/14 Poll Watch

National:  Mitt Romney moved up another point to +2 in the Rasmussen Poll on Sunday.  Gallup also shows Romney up 2 and IBD tracking now has Obama up 1.

Colorado:  Mitt Romney is up 48-47% in the Denver Post/SurveyUSA poll, this is a 2 point swing in Romney's direction since Sept 12.  Two things are interesting:  1) Romney gained 2 points from 46-48, while  Barack Obama remained the same.  Also in this poll, (and I'm not sure how many other polls do this) they only give a choice of two candidates  Obama and Romney.   The real ballot in Colorado will actually have several other choices on it.  Pollsters have their methods, we will see if this one is affected by the limit.

Speaking of Colorado (which is where I live and vote), Salena Zito of Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has a column on the importance of Colorado in the election.  In it, she ties the measure of Romney's success to the 7th Representative District between Incumbent Democrat Ed Perlmutter, and Republican Joe Coors.

10/13 Poll Watch: No Movement

Only Two National polls were released today, The Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls.  Both Polls held where they were yesterday Gallup Romney up 2, and Rasmussen Romney up 1.

UPDATE:  Two other polls were released the IBD Tracking Poll Obama +1 (No Change) and PPP released a Poll showing Obama +5 (Obama +1 9/30)  There was also a poll released for Arizona by the Behavior Research Center showing Obama +2 (No Change from 4/17).  There have been 6 polls in Arizona since the conventions, and Romney has been ahead in all 5 of the others.  If BRC is correct, we should start to see some other polls closer.  This could be a huge matter for Obama and Romney, if Arizona were to truly be a tossup state.

We may never get a clear gauge of any effect of the Vice President Debate with the next Presidential debate coming on Tuesday Night at Hofstra University.   Look at any treneds going through possibly Thursday to see the effect.

Fallout from the VP debate seems to be falling to both sides.  Democrats loved Biden's performance, and Republicans hated the smirks from the incumbent, but the real question is, what did the Independents and Undecideds do?

Biden's comments regarding the Benghazi Embassy Attacks is moving the entire story more prominently on the reporting by major media.   Most of this is centered on Biden's comment that "We didn't know that they requested more security."    The White House yesterday was trying to pin the "We" on Obama and Biden, but I find this disingenuous.  The State Department reports to the President and the buck needs to stop at the top.  Own up to it, that a mistake was made and moved on.  The danger for the President now, is that this story did not have a large presence in September, and now may come to the forefront in late October (see the Oct 22 debate).   This could be a major development in the last 3 weeks of the campaign, or it could go away and be dismissed.  Watch this story.

Bigger to me is the Iran issue.  What is the truth?  Is Iran 6 months away from having a Nuclear Weapon like Israel's Prime Minister suggested last month at the U.N.?  Or should we really calm down about Iran having Nuclear Capability but no "weapon" to put it in as the Vice-President said the other night?  

10/12 Polls: A Good Day for Romney

Mitt Romney may be experiencing his best single day ever in polling that has been released since yesterday afternoon.

Beginning with a  Tampa Bay Times poll in Florida that had Romney up 51-44, early polls today, have the following results (with previous results for same poll in Parenthesis):

National
Rasmussen Romney +1 (Obama +1 Yesterday)
Gallup Romney +2 (Romney +1 Yesterday)

Virginia
Rasmussen Romney +2 (Romney +1 10/4)

New Hampshire
ARG Romney +4 (Obama +5 9/27)

Florida
Rasmussen Romney +4 (Romney +2 10/4)
ARG Romney +3  (Obama +5 9/22)
TBT Romney +7 (Obama +1 9/19)

Michigan
Rasmussen  Obama +7 (Obama +12 9/20)

All eight of the polls have moved in Romney's direction.

No real changes in the Electoral Map though, Currently showing a 201-191 advantage for Obama with 12 states totalling 156 EV's up for grabs.   Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Hampshire could move back to Leans Obama status with a poll or two showing a larger lead for Obama.   A few states could switch in the No Toss Up Categories.  Romney could pick up Virginia while Obama could get Colorado back.

Vice Presidential Debate

After watching the first two debates, I feel like I'm in the middle of a triple Goldilocks tale:

1. Obama was too soft
2. Biden was too hard

1. Romney was just right
2. Ryan was too soft

1. Lehrer was too laid back
2. Raddatz was too intrusive

Maybe soon we will get the debate we want.

In the first Presidential debate, I was very impressed with Romney, and not at all impressed with Obama.
Last night, I noticed that Biden was smiling and laughing early in the debate and then kept interrupting when Ryan was speaking.  Ryan to his credit kept his cool throughout, except for one well-timed retort back to Biden.  Raddatz kept breaking the flow and never kept control of the interruptions, and many times both candidates were talking at the same time, which reminded me of most cable and Sunday news talk shows where no one ever learns anything .  I do feel that Raddatz was fair with her questions, as I also felt Lehrer was (although Lehrer lacked good substance in his questions "Explain the differences...").  Some commentary by the supposed non-partisans in the studios felt that she was excellent.  At best I thought she was adequate, but even that is stretching it.

The obsession with winners and losers misses the point of the debate.  It should be informative.   The first one was very informative from the Romney side, and probably rates a C as far as debates go.  Last night was more of a D, because the flow was horrible by the interruptions mostly by Biden and then even Raddatz.  

I expect more from the final two debates, and hope that CNN's Candy Crowley can set a better example of moderating in moderation.

10/11 Polls Watch: Polls Show the End of Romney's Debate Bounce?

First of all, RealClearPolitics as expected moved Michigan from Leaning Obama to Toss Up adding 16 EV's to the Toss Up Category.  Current Totals are Obama 201 Romney 181 Toss Up 156 (12 states).

This morning a slew of state polls were released including Ohio (O6, O1, R1); Florida (O1); Colorado (R1);  Virginia (O5; R1) Nevada (O2) Wisconsin (O3) Michigan (O7, O2) and Pennsylvania (O8)

Note:  A number next to the Candidate's initial indicates the poll is on that Candidates Side O2 is Obama up by 2; R2 is Romney up by two.

We will probably see more frequent polling by state in the last few weeks of the election.  At first glance it appears the Romney Debate bounce is ebbing and things are turning slightly back to the President.

Looking a little deeper at the polls here is what we find:

Ohio
NBC/WSJ 10/1 O8; 10/9 O6; Net R2;
Rasmussen 10/4 O1; 10/10 O1; Net No Change
Gravis 9/22 O1; 10/10 R1; Net Change R2;

Virginia
NBC/WSJ 10/1 O2; 10/9 R1; Net R3
CBS/NYT 9/17 O4; 10/9 O5; Net O1

Michigan
Detroit News 9/17 O14; 10/8 O7; Net R7;
Gravis 9/22 O4; 10/8 O2; Net R2;

Florida
NBC/WSJ 10/1 O1; 10/9 O1; Net No Change;

One of the problems with RCP is that they take the most recent polls over a certain amount of time, it's not a one to one replacement (i.e. the new NBC/WSJ poll doesn't replace the previous NBC/WSJ which would record the swing of that poll.  Another problem is that they take just about every poll published, even those without a trend like one in Florida from the University of North Florida showing Obama +4 without any reference since it's the first time it's been released.  That's not to say that it's wrong, but it does skew the average a little bit higher for Obama than all of the other polls in the average.

Expect more polls released during the day, but Rasmussen tracking is showing Obama back in the Lead nationally +1, which is a 2 point swing from yesterday's R1.

10/10 Poll Watch

The Real Clear Politics Average seems to be what everyone is watching to determine the Presidential Race.

The real battle is in the electoral college, and a couple of handfuls of states looked like they would decide it.   Recently before the debate, Ohio moved to the Obama Column and Missouri moved away from Romney to Toss up, giving Obama a lead of 269-181 (270 are needed to win) in Leaning or Likely states.  Following the debate, Ohio moved quickly back to Toss Up.

On Wednesday however, RCP moved 3 states to Toss Up from Leaning Obama.  Two of those states weren't too surprising:  Wisconsin (10 EV) and New Hampshire (4 EV).  But Pennsylvania was a surprise at least this early.  Pennsylvania's 20 EV could help Romney especially if he were to lose Ohio, which most pundits say he will lose the election if he doesn't get Ohio.  But if Pennsylvania is seriously in play, (and also possibly Michigan with 16 EV) then Romney has a much easier path to the Electoral Win.

Currently RCP shows it at 217-181 with 11 states toss up with 140 EV total.   Romney is already leading in North Carolina (15) and Missouri (10) So add 25 to Romney giving him 206.  Colorado is leaning his way also, so bring him up to 215-217 with 8 states and 106 EV's left.  Whoever ends up with Florida's 29 EV's is within 26 EV's of the Presidency (24 for Obama).  The other could offset Florida by taking Virginia (13) Wisconsin (10) and Iowa (6) OR Nevada (6).  Let's then say Romney takes Pennsylvania and Obama takes Ohio, making it a EV tie at 264.  It then comes down to Nevada or Iowa's 6 EV's and New Hampshire's 4.

If I had to guess though, I would say the same person will take Ohio AND Pennsylvania.  Let's say that is Obama and Romney gets Florida.  Romney would need 35 of the remaining 48 EV's to win.

It should be interesting to follow these toss up states over the next few weeks.  I see Michigan coming into toss up status at least briefly as soon as additional polls are released.

Reading the Polls Wrong

I've always loved how the media reports on studies, especially scientific ones.  Usually they report the press release that comes with it, but sometimes they try to analyze the data on their own, usually with bad results, because they don't understand statistics and/or science.

The media also doesn't understand political polls, but this is mostly because they rely on partisans to help them translate it.  A couple weeks ago, the national polls were starting to show the race breaking toward Obama, and some people were declaring the race was over, while the Romney folks were protesting that the polls were oversampling Democrats.  Since the debate last week, the polls started moving toward Romney and now his partisans are saying that it's looking like he is going to win, while the Obama spinmeisters are trying to minimize the break.

So what's the truth?  It's still a tight race.

Now, I still think it's going to break one way or another and it won't be close, but reading the current polls it's not quite indicating that yet.   From what I can see, the numbers are coming down to the Party identification and the Independents preference.

When the polls showed Obama ahead, much of it was due to a higher number of Democrats being sampled over Republicans.  Now in 2008, the exit polls indicated a 39-32 break for Democrats.   It's unlikely that there will be that big a spread this time.  Historically about 90% of Democrats have voted for the Democratic candidate, and  90% of the Republicans have voted for the Republican Candidate.   Every % increase in the spread indicates a 1% increase in the margin before taking account of the independents.  

Independents on the other hand, have been pretty much split or leaning slightly for Romney in most polls, so the Democrat over Republican spread has been much of the margin.

Let's illustrate with the Pew poll.  On Sept 19th the released a poll that had Obama ahead by 8 51-43.  That poll had a 37-30% advantage for the Democrats and the Independents favored Obama 44-42%.   On Monday, they released another poll, this time showing Romney ahead by 4.  But in this poll the Republicans had a 3 point advantage in the sampling, and the Independents are going 46-42 towards Romney.

It's a trend but is it permanent?  Only the next data point will tell us.

The point is, that the media only reports the raw number most of the time without looking a the underlying data, or trend to give a better picture.  At this point it looks like the election will turn mostly on the net turnout of Democrats vs. Republicans in a 1:1 relationship to the difference.  i.e. if turnout is 36-33 Democrats, then Obama will have a 3 point advantage.  If the Independents stay close, the offset is about 3-4% diffence to a 1% gain.

In other words, if the Democrats turnout 3% better than Republicans and Independents favor Obama by 3% then Obama will win by 4%.  However if the Democrats turnout 3% better AND independents favor Romney by 12% (Say 52-40)  then it's a dead heat.  More realistically thought the Turnout and the Independents will likely go in the same direction.

The Convention(al) Thinking is Wrong

Next week begins the first of two weeks of the National Party Conventions, first the Republicans in Tampa followed by the Democrats in Charlotte.

The first conventions I remember watching were in 1968.  At that time the Conventions were held up to a month apart.   In retrospect there was a lot of coverage of the Democratic convention in Chicago, mainly because of the riots there, but the Republican convention was significant because the nominee was not entirely decided, and there was talk about multiple ballots.  Richard Nixon barely got the nomination on the first pass through the roll call of states (He needed 667 delegates and ended up with 692).

That's about the last time there was any suspense at a political convention.

This year, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama will be nominated by their parties and lots of speakers will take the podium during the 7 nights of convention activity.

And the polls will probably continue to show a dead-locked race.

The 2012 Election

I love the quadrennial Presidential Election Season, which usually runs for about 3 years.  Now that we are getting down to the final 5 months of the election, it's time to start thinking about getting engaged in the process.

Both parties have their nominees:  In the left Corner: President Barack Obama representing the Democrats, and on the Right, Mitt Romney representing the Republicans after a prolonged primary season.

National Polls show it currently as a tight race, but I suspect in the end they will be wrong and it won't end up close.  For one reason, there is no National Race, there are only 51 State/District races.   For another, the Electoral Map of those 51 races show it currently to be a lop-sided race.  Electoral-vote.com has it currently as 314-224 in Obama's favor.  Real Clear Politics which averages all the polls has it even wider at 332-206 in favor of the President's Re-election.

But don't get too wrapped up in all that yet.  There aren't a lot of state polls to go on yet, and some of them were taken prior to Romney wrapping up the nomination.  That initially could be in Romney's favor and make some of the races appear tighter, for example in Michigan, where Obama had a 14 point lead in the RCP average on April 1st, but it currently sits at +3.5 for the President.

So what should you believe?  Probably nobody, but if you really want to gauge the trend of the election, I would suggest you pick one or two polls and watch the changes in that poll over time.  Much of the media reports all of the polls as if the Bloomberg poll and the USAToday/Gallup poll are the same and the changes between the two polls are significant.  They usually aren't as they use different sampling methodology, ask questions differently among other differences.

So choose a poll and follow it, and draw your own conclusions.   It should be a wild ride over the next few months.