Mid-October Polling Update

I have continued tracking and charting all of the polls in each state and deeming the winner of each state as determined by the median active credible poll.  As of today, these are the thirteen closest races that will determine the presidency.  I have presented them in descending order of likelihood of a  Mitt Romney victory.
(Jump to the senate graphs!)
Mitt Romney's baseline is 170 electoral votes.  He needs to find 100 more to win. 

Arizona (R+8) - The wild Hispanic voting bloc has long been rumored to live in this state.  Many Obama supporters claimed to have spotted it, but it remains elusive in shaping elections.

 

Missouri (R+6) - Obama was never expected to do well in this former bellwether state, and he isn't, though Rasmussen's recent poll showing Romney up by 11 is a bit of an outlier.

 

Florida (R+2) - On October 3rd, the night of the first debate, the median poll spread showed Barack Obama up by three points.  Today the median spread has him down two.  Florida experienced one of the largest post-first-debate swings (5 points).  It is interesting to me that Florida has been so competitive given the fact that it has more retirees, more Republican-leaning Latinos of Cuban descent, and more Southerners than the typical swing state.  I will be surprised if Barack Obama can win the critical I-4 corridor.

 

 

North Carolina (R+0.5) - The median poll shows North Carolina still in play. This is because the median uses some polls from September, during Obama's pre-debate surge.  Polls in October show an increasing Romney lead.

 

With these states and all the other ones that are not competitive, Mitt Romney has 235 electoral votes, only 35 away from the presidency. 

Virginia (tied) - Yesterday the median showed a one-point margin for Mitt Romney, though a PPP poll this morning moved the median to a tie.  On October 2, the spread was Obama +5. Since then, Romney has surged and Obama has slipped.  Should Romney improve any more nationally, Virginia will be one of the first states to tilt to Mitt Romney, adding 13 more electoral votes.

 

Colorado (tied) - Colorado has been very close for a very long time and continues to be close. Nine more electoral votes for Romney would give him 257 out of a needed 270.


















New Hampshire (O+1) - Still blue for now.  In 2008 Obama earned a 9-point victory in New Hampshire.  In 2004, New Hampshire was the only state Bush won in 2000 to go for Kerry.  Basically New Hampshire has moved from being a slightly red state to being bluer than the nation as a whole.  Not this time though.  Obama's post-debate slump has narrowed his margin in the Granite State from 6 points to 1 point in the median poll spread.  Should this state, one of many in which Romney owns property, continue to tilt towards its summer resident, Romney will have four more electoral votes (261).

Iowa (O+2.5) - Iowa was originally thought to be one of Obama's strongest of the "swing state firewall" states, but Obama's margin has shrunk as it has in most of the other swing states, down from 5.5 to 2.5.  Winning this state full of Mitt Romney's best demographic (white people) would give Romney 267 electoral votes, three away from winning.


















Nevada (O+2.5) - Nevada hasn't shown nearly the falloff in Obama margins that many other states have.  Right now Nevada is the tipping point state, but I think a more likely Romney path to victory goes through Wisconsin or Ohio.


















Wisconsin (O+3) - The reason I think this state more likely to go Romney's way than Nevada is because of the trend, though like Ohio, Wisconsin has consistently shown Obama on top.



















Ohio (O+3.5) - Like in 2004, Ohio will be the most watched state, even if it doesn't end up being the closest.  A Romney win in Ohio would mean he wouldn't have to win Iowa, Wisconsin, Nevada or even Colorado (as long as he gets Virginia and New Hampshire).  But if his performance on election night isn't strong enough to take Ohio, it definitely won't be strong enough to take Michigan or Pennsylvania.

Michigan (O+4) - There hasn't been a serious poll that has shown Romney with the lead in the state his father used to govern. Still, the median spread is only 4 points.

 

Pennsylvania (O+5.5) - There also hasn't been a serious poll showing Romney with the lead in Pennsylvania, but there was a Susquehanna College poll that showed him on top, which says more about Susquehanna College than it does about Mitt Romney's chances in Pennsylvania.

The rest of the states will support Barack Obama easily.

________

The senate is different.  Since the night of the first debate, Obama's margin has waned an average of 2.7 points in each of the thirteen states listed above.  But the margin for Democratic senate candidates has mostly remained unchanged, averaging +0.3 in the direction towards Democrats during the same time.  Here are the 14 senate races that will determine the majority in 2013, again ranked according to Republican support in descending order.

North Dakota (R+9) - Before a new poll came out today showing Rick Berg with a 10 point lead over Heidi Heitkamp, Democrats could have been excused for thinking this was going to be a close race.

Nevada (R+5) - Nevada is basically Opposite State.  There will be a lot more cross-ticket voters voting for Romney / Democratic senator than there will be voting for Obama / Republican senator in most other swing states (Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Missouri, Indiana, Arizona maybe).  Nevada will feature more Obama / Heller voters than Romney / Berkley voters. 


















Montana (R+2) - Jon Tester was supposed to be the most easily beatable Democrat out of this year's crop of incumbents, and this is still the case two weeks before the election, but it certainly doesn't mean that this race will be an easy win for Denny Rehberg.


















Indiana (R+1.5) - There have basically been two non-partisan non-internet polls in this race, and they say opposite things. But assuming the latest Rasmussen poll showing Mourdock with a 5 point lead is true, this race will give Republicans their 47th seat in the U.S. Senate. 


















The median poll spread has Democrats winning the rest of the seats, though I don't especially trust it in the case of Arizona.

Arizona (D+1) - In a Senate race featuring the word "pretty", this is an ugly race featuring ugly candidates.  After Richard Carmona's gaffe coincided with Jeff Flake's personal attack ad so perfectly, I'd expect Carmona's numbers to plummet.  If you give this one to Republicans, that puts their total at 48.  But it will be hard for them to find 2 or 3 more seats.


















Virginia (D+2.5) - One of the few races to show a trend similar to Obama's October, Tim Kaine is still polling a couple points higher than Barack Obama, which should keep this seat Democratic.

















Missouri (D+3) - There has been just one poll taken since October 3rd in this close / insane senate race.  This makes no sense to me.  That one poll was performed by the usually Republican-leaning Rasmussen Reports, and it showed an 8-point Claire McCaskill lead. 


















Wisconsin (D+3) - The persistent lead by Tammy Baldwin continues (except for in one Marquette poll).


















Connecticut (D+3) - Chris Murphy continues to lead Linda McMahon, though polling methodology seems to be all over the place as evidenced by the scatter in the thin lines below.



















Massachusetts (D+3) - The trends are all positive for Elizabeth Warren right now.  If Romney pulls off an upset on November 6th, expect a lot of inconsolable Democrats to say "at least Elizabeth Warren won in Massachusetts!" as they cry into their soy lattes.   


















If Republicans are to take control of the Senate, they will have to win at least two and probably three out of the five preceding races (Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Wisconsin, Missouri).  Because they ain't winning any of the next four.

Ohio (D+8) - Sherrod Brown's got this thing on lock.  There has been no consistent movement in the polls since September and no single credible poll showing Josh Mandel with any sort of lead.

















Florida (D+8.5) - Same story in Florida.  Barring a massive October surprise, Bill Nelson's lead is insurmountable two weeks out.


















Pennsylvania (D+9) - Really weird polling in Pennsylvania.  In every other state, the polls are either in agreement with each other or scattered randomly over a large range.  In Pennsylvania there are two distinct groups of pollsters: those who show Tom Smith's support above 45% (maybe could win!) and those who show it below 39% (no chance).  There are no middle-ground pollsters.  Since there are just three pro-Smith pollsters (Rasmussen, Susquehanna, Quinnipiac) and five anti-Smith pollsters (PPP, Siena, Franklin & Marshall, Philadelphia Inquirer and Muhlenberg College sort of), the median poll lies in the anti-Smith camp. 


















Michigan (D+10.5) - The Michigan senate seat has ceased to be on even crazy people's radar.

Guess Who's Unskewing Polls Now? (Hint: It's Me!)

There's a USA Today poll of swing state voters that just came out today that shows Mitt Romney with a five point lead over Barack Obama, 51% to 46%.  In the accompanying article, Susan Page conjures up a vision of 1992 and declares that "women, especially blue-collar 'waitress moms'" will be "the quintessential swing voters in 2012's close race."  Romney's sudden surge is due to women, who "tend to start paying attention to election contests later and remain more open to persuasion by the candidates and their ads", actually sacking up and picking sides.

But throwback political cliches aside, the poll results set off my bullshit alarm.  The poll is based on phone calls with voters in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.  But the polls in these swing states don't average out to a 5-point Romney lead.  According to the RealClearPolitics poll averages:

Colorado: Romney +0.6
Florida: Romney +2.5
Iowa: Obama +2.7
Michigan: Obama +4.4
Nevada: Obama +1.6
New Mexico: Obama +10.5
North Carolina: Romney +4.7
Ohio: Obama +2.2
Pennsylvania: Obama +4.8
Virginia: Obama +0.8
Wisconsin: Obama +2.3

Average: Obama +2.0
Population weighted average: Obama +1.2

Not only is the USA Today poll showing way more Romney support than the average of the state polls, it is showing more Romney support than any single constituent state in its survey!

I will try not to pay attention to any more tracking polls since they are useless as indicators of who will win the election.

Friday polls and charts

More charts for today's polls. 

OHIO - A Rasmussen poll lowered the margin to Obama +5. Well really the poor first debate performance from Obama lowered the margin to Obama +5.

PENNSYLVANIA - It's still Obama +8 and not really all that exciting.

Pennsylvania senate: Republican challenger Tom Smith has made up a lot of ground in the polls, but he's still 10 points down.

WISCONSIN - A Rasmussen survey with no undecided people and no Gary Johnson voters gives Obama a 51-49 lead.

The same survey puts Democrat Tammy Baldwin's support at 51%.

There are a lot of very tight senate races with very little polling.  Exhibit 1: Indiana

Exhibit 2: Montana

Exhibit 3: North Dakota

Nate Silvering It Up

A couple of weeks ago, I made predictions about the upcoming November election for the U.S. Senate.  In the section regarding Virginia, I made an assertion that I could more easily picture a Tim Kaine/Mitt Romney voter than I could a Barack Obama/George Allen voter.  But then I got to thinking about whether or not that was really the case, that there were some combinations of Republican senate candidates that go better with Obama and some Democratic senate candidates that go better with Romney.  So I started keeping track of poll numbers from RealClearPolitics.com to see if there was anything that I could glean from poll data from states with senate contests this year.  Short answer: nothing interesting.  But in the process of gathering data, I started making charts for the polls, and I made this way of displaying poll data that I don't think I've seen much of before.

It makes no sense to me to compare one day's poll releases with the next day's poll releases.  Polls done by different firms often use different methodologies to come up with different numbers that represent different viewpoints on how the electorate will vote.  However it does make sense to me to compare one company's poll of a state with the same company's poll from several weeks earlier.  The difference from that previous poll should be a better indicator of movement of opinion in the electorate rather than difference in polling methodology.  

So I took the poll numbers I had gathered, plotted them up, and connected each polling firm's dots.  The aggregate sticks and dots looked interesting, and sometimes one could see a clear trend in the polls, but just as often the graph looked like a lot of noise.  So I plotted another line, a thick line representing the median value of active polls, defined as the most recent polls from each polling firm.  This method has its advantages and disadvantages.  One advantage is that it is less volatile: the median value doesn't move around as much as the average poll values of other sites, and it will not be thrown off as much by one outlier poll.  But this means that it doesn't capture the reactions of the electorate to events in the campaign, like debates and conventions, unless the poll movement is sustained for awhile.

So here are some graphs of some swing states including the many polls released today, October 11.

Florida: Obama leading by 1 (though this poll doesn't include the poll released late in the afternoon from Mason-Dixon showing Romney up 7)

Ohio: Obama by 6

Virginia: Obama by 2

Wisconsin: Obama by 4.5

These are all a couple of points more friendly to Obama than most others are predicting, I think mostly because I use many polls that are a month old if they're the most recent poll produced by a firm.  I include Wisconsin in these graphs because the graph looks like a really abstract version of a horse or a turtle.

Here are some of the more interesting Senate graphs.
Arizona: Flake up by 2 over Carmona, but Carmona's support level skyrocketing in September. (note: needs more polls)

Connecticut: Chris Murphy up 3.5 over Linda McMahon, but Linda McMahon's support softening since late August.  I don't understand why she was trending up in August, so I couldn't possibly explain why she is trending down now.

Florida: Bill Nelson up 9 over Cornelius McGillicuddy IV.  The gap is wide and keeps getting wider.  Notice how the same polling firms that produce very precise presidential numbers are all over the place when it comes to Senate numbers.  

Massachusetts: Elizabeth Warren by 3. It took until mid-September, but Warren is finally polling consistently well in that very blue state.

Missouri: McCaskill up by 1 over Akin.  Akin's infamous legitimate rape gaffe occurred on August 19th, and a week and a half later the median poll value showed a legitimate polling swing from Akin +4 to McCaskill +5. 

Nevada: Dean Heller up by 5

 Ohio: Sherrod Brown by 8.

Virginia: Kaine up by 3, much less poll variance than Ohio or Florida.

Wisconsin: Tammy Baldwin up by 3.5.  This is another one where I don't know what happened to make Thompson's support fall in September.  There were a ton of polls in mid August showing Thompson up by a decent margin, and then there was a polling drought for a month, and by the time mid September rolled around, Baldwin was on top for some reason.

I'm going to be interested to see how these simple median poll predictions stack up to the actual election and all the other much more complicated algorithms.  In the meantime, I will update these graphs and add new ones in future posts as new polls come out (right now I only have states with close-ish senate races, but I may or may not add more).

Further Reflection on State Question 766

A response to an anonymous comment:

State Question 766 would apply to human beings. Florida's intangible tax put an annual assessment on the value of pensions and retirement benefits, until voters there repealed the state's intangible tax. A tax on intangible property is much bigger than just corporations. 

State Question 766 applies to human beings if you believe that corporations are people, my friend.

Florida had an intangible tax, repealed in 2006, that was a tax on stocks, bonds, etc. (pensions and other retirement benefits were exempted, though mutual funds weren't). Oklahoma has long had an exemption from intangible taxation from these types of personal assets, so there would be no change to the tax burden payed by people with mutual funds, for example. The Oklahoma intangible tax as currently structured only affects assets owned by businesses, and up until the 2009 decision by the Oklahoma Supreme Court, it only affected businesses whose value was assessed centrally by a state board, rather than locally by county assessors.

A centrally-assessed company (a public utility usually) pays taxes based on the value of the company as a whole. Southwestern Bell assessed the value of all their property, buildings, equipment, etc. (tangible property), and saw that the value of their company was greater than the value of their tangible property. They argued that they should be able to deduct the difference and only pay taxes on the tangible property. A judge disagreed, saying only things on the list of exempt intangible things can be exempt.

Locally-assessed companies saw this decision and realized that the exemption from ad-valorem taxation they had been enjoying for years was not actually codified in law, and there was nothing to stop property assessors from assessing and taxing the full value of their company rather than just the tangible property owned by the company. So they lobbied their legislators, got a temporary stop to having to pay any potential intangible taxes, and now three years later, this state question made it to the ballot where it will be overwhelmingly approved.

I'm not even saying that it's necessarily a bad idea to do away with intangible property taxation for businesses, and I certainly think that the difference in taxes paid due to the differing jurisdictions of the assessors is unfair. I just think it's misleading to bring this measure up to the public without explaining whom this tax affects. And comparing it to Florida's intangibles tax, which was a tax on the value of mutual funds and other assets held by actual individuals, is even more misleading.