It's Election Day!

Well, Dixville Notch already voted, so I guess I'd better make official predictions.  My method predicts 303 electoral votes for Obama (actually 294 with a tie in Colorado, but I'll wager that Colorado goes blue) and 54 senate seats for Democrats.

• I didn't add polling data from the states shaded gray in my database -- either due to no polls, no credible polls, me being lazy and not adding in uncompetitive states, or not wanting to deal with three-way senate races (MD, ME) -- so the spread I'm forecasting in those states is just my best guess. 
• I'm predicting Oklahoma will not be the most conservative presidential-voting state this year.  I predict those "honors" will belong to Utah this year. 
• My official guess will be based on spread, not Obama's total or Romney's total.

And the senate races.  There's a huge gap between the 58th senate seat (Nebraska) and the 59th (Texas).  If Democrats manage to upend polling convention by 20 points, opening up holes to long-established mathematical laws and basically breaking the entire field of statistics, they still will only get 58 seats. Also, no way do I think Ted Cruz will only get 52% of the vote, and even a 20.5% victory seems low.

Presidential Polls - Weekend Before Election Day

I wrote a couple weeks ago a couple days after the third presidential debate about momentum and how Mitt Romney's momentum from the first debate was very much real and very much continuing in his direction.  The margin for Barack Obama in swing state polls had slipped from an average of 4% to about 1%.

As if to prove me wrong, that week Romney's momentum stopped. Ever since the third debate, there has been no movement towards Romney in the swing state polls: Ohio has held firm for Obama, and the Great Lakes states have all shown constant or improving poll trends for Obama (except for my weird Michigan numbers). Still, the fact that Obama is still only up 1% in the swing states means that it will still be a close election despite the fact that it is clear Obama has the advantage.

The following are the median poll spreads in the nine battleground states plus Romney's "extended map" states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Minnesota, in order of how they would swing right now.

(I'll have more on the U.S. Senate races in a separate post).

Mitt Romney starts with a baseline of 191 electoral votes including Montana, Arizona and Georgia, states where Obama has a good shot at being within single digits.  His likeliest battleground state pickup is ...

North Carolina (R+3) (based on 9 latest polls from PPP, Survey USA, Elon, Rasmussen, Civitas, Gravis, ARG, Marist, and Purple Strategies) - The Survey USA poll that showed Romney up by 5 was the most effectual poll of the week, and while PPP and Elon call the race tied, no polling outfit has shown a result with Obama on top since the previous Survey USA poll one month ago.  


















Florida (R+1) (based on 15 latest polls from WeAskAmerica, Gravis, Quinnipiac, Survey USA, CNN/ORC, PPP, Rasmussen, Susquehanna (VSS), Pharos, ARG, Fox News, Mason-Dixon, Marist, Suffolk and WaPo) - There were 9 polls this week, and Mitt Romney was at or above 50% in 6 of them.  Florida still could go either way though; every single poll published in the last two weeks by firms that have house effects less than R+2 has shown the margin no more than 1% either way. 



















As of right now, this is all my model shows Romney getting, 235 electoral votes.  But there are ties.

Colorado (tied) (based on 12 latest polls from PPP, Survey USA, CallFire, CNN/ORC, Rasmussen, WeAskAmerica, ARG, Purple Strategies, Marist, Gravis, Quinnipiac and the University of Denver) - Prior to today my model had shown Colorado in Romney's tally for 11 straight days, but in the past three days six polls were released, and five of them showed leads for Obama.  The most meaningful may be the poll from Wednesday from the conservative firm WeAskAmerica that showed Obama up by three.  The polling results from Colorado this week are what one could expect from a candidate with momentum, and that candidate is not Mitt Romney.



















Virginia (tied) (based on 12 latest polls from WeAskAmerica, PPP, Roanoke College, Quinnipiac, Gravis, WaPo, Purple Strategies, Fox News, Rasmussen, ARG, Marist and Suffolk) - 7 new polls this week, and only one of them showed a Romney lead (that crazy Roanoke College poll).  For Obama the best poll might have been the WeAskAmerica poll today that showed him up by 1 despite having an unusually rightward tilt shown by the senate race numbers (George Allen up on Tim Kaine by 0.8).    

















Even if you assume Romney stops the Obama momentum and wins these ties, he only has 257 electoral votes, 12 shy of victory.  But it is not looking good for him anywhere else.

New Hampshire (O+2) (based on 8 latest polls from New England College, Gravis, Marist, PPP, Rasmussen, ARG, UNH and Suffolk) - Four new polls this week all showed Obama with leads, including today's poll from New England College showing Obama up 6, the largest lead a non-UNH poll has shown since a Marist poll on September 25th had him up 7.  There were two days last week when my model showed Romney tied with Obama in New Hampshire, but now the polls are indicating that the momentum is with Obama.



















Michigan (O+2) (based on 7 latest polls from PPP, Rasmussen, Epic-MRA, Detroit News, Baydoun/Foster, Gravis and MRG) - The biggest numerical anomaly.  Despite having only one poll show the race any tighter than 3 points, the median Obama number (47, 48, 48, 48, 50, 52, 52) minus the median Romney number (42, 42, 45, 46, 46, 47, 47) gives a result of O+2.




















Nevada (O+3) (based on 9 latest polls from Survey USA, CallFire, Gravis, Marist, PPP, Rasmussen, ARG, Suffolk, WeAskAmerica) - There were only three new polls this week, and they've shown the same results as every other Nevada poll I have in my database: Romney not leading, but Obama not pulling huge numbers.  Nevada is a state with a tight race, but it is not a swing state.



















Iowa (O+3) (based on 8 latest polls from Gravis, CallFire, Rasmussen, Marist, WeAskAmerica, PPP, ARG and the Des Moines Register) - There were six polls that came out in Iowa in the last three days and only one of them (Rasmussen) showed a Romney lead.  Gravis is the Republican-leaning pollster showing the largest margin for Obama right now, 4 points.  This is another state where Obama seems to have momentum.



















Ohio (O+4) (based on 17 latest polls from WeAskAmerica, Rasmussen, CNN/ORC, U. of Cincinnati, PPP, Quinnipiac, Survey USA, Pharos, Gravis, Purple Strategies, ARG, SBSI, Suffolk, Fox News, Marist, Columbus Dispatch and WaPo) - Ohio gets the most attention from pollsters this year, but it is not swinging right now.  12 new polls came out this week, and Romney was only up in one of them, a Rasmussen poll on Monday that showed him up 2 points.  On Friday Rasmussen showed the race tied.  Obama doesn't have momentum here only because he's been leading by the same 3-5 point margin for the last two or three weeks.


















Pennsylvania (O+4) (based on 10 latest polls from Franklin & Marshall, Philadelphia Inquirer, Rasmussen, Pharos, Gravis, Muhlenberg, Susquehanna, Quinnipiac, PPP and Siena) - There was only one poll released this week after Hurricane Sandy made landfall, and it used data from before the disaster.  Still, prior to the hurricane Pennsylvania was like Nevada; a close-ish state but definitely not a swing state.



















Wisconsin (O+4.5) (based on 8 latest polls from WeAskAmerica, St. Norbert, Marist, Rasmussen, Marquette, PPP, Mason-Dixon and Quinnipiac) - Six polls released in the past three days, and none of them showed Romney with a lead. Wisconsin had looked like a possible non-Ohio alternative route to 270 electoral votes for Mitt Romney at one time, but Wisconsin provided Obama with arguably his best results from any state this week.  With maybe the exception of the Marist poll that only showed Obama up 3, every single poll this week was a pleasant surprise for Obama fans.  First PPP showed Obama up 5, then Marquette showed him up 8, then Rasmussen couldn't even tweak the numbers enough to show a Romney lead, then the NPR station showed Obama up 9, and finally the Republican WeAskAmerica showed an amazingly large 7 point lead. 



















Minnesota (O+7) (based on 5 latest polls from PPP, Survey USA, Mason-Dixon, Rasmussen and St. Cloud St.) - I only started charting Minnesota because the Romney campaign has claimed it can win there based on Mason-Dixon's polling. But Mason-Dixon is the only firm that has shown Obama with less than 50%.  This state has been in the bag for Obama since the time Minnesota let Mondale supporters into the electoral college.



















There are other states where Romney will keep it in single digits (Oregon, possibly New Mexico, possibly Connecticut).

2008 Electoral Vote Map

Electoral Vote Map

Click here for a downloadable pdf so's you can color along with me on November 4th!.

Monthly Harumph - July

As more national polls come out showing Barack Obama's projected popular vote lead over John McCain by anywhere from one to six percentage points, and as more NY Times opinion columnists make claims such as "The election remains Mr. Obama's to lose," and "Mr. Obama will win," I feel it is necessary to throw cold water on everyone.

1. It's still July. Most people still haven't put much thought into the November election. October is when things can change and polls will perhaps matter more.

2. The popular vote is never how we elect presidents. If it was, we never would have had George W. Bush as president. Therefore the national projected popular vote polls are as meaningless as if we polled people on their favorite celebrity.

3. Swing state polls are fraught with potential error. Barack Obama's projected electoral college lead depends on polls that put him one or two percentage points up for the time being in states such as Indiana, Missouri, Michigan, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Montana. I will bet any amount of money that there will be polls in these states between now and the election that will claim that John McCain leads Barack Obama. These too will be meaningless except as indicators saying its a close election.

4. Polls can and are often wrong anyways.

Hillary Clinton Wishes She Was a Republican

There's less than a minute left on the game clock in the primary season game of hoops, and Hillary Clinton is down by 200. She's still trying, still reacting to things Barack Obama does and says, and organizing protests at DNC meetings; in other words, she's fouling like crazy in order to extend the game. After all, Obama is only a mediocre free-throw shooter. But after the last primaries on June 3, the shot clock will be off, and she should be able to call off the horses and let Obama dribble the clock out until the convention in August.

If only Hillary Clinton was a Republican, she would have already locked up the nomination.

I had heard that if the Democrats used the delegate-selection system that Republicans use, then Clinton would be ahead in delegates, but I couldn't find any numbers to tell me exactly by how much. So I charted the delegates won by Obama and Clinton on a primary by primary basis in real life and as if they were apportioned using whichever rules the GOP was using in that contest. In most states, the Republicans use winner-take-all or winner-take-most, but there are a few (e.g. Iowa, North Carolina) where the splits are more proportional to the popular vote. I had to guess on some contests (particularly the winner-take-almost-all primaries), but I have come up with (I think) a fairly reasonable estimate of the difference between the number of pledged delegates Clinton would have and the number of pledged delegates Obama would have if the Democrats copied the Republican's rules, shown below.

Hillary Clinton is down by around 162 pledged delegates in real life, but she's up by around 429 pledged delegates in the GOP-style fantasy situation. Her chances are slim at best, and people are calling for her to quit campaigning and step aside at a deficit of 162. But if Obama had a deficit of more than 2.5 times that, he'd already have had to quit and yield to the mathematical certainty of a Clinton nomination.


So why fuck around with delegates, respective political parties? This is supposed to be a government where people directly elect representatives. Yet even the general election we have the electoral college, not the people, deciding who the next commander-in-chief will be, and sometimes the result can be very different. Why should the political parties mimic this inane system? Since a 600-delegate swing exists when different rules are in play, why must we mess around with unnecessary layers of representative amalgamation that serve only to distort the will of the people?

Kid Gloves and Non-Traditional Constituencies

A few weeks ago, Bill Clinton chided the media for what he thought was the media's kid glove treatment of Barack Obama. Never fond of criticism, the media retorted with several news cycles worth of "Why Can't Hillary Control Husband?" and "Bill to Innocent Reporter: 'Shame On You!'". But like many things the media overblows, there is actually a kernel of truth to the former President's accusations.

Today news analysts have been talking about John McCain's multiple decisive victories in yesterday's primaries, but they have been withholding their declaration of McCain's inevitability as the Republican Party presidential nominee, citing that he won most of his big victories in blue states, or states that would not support a Republican nominee in the general election no matter how many tax cuts he voted against. This is seen as a negative against McCain, the thinking goes. He'll get blown out in states where he's actually popular in the primaries, and people won't vote for him in states where he's not popular in the primaries. But the same analysts have said that Barack Obama is the most electable candidate on the Democratic side because he is popular in traditionally red states.

While Hillary Clinton was dancing last night with the big shining jewels of the Democratic party such as California, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts, Obama was slumming it with the red state puu-puu platter of Alaska, Alabama, Georgia, North Dakota, Utah and Idaho. Of the 27 states that have had Democratic primaries or caucuses so far*, 17 voted for Bush in 2000, and Obama has won 10 of them to Clinton's 7. If you look at the electoral votes of those states with Democratic primaries and caucuses so far, there are 143 red state electoral votes and 178 blue state electoral votes, if you count red states as "States that voted for George W. Bush in 2000". While Clinton and Obama have nearly evenly split the red state electoral votes (73 for Obama, 70 for Clinton), Hillary Clinton has an overwhelming total of blue state electoral votes (130 to 48). If you define red state / blue state by the 2004 election, the split is even more lopsided (134 to 41).

Using the same analysis for the Republican side, McCain has won 67 red state electoral votes (most of which come from Florida), compared to Huckabee's 46 and Romney's 31. McCain however has won a ton of blue state electoral votes, 132, compared to Huckabee's 7 and Romney's 43.

So if winning 132 blue state electoral vote equivalents hurts Republican McCain, why doesn't losing 130 of them hurt Democrat Obama in the media's eyes? Is it kid gloves? Or am I just doing way too much math on things that don't actually matter?



*Not counting New Mexico, where yet another hangup in the vote counting had delayed results. There's always a problem with voting in New Mexico for some reason *cough corruption cough cough*, but that's a post for another time.