Romney's Zero-Vote Precincts in Oklahoma: There are Actually Three!

If you've been poking around the right-wing media looking for some of their excuses for why Republicans lost the election (or if, like me, it was brought to your attention by reading this Dave Weigel article), you would have stumbled across this fact nugget: 59 precincts in Philadelphia and 16 precincts in Cleveland tallied zero votes for Mitt Romney.  Zero!  How is it possible that not a single Romney voter lived in any of those 75 precincts?  You could come to one of two conclusions: that the votes recorded are an accurate count of the will of the electorate reflecting the popularity of the current president and/or the deep unpopularity of Mitt Romney specifically and Republican policies generally; or, FRAUD!!!!!11!!

It's not hard to see that these are likely legitimate totals.  Black people make up somewhere close to 100% of the population in these precincts, and 96% of black people went for Obama in Ohio.  There isn't a comparable monolithic voting group on the right, so one wouldn't expect to find as many precincts recording zero votes for Obama as there are precincts that record zero votes for Romney.  Even the reddest county in Oklahoma (Cimarron County, way up in the panhandle) recorded some votes for Obama (9.4%).  So this got me thinking, did Oklahoma have any zero vote precincts for either candidate?  Yes!

Using data from the Oklahoma State Election Board, I made a spreadsheet and some charts.  This was the distribution of precincts in Oklahoma that voted for Obama.  The largest block of precincts (725) gave Obama between 20% and 30% of the vote. 

This is Romney's distribution.  As you'd expect from a state that allows no write-in candidates and no third-party ballot access, it is basically a mirror image of the Obama chart.

But as you can see, four non-empty precincts recorded no Obama votes, and three recorded no Romney votes. Where are these precincts?

Here are the precincts with 100% Romney support (maps adapted from OU's Center for Spatial Analysis).

Kay County, precinct 407 - Romney 34, Obama 0 - wedged between Newkirk and Ponca City on Hwy. 77.






















Wagoner County, precinct 105 - Romney 6, Obama 0 - A couple of farmhouses northeast of Broken Arrow






















Woodward County, precinct 104 - Romney 6, Obama 0 - Northwest Oklahoma, rural precinct not near anything

Woodward County, precinct 303 - Romney 2, Obama 0 - Northwest Oklahoma, rural precinct not near anything

For those four precincts, it's Romney 48, Obama 0.


Oklahoma County, precinct 237 (near the boathouses) - Obama 4, Romney 0 - There's maybe one house left in this precinct since the new crosstown expressway, the boathouses, Lincoln Blvd.'s realignment and the Boulevard's construction has taken every other property.























Oklahoma County, precinct 188 (the state fairgrounds) - Obama 3, Romney 0 - I guess the three homeless people living on the fairgrounds all like Obama.






















Cleveland County, precinct 90 (Moore, north of NE 27th, between I-35 and Eastern) - Obama 1, Romney 0 -  It could have gone either way.




















For those three precincts, it's Obama 8, Romney 0.

But this all doesn't tell us much.  Besides that Kay County precinct, these are all fringey precincts with very few people that all have a pretty good chance of voting unanimously just by random chance. What about precincts where the candidates get 95% of the vote or more?

Beaver County, Precinct 13 (way up in the panhandle northeast of the town of Beaver, north of Slapout) - Romney 119 (95.2%), Obama 6 (4.8%) - Over 250 square miles, and only 6 people voted for Obama.

Harper County, precinct 303 (the next county over from Beaver County, east of Buffalo) - An even bigger precinct, even fewer Obama voters. Romney 107 (98.2%), Obama 2 (1.8%)
















Kingfisher County, Precinct 303 (between Kingfisher and Okarche, northwest of Oklahoma City) - Romney 110 (95.7%), Obama 5 (4.3%)

Kingfisher County, Precinct 106 (between Kingfisher and Crescent, but near nothing at all) - Romney 79 (95.2%), Obama 4 (4.8%)
























Logan County, Precinct 301 (next to Kingfisher precinct 106) - Romney 167 (96.0%), Obama 7 (4.0%)























That's it for Romney's 95% precincts.  They're all rural precincts in the northwestern part of the state that happen to be just a couple of percentage points redder than their surroundings.

Obama has more 95% precincts than Romney, and they are all more populated and all in Oklahoma City or Tulsa (with one exception).

Oklahoma County:
Precinct 115 - Obama 987 (96.7%), Romney 34 (3.3%)
Precinct 240 - Obama 829 (97.0%), Romney 26 (3.0%)
Precinct 242 - Obama 542 (98.0%), Romney 11 (2.0%)
Precinct 243 - Obama 864 (97.8%), Romney 19 (2.2%)
Precinct 244 - Obama 807 (98.4%), Romney 13 (1.6%)
Precinct 245 - Obama 895 (99.6%), Romney 4 (0.4%)






















These are all the precincts around M.L. King south of Remington Park and north of I-40 in Oklahoma City, the traditionally black neighborhoods.  Out of the 5000 voters in this section of the city, only 100 of them voted for Mitt Romney.  But see precinct 30 and 31 down there in Del City? 1198 Mitt Romney voters live there. I'm just amazed at the sharp contrast in the Obama electorate from its surroundings.

Here's an awesome map from Eric Fischer showing 2010 census race and ethnicity data for Oklahoma City.  Each dot represents 25 people, red dots are white people, blue dots are black people, orange dots are Hispanic, and teal dots are Asian.  Not surprisingly, those blue areas are where Obama's 95% precincts are.

 

Tulsa County:
Precinct 1 - Obama 877 (96.9%), Romney 28 (3.1%)
Precinct 4 - Obama 910 (95.1%), Romney 47 (4.9%)
Precinct 6 - Obama 956 (97.0%), Romney 30 (3.0%)
Precinct 10 - Obama 565 (95.3%), Romney 28 (4.7%)
Precinct 13 - Obama 913 (97.0%), Romney 28 (3.0%)


















 Basically this is all of the Greenwood neighborhood in Tulsa and everything north of it.  Here's Tulsa's dot map.




Logan County, Precinct 310 (Langston University) - Obama 606 (99.5%), Romney 3 (0.5%) - Langston University is Oklahoma's only historically black university.

My Election Prediction Report Card

I know you all are wondering how my predictions stacked up against reality.  No? Well, I'm going to tell you anyways: not that great.  Certainly not Nate Silverish.  Here's a graph of my prediction of the margin versus the actual margin in each state.



























The worst prediction in terms of margin was Hawaii (the topmost dot), where two polls led me to guess an Obama margin of 27 points that was actually 15.8 points too Republican. 

Here's the same graph zoomed in on the battleground states.



























My prediction for every battleground state except Ohio was too Republican.  The median poll spread method I chose called Michigan a 3 point state (ludicrously).  The real margin was 8.5 points.  Iowa, Colorado, New Hampshire, Nevada -- all these states went more than 3.5 points more for Obama than I had predicted using the median poll spread.  The model got the call on Florida wrong, and it predicted only a tie for Colorado, which wasn't even the next closest state (Ohio was). 

On average, my guesses had a 1.6 point Republican house effect overall, but a 3.3 point Republican shift in states that went for Barack Obama.   

The worst prediction in terms of margin was Hawaii, where two polls led me to guess an Obama margin of 27 points that was actually 15.8 points too Republican (the real margin was 42.8). 

As bad as my results were in the presidential race, my results in the 33 senate races were worse.



























There is a systemic leftward shift in that data, which means the actual results were more Democratic than I had predicted.

Here's the same graph zoomed in on the battleground states.



























 I predicted a 6 point race in Missouri (that dot way at the top of the zoomed in map) that was actually a 15.5 point walloping by Sen. Claire McCaskill.  The model only missed on Heidi Heitkamp; I had predicted a 4 point loss.  But my average error more than makes up for the fact that it correctly called 32 of 33 races: I had a house effect of 4 points towards Republicans.  The only Democrats who won by less than my prediction were Sens. Sherrod Brown, Martin Heinrich and Tom Carper, and I was too kind to Bob Kerrey, who lost to Sen.-elect Deb Fischer by a huge margin.  But that's it. Only four races out of 33 were redder than I expected, and 29 were bluer.

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).

Late October Polling Update - Presidential Contest

Mitt Romney's momentum has stopped, speaketh Lord Silver from his throne inside the Castle of the Gray Lady.  And the high lord of poll analysis was right -- it has been a pretty good polling week for Barack Obama overall.  The following graphs show the median of the active independent polls in each of the presidential battleground states.  I'll do the senate races in a separate post.

The presidential election will come down to these 11 states.  Last week I ran down the numbers from the perspective of Mitt Romney, so in the interest of fairness I will do it from Barack Obama's perspective this time.  His baseline is 201 electoral votes.

Michigan (O+5) (based on 7 active polls) - Michigan remains unchanged from last week, as only one (outlier) poll by Baydoun/Foster was done this week.  That poll showed an improbable tie in Michigan, but the pollster has a 3.2 point Republican-leaning house effect, second in magnitude only to Susquehanna in my database.

 

Pennsylvania (O+4.5) (based on 10 active polls) - Pennsylvania remains mostly aspirational for Mitt Romney.  Five polls released this week in Pennsylvania ranged from Obama +3 to Obama +6.  With Michigan and Pennsylvania looking like they're in the bag for Obama, his electoral vote total becomes 237.

 

Ohio (O+4) (based on 17 active polls) - There are varying definitions for swing state, but they all include this one.  Nate Silver's computers say that Ohio has a 50-50 chance of deciding the election, which basically means it's as important as all the other states combined.  This is great news for Obama.  

Nine polls were published about Ohio this week, and Mitt Romney wasn't leading in any of them.  The last two polls that had showed a Romney lead came from ARG (R +2.3) and Gravis Marketing (R +3.1); both firms have done more recent polls showing either a tie (Gravis) or a 2 point Obama lead (ARG).  Adding 18 more electoral votes to the total, Obama has 255, 15 to go.

Wisconsin (O+4) (based on 7 active polls) - It would seem that the presidential race in Ohio would be closer than Wisconsin or Iowa judging by all the polling done in the Buckeye State, but all three of them show similar numbers.  Three polls were released in Wisconsin this week.  The latest one released on Friday showed a tie, but it was a Rasmussen poll (R +2.6).

 

Iowa (O+3) (based on 7 active polls) - Gravis Marketing (R +3.1) and PPP (D +0.5) apparently switched names just for their Iowa polling this week.  PPP showed Romney up 1 point last weekend, while Gravis just released a poll showing Obama up 4, which was only their third poll out of 23 in my database to show a spread bluer than the median.  With Wisconsin and Iowa, Obama would have 271 electoral votes and a second term. But he'll win at least one more state.

 

Nevada (O+3) (based on 8 active polls) - No 3-point margin has ever felt safer for Obama than his lead in Nevada.  Five new polls this week all showed slender leads for Obama, and it's a lead that just makes sense given the demographics of the state and the recent election history.  With Nevada, Obama would have 277 electoral votes.

 

New Hampshire (O+1) (based on 7 active polls) - New Hampshire had four new polls this week: two showed a change in Obama's favor from previous polls, one showed a change in Romney's favor from a previous poll, and one was a new entry that showed a 3-point Obama win.  If Obama were to pull off a victory in this Democratic-leaning state, he would have 281 electoral votes.

 

Virginia (O+0.5) (based on 12 active polls) - Just this evening Virginia tilted to Obama for the first time in 9 days based not only on the 4-point Obama margin in the Washington Post poll but also on the latest poll from Gravis Marketing exterminating an older poll showing Romney up five. Virginia is the last state I show Obama winning as of right now, and it would give him 294 electoral votes.

  

North Carolina (R+0.5) (based on 8 active polls) - North Carolina suffers from partisan polling divergence, similar to the Pennsylvania senate race.  You can see from the chart that there are two pollsters (Rasmussen and Gravis) that show Romney's support well over 50% in the Tarheel State.  ARG showed Romney's support back in September right at 50%, and there was one Civitas poll that had Romney's support at 53% in early September (a new Civitas poll put it at 48% this week).  The one firm that does not have a Republican bias that has polled North Carolina at all this month is North Carolina-based PPP, which has this race tied.  Yet most other poll aggregators show North Carolina as Romney country, with Obama having a better shot at winning Florida than at winning North Carolina.  I don't agree, and I wish we could see some updated polling numbers from Marist and Survey USA that could back this up.  It may be moot to the electoral college, but I think Romney will win North Carolina by less than 2 points if he wins it at all, and it certainly less than the 6-point and 8-point margins Rasmussen and Gravis are showing.

 

Colorado (R+1) (based on 10 active polls) - Four new polls came out this week, and they were literally all over the place.  Rasmussen had Romney by 4, but PPP had Obama by 4.  The trend in three of them though favored Romney, while the fourth (PPP) only barely favored Obama (+3 to +4).  Therefore Colorado moved from a tie last week to Romney +1 this week.

 

Florida (R+1) (based on 15 active polls) - Five new polls came out this week, and Obama was ahead in none of them (though he did manage a tie in the Pharos Research Group poll if you round to the nearest whole percent).  One glimmer of hope for Obama is that the latest poll that came out (Rasmussen) showed a three point swing from the week before towards Obama.  If Obama wins all these 11 battleground states, he will have 347 electoral votes.

After Florida, there is a steep jump to the next nearest state (Arizona, R+8), so I feel pretty confident that the universe of potential Obama victories has a rigid ceiling at 347 electoral votes.  

I will have more on the Senate races tomorrow. 

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.