Comments History
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hideVersion: 29
Alright, moving more states out of the tossup and lean columns as we get down to the wire here. The positive jobs numbers out today take away some of the downside risk for President Obama that I had factored into my previous predictions, so I really have no concern any longer that things could go badly in Wisconsin or Nevada. Additionally, I see no evidence of momentum in President Obama's direction in North Carolina, so I've finally shifted that state to the solid Romney column.
I will move both Ohio and New Hampshire into either solid or tossup status when I make my final prediction on Monday. Right now the evidence seems to suggest that both will end up in the solid column, but I want to wait until I have every last bit of data in those states to make that call.
Notes on a few individual states
Virginia: While I have Virginia listed as a tossup, I would say that it is my most confident tossup, if that makes sense. There are, however, still enough unknowns in the race that I'm not willing to take it out of the tossup category, and I don't expect that to change over the next three days.
Colorado: President Obama has rebounded in Colorado since the first debate, but I'm afraid that early voting may be his undoing here. Colorado has one of the highest, if not the highest, early voting rates in the country, and I fear much of that early vote occurred while President Obama was still reeling after that Denver debate. Still, this remains essentially a coin-flip race, I won't be surprised by the outcome here, whatever it is.
Florida: This is a state that I have no real feel for in the closing days. President Obama does appear to have real momentum here, however, and some of the circumstantial evidence suggests that the President does indeed have a come-from-behind victory in the works. This is one of the few times I'm going against my gut instinct in a prediction (my gut says that Florida's built in Republican lean will deliver the state for Romney, even if President Obama does have real momentum), and I really hope I'm right to do so.
Ohio: Not that any of us really need to be reminded again, but Ohio is probably the central state in this election. Without it, President Obama would need to carry a state like Virginia or Colorado to win re-election, while otherwise those states are essentially luxuries for him. Governor Romney, on the other hand, really has no viable path without Ohio. The poll consensus clearly favors President Obama here, and barring some major shift over the weekend, I will have this state in the Solid Obama column for my final map.
Pennsylvania: Ah, Mitt, I see what you're going for here. No, you're not really so confident about Ohio that you're trying to expand the map, but you're also not just trying to do a head fake either. This is a classic Hail Mary Pass. You need to go for the largest state that you even have a snowball's chance in hell of winning, and you've concluded that Pennsylvania is that state. If you thought you could spare the four extra electoral votes maybe you would be making a stronger play in Michigan instead, but you think you're down by more than 16 EVs. If somehow this works, then kudos to you, but I know how frequently Hail Mary Passes turn up incomplete.
National Popular Vote
I've decided to augment my previous model for predicting the popular vote from the electoral vote, as it had what might be described as a quantum nature to it (ie, moving the state of Florida from barely Republican to barely Democratic would result in a shift in the popular vote of around a full percentage point, with no in-betweens possible) due to how the electoral college works. As such, I am now averaging the popular vote result from my model with the Nate Silver's prediction for the popular vote. While I don't necessarily think Nate's model for the election is perfect, I think I would be a fool not to take his view into consideration, given the inherent flaws in my own model. I also contemplated simply averaging my prediction with the consensus of the national opinion polls, but I think that would have given only a trivially different result.
Barack Obama: 50.6%
Mitt Romney: 48.3%
3rd Parties: 1.1%
Version: 28
Just a few minor changes since the last map, mostly percentages and confidence levels. A few specific points:
Colorado: I've decided to drop Colorado to under 50% for whoever I have leading in the state (currently President Obama), unless there is a shift in the polls there. Third party candidates tend to perform fairly well in the western states, and I wouldn't be surprised at all to see Gary Johnson perform fairly well in Colorado as a result (maybe only 2-3% of the vote, but that could be decisive in a close election), especially since he is from neighboring New Mexico.
Florida: It looks like Florida has moved closer to pure coin-flip status since my last prediction, so I've shifted its classification from lean to tossup. However, I still think Mitt Romney has an advantage there.
Wisconsin: I decided I may have jumped the gun a bit by putting Wisconsin into the solid category for President Obama. Still, President Obama remains the favorite there in essentially all of the polling, and I would be quite surprised to see Mitt Romney pull off an upset there.
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National Popular Vote Split
Barack Obama: 49.9%
Mitt Romney: 48.6%
3rd Parties: 1.5%
Version: 27
President Obama has gained Colorado from my last map, while the overall number of tossup states has decreased. From this point on I'm basically only going to use tossup to refer to pure coin-flip races. Right now I see Virginia, Colorado, and New Hampshire fitting that criteria, whereas the lean states are still potentially competitive, but I cannot reasonably characterize them as pure coin-flips. Nevada could be argued to be a strong state at this point, based on the fact that Democrats typically overperform their polling there, but I'm not quite willing to make that call yet. North Carolina is another state which could change to strong by the time I make my next map, as it is becoming very difficult to come up with a credible scenario for President Obama to mount a comeback there.
As with my 2008 maps, the final map I make before the election will have every state as either strong for a candidate or a tossup. I feel like in Presidential elections, where we have so much data, the use of lean on the final map is a bit of a cop-out. Senate elections I feel differently since we don't have nearly as much data, and I'm sure I'll have one or two lean states on my final Senate map.
Version: 26
I don't usually like to do updates this close together, but there were a few new polls out that I missed in my last update, which have changed my perspective on where certain states are in terms of strong/lean/tossup.
Version: 25
It's not looking like President Obama will rebound quite enough in Florida to take that state, so I've switched it to Romney.
It looks like the South and the rural frontier states are going to break very heavily against President Obama, while the rest of the country is going to be more evenly divided, with a modest overall tilt toward the President. I would hate to see the popular vote and the electoral vote inverted, because it would deny whoever wins the kind of clear mandate that I feel is necessary, but it is looking increasingly likely that that could happen.
Version: 24
Alright, the polls are making sense again.
President Obama is clearly in a worse position than he was before the first debate, but I think things have already bottomed out for him. If the election were held today, I would have Florida going to Romney, but I think things will improve for President Obama there in the next few weeks. Definitely more of a tossup race than it had been.
Version: 23
To quote Nate Silver: The. Polls. Have. Stopped. Making. Any. Sense.
Gallup: Obama +5 (Marginally BETTER for President Obama than pre-debate numbers(+4), Obama approval rating at 51)
Rasmussen: Tied (Marginally better for Romney than pre-debate numbers, but down from peak yesterday, Obama approval at 51)
Pew: Romney +4 (Dramatic move toward Romney)
Not to even get into how all-over-the-place the state polling is.
As I predicted in the comments section on the last map: the polls are very volatile.
Version: 22
My concerns about the drought situation hurting President Obama in Iowa have largely been alleviated by the fact that he now has a consistent lead in all of the credible polling.
I'm somewhat tempted to move North Carolina into President Obama's column, but he hasn't yet hit 50% in any of the polling there. I think he might get dragged down a bit by the gubernatorial race there, hence why I have him still trailing there despite having a small lead in the most recent polls. If he's still leading there two or three weeks from now, expect a change.
And yes, that is Vermont at 70% Obama. I know it's a reach, but I think it could happen this year. McCain underperformed his polls there in 2008, barely getting 30% despite polling around 36%. I wouldn't be surprised to see Mitt Romney similarly underperform, and he's already polling below 30% there. It used to be a common thing for Vermont to vote nearly or over 70% Republican, back when the Republican Party was the more progressive party, and I think we have now reached the point where Vermont will once again be voting 70% for the more progressive candidate. If it doesn't happen this year, it will happen in the near future.
If Mitt Romney can't turn his campaign around with the debates, it is going to become nearly impossible to come up with a credible path for him to win the presidency.
Version: 21
Things are slipping away from Romney. If he can't do a massive turnaround in the next three weeks, he's toast.
President Obama is starting to get to 50 percent in a number of polls in many of the swing states, as well as in some of the national polls, meaning Romney is going to have to convince some Obama leaners to change their vote in order to have a chance to win, along with winning the overwhelming majority of the remaining undecideds. I doubt he's going to be able to do that.
Version: 20
I probably jumped the gun a little bit in declaring Florida a Lean Obama state, so I've pulled that back for this prediction. Still, President Obama remains in a very strong position for November, as Romney's convention seems to have failed to produce any substantial bounce for him, a bounce that he badly needed. The debates could still, possibly, change the state of the race, but I don't expect that to be the case.
Note on Iowa: I know the majority of polls suggest Iowa is a less likely Romney state than North Carolina, but I feel the effects of the terrible drought out there may drag down President Obama's numbers in that state in the closing months of the campaign. As such, Romney manages to win Iowa with over 50% of the vote, while not quite cracking 50% in North Carolina.
Version: 19
I'm quite confused by the polling in Missouri right now. Rasmussen has Obama up by 1, which means he should be up by about 3, yet PPP has him down by 10, which means he should be down by about 12. So does that means he's down by about 7? Or is one of these polls wildly off?
I probably won't make any more predictions until after the conventions. The polling is going to be far too volatile while they are going on.
Version: 18
President Obama continues to improve his chances for re-election, as Pennsylvania moves into the solid column and Ohio enters lean territory. Virginia is right on the boundary between lean and tossup right now, and with more consistently good polling performance the President will move that state into the lean column as well.
Mitt Romney is maintaining his leads in the core group of states that he needs to hold to even have a chance, but the fact that he is in a dead heat in a normally red state like North Carolina and is trailing somewhat consistently in Florida does not bode well for the former governor.
As for Romney's running mate, right now it looks as though Paul Ryan very well might be the favorite. Quite frankly, I think this would be a terrible decision for Romney to make, as I doubt Wisconsin could be put in play, and Paul Ryan's presence on the ticket seems likely to do more harm than good, particularly with the 45-60 year old demographic, given what his budget proposal would mean for Medicare. It would force the issue of health care back into the spotlight as well, which is hardly an issue that Mitt Romney wants to be discussing.
If I were Mitt Romney, I would pick Marco Rubio as a running mate. His background is a plus, and he would help put an absolute must-win state for the governor back into a more viable position, whereas now Florida is slowly trending toward Lean Obama status. It would also provide an upbeat note going into the convention, something that Romney could certainly use right about now.
Nationwide Popular Vote
Obama (D): 50.8%
Romney (R): 47.7%
3rd Party: 1.5%
Version: 17
Marginally more confident about President Obama's chances of re-election now than when I made the last map. Romney's actions and statements about Bain Capital and his taxes have left the impression that he is trying to hide something. Regardless of whether or not that is actually true, in the minds of many voters perception is more important than reality, and these stories are hurting his chances. The only way any of this is going to go away for good is if he follows the same standard that his father set and releases at least a decade of tax returns. If he doesn't, then maybe it goes away for a month or two when some other big news story grabs people's attention, but it'll come back even harder later in the year, most likely during debate season.
Of course, if there actually is something highly damaging in his tax returns that he needs to hide, then he's screwed either way. For now I'm operating on the assumption that he just doesn't want to deal with the political implications of the fact that he pays an unfairly low tax rate.
Version: 16
Decided to get rid of my post-Wisconsin panic map. While President Obama is not in the same position he was in mid-March, he's still in my opinion a favorite for re-election. If the situation in Europe can stabilize that should also help the economy, which would only improve his re-election chances. The ad campaign that Obama and the not-technically-coordinating Super-PAC are running against Romney seem to be working according to what I'm hearing, and if Romney can't run on his business experience, he has nothing.
Still though, not as comfortable a lead as he had in March, this will be a somewhat tougher race than I had been anticipating.
Version: 15
Felt a need to make a pessimistic map after the result out of Wisconsin tonight.
Next map will probably be back to a more optimistic perspective.
Version: 14
First update since Romney has wrapped up the Republican nomination. It seems like the conservative vote has consolidated around him by now, so he's gained a few states since the last map. Right now President Obama still has a fairly decent lead in the electoral vote, but Romney is closing the gap.
I've decided not to include the popular vote prediction with this map, because I feel like this election is not going to correlate very well with the trend from previous elections. I think the social conservative vote is going to skew the popular vote toward Romney, but most of it will come from states that Romney was already going to win anyway. Not saying that Romney will win the popular vote, but it's going to be closer than the electoral vote might suggest.
I'll be watching the situation in Greece very closely over the next few weeks. If things go south there it could very easily have repercussions for our election. As opposed to austerity as I am, I would rather Greece vote in a pro-austerity government for now just so that they don't panic the financial markets and blow up the entire global economy. Sorry Greece, but you're the sacrificial lamb.
Version: 13
Just some minor updates since the last map. No lead changes in any states, but I did change the confidence levels for a few. I have begun to take certain economic factors into consideration, in addition to the polls, causing me to rethink some of the conventional wisdom on which states are more likely to vote a certain way than others.
National popular vote remains the same as last time.
Obama (D): 52.0%
Romney (R): 46.5%
3rd Party: 1.5%
Version: 12
Not too many adjustments since the last map. I've decided to give North Carolina to the Romney, as I think Purdue's poor approval rating in that state is going to drag Obama down there. I've also decided to give all of the Nebraska districts to the Romney until I can figure out what has gone on with the redistricting there: I've heard some claims that now the 1st District is more favorable to Obama than the old 2nd District, but I've seen other things that make it sound like Obama won't have much of a chance in either. I also adjusted the confidence in a few states, with North Dakota and Montana now strong Republican states and Iowa a tossup.
Nationwide Popular Vote
Obama (D): 52.0%
Romney (R): 46.5%
3rd Party: 1.5%
I find it interesting that Romney is now talking up this idea of President Obama trying to take away Americans' "economic freedom" - a theme that he is taking directly from Rick Santorum and which seems to be an attempt primarily to shore up his weak support with the Tea Party Republican base. I think he once again is going to go too far with his rhetoric in an attempt to try to sound like a "severely" conservative Republican, as this is not the kind of talk that appeals to Independents. While a fair number of Americans believe that President Obama hasn't been great for fixing the economy, I don't think most feel like their freedom is under assault, especially since Romney's focusing on regulations as the cornerstone of this supposed assault: regulations that in almost all cases only restrict the "freedom" of corporations. Most people probably don't really think of corporations as having freedoms.
Then again, when you think that corporations are people, maybe that sort of thing makes sense.
Version: 11
The Republican primary voters could not come to a definitive choice tonight, so now Romney is going to have to pander ever-more rightward to try to win the nomination. Additionally, the next group of states to vote in the primaries appear to largely be hostile to him, especially the states in the South, so he is going to have to keep pandering all the way through April at least, and possibly the whole way through June. He is making himself less and less electable in the fall while the economic situation is showing more improvements for President Obama. In my view Barack Obama is a 2:1 favorite to win re-election in November. There is still a path for Mitt Romney, no denying that, but in my mind Romney is now a clear underdog for the general election.
Version: 10
I think Mitt Romney is really going to hurt himself the way he keeps tacking farther and farther to the right in these primaries. He's now come out fully in support of the Blunt Amendment on birth control, which I think is going to really hurt him with women in the fall. I think the only votes he picks up by supporting this 1950s era idea are Baptists in the Deep South, but that doesn't serve him any good in the general election. Add in his growing alienation of the Hispanic vote, and his failure thus far to connect with working-class voters, and a path for victory for Romney starts to become very narrow indeed.
Version: 9
A lot of the polling I've seen lately has shown President Obama doing relatively well on a state-by-state basis in much of the country, but running in a very close race nationwide. I'm thinking that this has to do with a highly polarized electorate regionally, and that there are going to be a higher-than-typical number of states in the 60%+ category for each side, and possibly a fair number of 70%+ states. I know I saw at least one poll that showed Obama only getting something like 29% of the white vote in the South, while getting 50% or more in the rest of the country. If I can find the poll I'll post it.
Version: 8
First scenario with Santorum as the Republican nominee, and I'm probably being a bit generous to him.
Dem: Barack Obama(IL)/Joe Biden(DE)
Rep: Rick Santorum(PA)/Paul Ryan(WI)
I don't want to get cocky, but I'm starting to feel a real sense of optimism about November. Both Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are fundamentally flawed candidates: Romney because he has no real political convictions, and Santorum because his social values are stuck in the late 19th century.
Version: 7
I make this map as a warning to any Republicans on this site: if your party decides to follow Marco Rubio and Roy Blunt and embraces the position of allowing any employer to deny birth control coverage in their insurance plans - as Mitch McConnell suggested they will - your party will overwhelmingly lose the vote of women in this country, and a map like this is the likely outcome. Women are not going to look at this as an issue of religious liberty: they will look at it as an attack on themselves. Which it is.
Stop trying to return this country to the 19th century. You have been warned.
Version: 6
From everything I can see, President Obama's position for November continues to improve. All of the Republican candidates seem profoundly weak, and the odds are that a drawn-out nomination fight will only make them weaker for the general election. There is still reason for a fair amount of uncertainty, as it is only February, and the global economic and political situation remain fairly volatile. Nonetheless, a weak Republican field, an improving economy, and a motivated Democratic base make me feel more confident that President Obama will be re-elected than at any time since before the Tea Party exploded onto the scene in 2009.
Version: 5
After Romney's speech tonight, he clearly has decided that he is going forward as the champion of high finance. If either he or Gingrich is the nominee, I think Obama is looking very solid for re-election now.
I welcome this debate on the essence of modern capitalism itself.
Version: 4
"I like being able to fire people."
Even if Mitt Romney can overcome that gaffe in the primary, it will destroy him in the general election. I don't care that it's out of context. "I voted for it before I voted against it" was out of context too, and yet that still doomed John Kerry.
Version: 3
Starting to feel a little bit better about Obama's chances next year. I think this Republican primary process is likely to drag out into a long fight, thus hurting the eventual nominee. If the nominee is Gingrich or one of the other non-Romney candidates, I expect Obama to do better than this; if Romney is the nominee, I think it will be closer, but that Obama will still win by taking either Virginia or Ohio, along with at least some of the western swing states. There is also the distinct possibility that a third party candidate could draw some of the tea party support away from Romney if he is the nominee, but I'm not yet accounting for that. I think in general the media narrative regarding third parties next year is overstated. Still a fair amount of uncertainty in any prediction because of the state of the economy.
Final analysis: Obama's chances looking slightly better, but still could go either way with over 10 months before the election.
Version: 2
I'm starting to feel substantially more pessimistic about Obama's chances for re-election. It looks like the Tea Party austerity agenda is taking hold even more than I thought it would, and Obama is getting blamed for the damage it is causing to the economy. Add a discouraged progressive base, who sees him as far less bold than they wanted him to be, and his chances start deteriorating.
This map assumes a matchup against Rick Perry, who I think would strike enough fear into the Democratic base that they would not be willing to sit this one out, thus offsetting the disappointment that the base feels toward Obama himself. If I did a Romney map, I think I would have Obama trailing at this point, as the base just wouldn't be motivated enough.
Version: 1
First 2012 prediction map for me, likely of many. This is based on a match-up of Obama against any Republican other than Romney. As of right now, I just don't see the Republican base willing to nominate someone who is perceived to be as moderate as Romney; though I would dispute his actual moderateness. This assumes a slight improvement in the economy by November 2012, but not anything dramatic. If it gets worse, or Romney is the Republican nominee, I would have to come up with a more pessimistic map. If the nominee is Palin (something I see as very unlikely at this point, since I don't think she's going to run) then we'll be in store for a landslide not seen since 1964, at least.
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