Electoral College Opinion Maps

Here is the list of the opinion maps that we are following:

• Washington Post
• New York Times Political Desk
• USA Today
• CNN
• Associated Press
• Real Clear Politics
• Electoral-vote.com
• Real Clear Politics
• Fox News
• 270towin.com
• ElectionProjection.com
• Governing.com
• Cook Political Report
• NBC News
• Rothenberg Political Report
• Larry Sabato
• Wall Street Journal
• Rasmussen Reports
• Los Angeles Times
• Princetone Election Consortium
• Talking Points Memo
• Poll Headlines
• Washington Times

         
Even though state polls are relatively scarce at this point in the campaign, most of the opinion maps are being updated each week or so.  Five however were updated one to three months ago.  And the USA Today map hasn’t been updated since it was published and displays the broadest definition of a swing state and 151 tossups, the highest number of tossups on the list.  (The USA Today map also shows Obama with 196 electoral votes and Romney with 191, the lowest number of Obama votes on the list.)   As the campaign moves toward the conventions and then the debates, the number of polls being published can be expected to increase, along with the updating frequency of the maps.  

Pew poll:  65% of Independent voters say presidential campaign is dull

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/onpolitics/post/2012/07/presidential-election-boring-pew-research-poll-/1

Five Thirty Eight

Nate Silver, a political analyst for the New York Times, publishes the Five Thirty Eight blog wherein he uses a complex statistical model to assign the total electoral vote between the two Presidential candidates, without tossups.  (His “Now-cast” forecasting model presently splits the votes Obama 301 and Romney 237, with all tossups assigned.)  We are not using this forecast in our opinion map average because it is an informational input to the New York Times Political Desk that publishes the official Times opinion map, which is included in our average.  However, it is interesting to see the methodology he uses to reach his conclusions:  http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/methodology/#postComment

Swing states, immigration and independent voters

Contrary opinion that Presidential elections are not won in swing states.  (Comments below the article are interesting also.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-swing-states/2012/06/08/gJQAnXxCOV_story_1.html
 

How Obama’s immigration action plays in the swing states:

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/06/22/politics-counts-immigration-in-the-battleground-states/

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/27/news/la-pn-poll-obama-immigration-policy-winning-battleground-voters-20120627

Three-year-old article still sheds light on the “independent” voter:

http://www.psmag.com/politics/independent-voters-are-generally-not-3560/

Swing State Musings

The only job stats that matter:

http://www.businessinsider.com/this-chart-shows-why-obamas-economy-problems-arent-as-bad-as-everyone-says-2012-6

The Wall Street Journal’s path to victory for Romney:

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/06/26/romneys_game_changers.html

Will swing state independent voters go for Romney’s (Bush fiscal policy on steroids) budget proposal?

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/romneys-budget-plan-doesnt-add-up-2012-06-18?link=MW_story_featcomm


Results of CNN poll showing Romney leading in battleground states published on Newsmax:

http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/obama-romney-national-poll/2012/07/03/id/444302

The only problem is that CNN included three very pink non-battlegrounds in the group of states that were polled -- Arizona, Indiana and Missouri.  (Nate Silver puts the probability of Romney winning those three at over 75%, and neither campaign is spending ad dollars there.)

http://www.tnr.com/blog/electionate/104624/stop-the-battleground-subsamples

And here is Nate Silver's analysis of an Obama outlier poll:

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/outlier-polls-are-no-substitute-for-news/

Moral to the story:  One has to read more than the headlines.

A Calculation Reset

Obama                          232

Romney                        194

Tossups                         112

Please note that there is a material difference between the averages of last week and this week.  This is partially due to adjustments in the data in order to make an “apples to apples” calculation.  Some opinion maps break out leaning states (just outside the margin of error) and some maps include such states in their total, without breaking them out.  The averages now include all leaning state data, thus eliminating an average of a lot of apples with a few oranges.  

The results this week also reflect the slight wind in the battleground states that has appeared at Obama’s back and in Romney’s face.  

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/06/27/romney_getting_hammered_in_the_swing_states.html

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/07/01/the_parallel_campaign.html


The impact of both of these changes is to modestly increase Obama’s lead, while materially reducing the number of competitive tossups.