Archives for September 2012

Obama	Romney
100.0% probability of winning	0.0% probability of winning
Mean of 344 electoral votes	Mean of 194 electoral votes

Even Newer Update: There is a real North Dakota poll that has just been released. It shows Romney leading in N.D. by 51% to 39%. The poll fails my inclusion criteria because it was conducted on behalf of the North Dakota Democratic-NPL State Party. But there you have it.

Newer Update: Okay…stuff should be fixed now.

Update: OOPS! As was pointed out in the comment thread, I accidentally “invented” a new poll that turned N.D. blue! Alas, it was an Ohio poll that got entered for the wrong state (and then entered again for Ohio). I’ll do a new analysis soon.

The analysis a few days ago showed President Barack Obama leading Governor Mitt Romney by, on average, 345 to 193 electoral votes. Since then, we’ve had a plethora of new polls released, and the result is a small gain for Obama Romney.

Here are the new polls:

		start	end	sample		%	%	%
st	poll	date	date	size	MOE	O	R	diff
AZ	Moore	25-Sep	26-Sep	500	4.0	42	46	R+4
IA	Iowa Poll	23-Sep	26-Sep	650	3.8	49	45	O+4
IA	VCR	23-Sep	25-Sep	500	4.4	46	47	R+1
ME	Rasmussen	25-Sep	25-Sep	500	4.5	52	40	O+12
MA	Boston Globe	21-Sep	27-Sep	502	4.4	57	30	O+27
MI	Gravis Marketing	21-Sep	22-Sep	804	3.3	50.0	46.2	O+3.8
MI	PPP	17-Sep	19-Sep	2386	2.0	51	42	O+9
NV	Marist	23-Sep	25-Sep	984	3.1	49	47	O+2
NH	ARG	25-Sep	27-Sep	600	4.0	50	45	O+5
NH	Marist	23-Sep	25-Sep	1012	3.1	51	44	O+7
NM	PPP	17-Sep	20-Sep	3111	1.8	52	43	O+9
NC	Marist	23-Sep	25-Sep	1035	3.1	48	46	O+2
OH	Columbus Dispatch	19-Sep	29-Sep	1662	2.2	51	42	O+9
OH	PPP	14-Sep	18-Sep	2890	1.8	50	44	O+6
PA	Muhlenberg	22-Sep	26-Sep	427	5.0	49	42	O+7
PA	PPP	17-Sep	18-Sep	2051	2.2	52	40	O+12
VA	ARG	24-Sep	27-Sep	600	4.0	49	47	O+2
VA	Suffolk	24-Sep	26-Sep	600	4.0	45.7	44.0	O+1.7
VA	PPP	17-Sep	19-Sep	2770	1.9	49	43	O+6
WA	Rasmussen	26-Sep	26-Sep	500	4.5	52	41	O+11

Romney continues to out poll Obama in Arizona. The three current polls, taken together, has Romney with a 95% probability of winning the state.

In Iowa, Obama leads by +4% in one poll and trails by -1% in another. Still, there are six Iowa polls taken in the past three weeks—Obama leads in four. Together they put Obama’s probability of taking the state (now) at 98%. Here is the last three months of polling:

Maine has Obama leading by +12% in the new poll. There is also a newly released Critical Insights poll that is a couple weeks old and has Obama up by +16. I didn’t see the poll until after the analyses were running; it’ll be included in subsequent analyses.

Obama hangs on to a small +3.8% in one new Michigan poll. Even so, Obama pulls over 50%. Another huge, but somewhat older, Michigan poll has Obama up by +9. With Obama leading in all eight current polls, by double digits in three of them, Obama is looking unbeatable in this state.

In Nevada, Obama’s lead is just +2% in the current poll. Romney hasn’t won any of the six current polls, and Obama would be expected to win the state now with a 95% probability.

Two new New Hampshire polls have Obama up by +5% and +7%. These are Obama’s strongest showing, now giving him three of the four current polls. Romney’s chances in the state have shrunk to about 10%.

Another North Carolina poll goes Obama’s way, but by only a +2% edge. Obama now has a streak of four consecutive polls in his favor, and he takes four of the five current polls for the state. Here is what the last three months of polling look like graphically:

Two more Ohio polls go to Obama, who leads in all 12 of the polls taken over the past three weeks. In 2008, Obama won Ohio by +4.6%. If the election was held now, we’d expect Obama to win by more than a +6% margin! Here’s the recent trend:

Pennsylvania shows, once again, that it isn’t a swing state. Obama’s +7% and +12% in the new polls fall in line with the rest of the ten current polls.

In Virginia, Obama has a puny +2% lead in two polls and a +6% lead in another. These polls make eleven taken in the past three weeks and Obama leads in every one of them. The analysis suggests Obama would win the hypothetical election now with certainty, even if by a smallish margin. The polling trend makes this apparent:

Last, but not least, we get a new Rasmussen poll in Washington, where Obama leads Romney by a solid +11%, and takes 52% of the vote. All three current polls are double digit leads for Obama…this new poll is the smallest lead.

Now, after a Monte Carlo analysis using 100,000 simulated elections, Obama receives (on average) 347 (+2) 344 (-1) to Romney’s 191 (-2) 194 (+1) electoral votes. Obama won all 100,000 of the simulated elections, suggesting he would certainly win a hypothetical election held now.

We can view the long term trend of this race from a series of elections simulated every seven days using polls from 30 Sep 2011 to 30 Sep 2012, and including polls from the preceding 21 days (FAQ).

Looking at the media electoral vote line (purple), we see that Obama’s position is stronger than at any time in the past year tied with his strongest position over the past year (median of 347 electoral votes).

Here is the distribution of electoral votes [FAQ] from the simulations:
[Read more…]

Obama	Romney
100.0% probability	0.0% probability
345 electoral votes	193 electoral votes

The previous analysis showed President Barack Obama leading Governor Mitt Romney by an average of 341 to 197 electoral votes. The results were strong enough and certain enough that we would expect Obama to be the certain winner in an election held now.

Over the past two days, 14 new polls have been released, covering 12 states.

The net result is that, after 100,000 simulated elections, Obama wins 100,000 times and Romney wins 0 times. Obama receives (on average) 345 to Romney’s 193 electoral votes. That is a gain of +4 EVs based on the new polls and the “aging out” of some older polls. We’d have to say the the evidence is quite strong that Obama would achieve victory in a hypothetical election held today.

Here are the new polls, followed by a discussion of some of the changes over the past couple of days:

		start	end	sample		%	%	%
st	poll	date	date	size	MOE	O	R	diff
AZ	Rasmussen	25-Sep	25-Sep	500	4.5	42	52	R+10
CO	Gravis Marketing	21-Sep	22-Sep	765	3.4	50.2	45.5	O+4.7
CT	PPP	24-Sep	26-Sep	801	3.5	54	41	O+13
FL	Insider Advantage	24-Sep	24-Sep	540	4.1	49	46	O+3
FL	Quinnipiac	18-Sep	24-Sep	1162	3.0	53	44	O+9
IN	Bellweather Research	19-Sep	20-Sep	800	3.5	40	52	R+12
IA	PPP	24-Sep	26-Sep	754	3.6	51	44	O+7
MD	Gonzales Res	17-Sep	23-Sep	813	3.5	55	36	O+19
MA	Rasmussen	24-Sep	24-Sep	500	4.5	55	40	O+15
MO	Chilenski Strategies	20-Sep	20-Sep	817	3.4	44.3	50.2	R+5.9
OH	Quinnipiac	18-Sep	24-Sep	1162	3.0	53	43	O+10
PA	Quinnipiac	18-Sep	24-Sep	1162	3.0	54	42	O+12
PA	Franklin & Marshall	18-Sep	23-Sep	392	4.9	52	43	O+9
WA	Gravis Marketing	21-Sep	22-Sep	625	4.6	56.4	38.6	O+17.8

There are a couple of bright spots for Romney, including a poll from Arizona that has Romney up by a +10%. Romney’s lead in the previous AZ poll was only +3%. The three current polls, taken together bump Romney’s chances of taking the state from 97.5% to 99.3% in an election now.

In Colorado, Obama has a +4.7% lead in the latest poll. Obama gets a slight bump from 95% to 96% probability of taking the state (for now) from the poll.

Two more Florida polls go to Obama. He gets a +3% in one and a +9% in the other. Taken together the 15 current polls suggest a 99% chance of Obama taking the state—up from a 93% probability without these two new polls.

Indiana has Romney up by a respectable +12% over Obama. Indiana barely went for Obama in 2008. It seems unlikely the state will repeat that in 2012.

Another Iowa poll goes Obama’s way, this time by +7%. Romney has only led in one of the four current polls taken over the past three weeks. Taken together, Obama gets a slight bump from 95% to 98% of taking the state now.

The other bright spot for Romney is Missouri, where Romney leads in a new poll by +5.9%. Together, the two current polls bump Romney’s chances from 68% to 90% of taking the state now.

Another Ohio poll goes to Obama, this one by double digits. This gives us 12 polls in Ohio over the past three weeks and every one of them goes to Obama. As a result, Obama won all 100,000 simulated elections in that state.

Two new Pennsylvania polls both go to Obama. One by +12% and the other by +9%. The eight current polls all go to Obama. The give Obama, in aggregate, a +9% lead over Romney, and suggest Obama would take the state with certainty in an election right now.

A new poll for Washington state has Obama leading Romney by +17.8%. The five current polls all give Obama double digit leads in the state.

Here is the distribution of electoral votes [FAQ] from the simulations:
[Read more…]

Obama	Romney
100.0% probability of winning	0.0% probability of winning
Mean of 341 electoral votes	Mean of 197 electoral votes

Beginning this analysis, I’ve narrowed the “current polling window.” The old window included all polls taken within the past month. That criterion resulted in some states with many “current” polls, including some pre-conventions polls.

The new criterion is three weeks, so that almost all the polling occurs after the conventions. You can expect the window to shrink to two weeks sometime in October.

There are two effects from shrinking the window. First, the number of individuals polled goes down for some states. With fewer respondents, we have less evidence and, therefore, uncertainty increases (all else being equal).

The other effect is that there is less smoothing of the results. That is, the results become more indicative of trends.

Taken together, we might expect that Governor Mitt Romney’s chances improve through the increase in uncertainty. We can also expect Romney’s chances to decrease as a result of a recent poll surge for Obama. As it happens, the latter has a much stronger effect. The net effect is that Romney takes a beating….

The previous analysis had Obama leading Romney by 331 to 207 electoral votes, and the analysis suggested that Obama would almost certainly win an election held now.

Nineteen new polls covering 13 states have appeared in the past two days. Additionally, I’ve found four older polls (one each in AL, CO, OH, and FL) by comparing my database against Samuel Minter’s database.

Here are the new polls:

		start	end	sample		%	%	%
st	poll	date	date	size	MOE	O	R	diff
AR	Talk Business-Hendrix College	17-Sep	17-Sep	2228	2.0	34.5	55.5	R+21.0
CO	PPP	20-Sep	23-Sep	940	3.2	51	45	O+6
FL	PPP	20-Sep	23-Sep	861	3.3	50	46	O+4
FL	WA Post	19-Sep	23-Sep	769	4.5	51	47	O+4
FL	ARG	20-Sep	22-Sep	600	4.0	50	45	O+5
IA	ARG	20-Sep	23-Sep	600	4.0	51	44	O+7
MI	Rasmussen	20-Sep	20-Sep	500	4.5	54	42	O+12
MN	Mason-Dixon	17-Sep	19-Sep	800	3.5	48	40	O+8
MT	Mason-Dixon	17-Sep	19-Sep	625	4.0	42	51	R+9
NV	ARG	20-Sep	23-Sep	600	4.0	51	44	O+7
NV	NV Retailers	19-Sep	20-Sep	500	4.4	46	46	tie
NV	PPP	18-Sep	20-Sep	501	4.4	52	43	O+9
NJ	Monmouth	19-Sep	23-Sep	613	4.0	52	37	O+15
NC	Civitas	18-Sep	19-Sep	600	4.0	49	45	O+4
OH	Gravis Marketing	21-Sep	22-Sep	594	4.3	45.3	44.3	O+1.0
OH	WA Post	19-Sep	23-Sep	759	4.5	52	44	O+8
PA	Susquehanna	18-Sep	20-Sep	800	3.5	47	45	O+2
PA	Mercyhurst U	12-Sep	20-Sep	522	4.3	48	40	O+8
WI	WeAskAmerica	20-Sep	23-Sep	1238	2.8	52.5	41.0	O+11.5

With this new poll, seven of eight current Colorado polls go to Obama suggesting he would win an election now with about a 95% probability. One can sense from the last three months of polling that Obama is gaining slowly in the state:

Florida has Obama up by +4% in two new polls and +5 in another. Obama has now led in five consecutive polls in the state. That trend we can almost discern in Colorado is even more apparent in Florida:

Romney took the previous Iowa poll, but this new one goes +7% for Obama. The three current polls, take together, suggest Obama has a 95% chance of taking the state right now.

Another solid Michigan poll for Obama leaves him with a certain win in the state (at least, for now).

Three new Nevada polls have Obama up by +7%, +9%, and +0% (i.e. tied). It looks like Obama is regaining the lead he held there six months ago:

The Civitas Institute is a right wing think tank in North Carolina, but they release all their polls. This one has Obama leading by +4%. Obama leads in four of the six current polls and the last three in a row. Still, the weight of evidence goes very slightly to Romney. The trend seems to be in Obama’s favor:

Two new Ohio polls favor Obama, one by a whisper, the other by +8%. Looking at the three month polling trend in the state, the past few weeks have not been kind to Romney:

Obama gets his best and his worst poll in recent months in today’s Pennsylvania collection. Still, it is hard to argue that Obama’s lead isn’t solid:

Finally, a double-digit lead for Obama in Wisconsin caps off a very favorable collection of recent polls in the state for the President. Whatever momentum Romney had in the state in August seems to have almost entirely vanished:

Now after 100,000 simulated elections, Obama wins 100,000 times and Romney wins 0 times. Obama receives (on average) 341 (+10) to Romney’s 197 (-10) electoral votes. In a hypothetical election held now, Obama would have a 100.0% probability of winning.

[Read more…]