There Are Facts

It turns out the polling was accurate all along. Amazingly accurate as it happens.

As I wrote on Sunday, the polls were unequivocal. The only chance Romney had to win was if the polls were somehow displaying some kind systemic polling bias. I explained that that was possible even if it was not likely. Not likely was right. The polls were just right on the mark.

As a side note, not that I'm out for anyone losing their livelihood or something, but I do think there should be some accountability for some of the pundits that were just silly, silly wrong. For goodness sake, take Dick Morris off the air. Seth Masket is right about Peggy Noonan.

Anyone (including the Romney campaign) who considers Pennsylvania to be a swing state should be shut out of the discourse. They're not living in the fact-based world. I continue to defy anyone to show me something insightful Mark Halperin has said. Gallup Poll meet lack of credibility. Lack of credibility, this is the Gallup Poll.

There are facts. Thank goodness.

What You Should Worry About

The election is close and so everyone is nervous. Well, everyone except Dick Morris who is convinced that Romney will win in a landslide as Oregon is now in play (I'm not kidding).

Obama is leading according to the polls. It is roughly tied in the national poll averages and Obama has clear leads in the polling averages in enough swing states to put him over the top for re-election.

So, if you're supporting the President, you have just two things to worry about:

1) Something changes
2) The polls are wrong

Are either or both of these things possible? Absolutely. Are they likely? No. But let's take a closer look at each possibility.

Something changes. What could change in the final days? Some argue that nothing is going to change. Sam Wang, for instance, points out that the cake is now fully baked. He provides statistical proof for this and I find the phrase oddly compelling so I figured I'd repeat it. But it is always possible something could change. For one, a jobs report is going to be released in a few hours. Economists expect that the unemployment rate will tick up to 7.9%. That's probably not enough to damage Obama significantly. But it is an awfully close race and what if it ticks up to 8.0%? Are the optics of that sufficiently bad to do damage? Doubtful, but possible. (UPDATE: The jobs report was better than expected with 171,000 jobs added but the unemployment rate did tick up to 7.9% as more workers re-entered the workforce). What about the so-called incumbency effect? Many (mostly Republicans) argue that most of the undecided voters will break for Mitt Rommey because if they were voting for the President, they'd have been with him already. Is this likely? No. Mark Blumenthal picks that argument apart pretty well.

What about some other wildcard? Hurricane Sandy seems like the last, biggest wildcard and that does not seem to have done any damage to President Obama. Arguably, it has made him look good. Mitt Romney seems to think Pennsylvania is in play and he's headed there for a campaign stop on Sunday. Don't get me started on that. Overall, I think the jobs report is Romney's best bet in this category.

The polls are wrong. The polling data is much more clear than it appears to the naked eye. Sam Wang, Simon Jackman, Nate Silver, Drew Linzer, and others have modeled the probability that Obama does, in fact, have a lead according to the polls and the general consensus is ... "YEAH." But the key phrase in all that is "according to the polls." If the polls are all systematically biased in some similar kind of way, that lead would be a mirage. How often does this happen? Not often. But it is important to remember that polling is at least partially an art. In this era of low response rates, it is not quite as easy as before to ensure you have an unbiased sample. If Obama's lead (and he DOES lead in the key state of Ohio in the polls) were bigger, this would be less of a concern. But it is a small lead.

Of course, the possibility of error goes in both directions. If you watched the video of Stan Greenberg I posted a few days ago, you know there are those who believe the pollsters are undersampling Obama voters. In addition, the Obama campaign claims their superior ground game will help them out-perform the polls. Of course, the Romney campaign claims the same things. The reality is that pollsters are smart people and have staked their reputation on what they're doing. The odds are they are right. Systemic polling failure is possible ... but unlikely.

In the end, there is enough uncertainty to worry about both of these things: Something could change. The polls could be wrong. How much should you worry? As of tonight, Nate Silver has Obama as an 81% bet to win.

That's a high point in the post-Denver (first debate) campaign for Obama. And as Nate points out, you'd rather be holding Obama's cards right now than Romney's.

Romney's Pennsylvania Gambit ...

... is funny.

I woke up this morning to this nonsense about Romney trying to "expand the map" in Pennsylvania. It seems Romney Romney's super PAC has some extra money to burn so they're burning it in Pennsylvania with a media buys of about $2.6 million. The Obama campaign has responded by spending about $600,000.

In defending the move, the Romney campaign has said they think Pennsylvania is in play and Politico (et tu Politico???) reports that "some polls have shown tightening there." Oy.

I have written more posts railing about how Pennsylvania is not in play than I can count. Here's one. Here's another. You can search the blog for more.

I guess it would be helpful if there were some data that could help us determine whether Pennsylvania is in play:



Oops.

It turns out there's been exactly one poll since February that has showed Romney in the lead. That poll was done by ... the Republican State Committee of Pennsylvania. Interesting. Rasmussen polled Pennsylvania just a week ago and has Obama over 50% and 5 points ahead.

Perhaps you know all this but you worry because Obama spent that $600,000 in Pennsylvania. Believe me folks. The Obama campaign is not sweating Pennsylvania. They can't literally spend every dollar in Ohio. So why not spend a fraction of what the other side is spending to get a little bit of a counterargument on the air.

Let me leave you with this thought. In 2008, Obama beat McCain by just over 10 points in Pennsylvania. The whole nation has shifted a bit back towards the Republicans since then. Has Pennsylvania shifted by 10 points? No. Will $2.6 million in last-minute spending on Romney make it shift 10 points? No.

Romney has one hope for winning Pennsylvania and it is not $2.6 million in ads. Romney's only hope in Pennsylvania is ... systemic polling failure.

Romney's Swing State Problem

I'm going to sound like a broken record but here are the "swing-state" poll numbers released in the last 12 hours according to Taegan Goddard:

Colorado: Romney 48%, Obama 47% (CBS/NYT/Quinnipiac)
Florida: Obama 47%, Romney 46% (NBC/WSJ/Marist)
Michigan: Obama 49%, Romney 42% (Detroit News)
Michigan: Obama 46%, Romney 44% (Gravis)
Nevada: Obama 47%, Romney 45% (Suffolk)
Ohio: Obama 51%, Romney 45% (NBC/WSJ/Marist)
Ohio: Obama 47%, Romney 46% (Pulse Opinion Research)
Pennsylvania: Obama 47%, Romney 45% (Pulse Opinion Research)
Virginia: Romney 48%, Obama 47% (NBC/WSJ/Marist)
Virginia: Obama 51%, Romney 46% (CBS/NYT/Quinnipiac)
Virginia: Obama 48%, Romney 48% (Pulse Opinion Research)
Wisconsin: Obama 50%, Romney 47% (CBS/NYT/Quinnipiac)
Wisconsin: Obama 50%, Romney 46% (Pulse Opinion Research)

I put "swing-state" in air quotes because Michigan and Pennsylvania are not swing states but I won't get started on that rant again. These are just the states that Goddard lists.

Some of these pollsters are better than others and I won't bother with that discussion right now other than to say, look at where Obama is in polls that call cell-phones. For purposes of our discussion here, let's assume these polls are all equally valid.

Who is likely to win the election today if these polls are accurate? Mitt Romney is ahead in exactly 2 of these 13 polls and he's tied in one more. If we average the polls in states where there is more than one poll, Obama wins every state listed here except Colorado. Now, many of these states (like Florida) would be close. But guess what? Florida has always been close. And guess what else? Let's give Florida to Romney along with Colorado. Now who wins? The President.

Everyone is talking about how the first debate "wiped out" everything that happened between the convention and the debates when Obama built a bit of a cushion. I don't believe that's exactly correct but let's say it is. Now who wins? The President.

Yesterday, the President said, "What’s important is the fundamentals of what this race is about haven’t changed." He's absolutely right.

UPDATE: Greg Sargent snagged an interview with Geoff Garin, arguably the top Democratic pollster in the country and got Garin to outline why Obama is doing so much better in swing states like Ohio than he's doing nationally:

Geoff Garin, the pollster for the Obama-allied Priorities USA, tells me that his polling shows that views of Romney are more fixed in the battlegrounds than nationally. “In the swing states, voters are much more apt and able to quote back the main case against Romney,” he tells me.

Garin adds that his polling has tested voter reaction to various arguments against Romney, such as the idea that his economic policies would favor the wealthy or burden the middle class. He says voter agreement with those suggestions is “higher where the advertising has occurred,” and adds: “All the swing state advertising has had a measurable and lasting impact.”

Movement?

A couple of days ago, Quinnipiac released polls in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania showing Obama with leads of 6, 6, and 11 points respectively among likely voters.

Yesterday, Pew Research Center released a national poll showing Obama with a whopping 10-point lead with Romney's unfavorables ticking up to 52%.

This morning, the monthly jobs report held moderately good news for Obama ... a gain of 163,000 jobs in July. We've said previously that averaging job gains of even 125,000 a month would probably be good enough for the President to get reelected.

Finally, Nate Silver's model has Obama's probability of winning ticking up a bit over 70% and that has not yet factored in the decent jobs report.

So, is there real movement in the race here or just statistical noise? Let's break down each piece of news here. The Quinnipiac polls are probably the most positive indicator in all this as they are a good pollster and the Ohio and Florida numbers are surprisingly strong for Obama (please don't get me started on Pennsylvania again). Quinnipiac has moved to a likely voter screen here though and, while that normally gives a slight bump to the Republicans, it could do almost anything depending on how they are screening likely voters. So, it is entirely possible there is no movement here at all and Obama's lead in Ohio and Florida in these polls is just a function of a bad likely voter screen. Similarly, it could be statistical noise though these polls had very large sample sizes (over 1,000 likely voters in each state).

The Pew poll shows a very large lead for Obama that is out of step with other polls. Pew has had a significant house effect towards Obama for some time now so the "lead" would need to be discounted some just for that reason alone. Nate Silver discussed this at length last night.

The jobs numbers are decent for Obama but not incredible. The new numbers basically stem the erosion of confidence in my view rather than boosting Obama. This is good news for Obama no doubt but it is not a "game-changer."

Taking all that together, I think it is fair to say it has been a good couple of days for Obama but "no movement" is a good day for him right now. He doesn't need the dynamic of the race to change. I am not sure we're seeing actual movement in any numbers here. We'll know more in a week or two but count me as one who believes the breaking news here is ... nothing, nothing is happening.

What is Wisconsin's Message?

I didn't catch the name of the analyst on MSNBC last night who made this general point that I think is correct: Walker surviving the recall is very bad from a policy perspective but there was certainly a lot of bad news for Mitt Romney in electoral terms.

After hearing this, I quickly flipped over to CNN to hear Gloria Borger making the opposite case for the electoral message. Borger argued that Wisconsin was a test-run for the Republican ground game for the Fall and Walker's victory means their ground game is in great shape.

I'll outline this more in full below but the short version is that Gloria Borger is just dead wrong as the exit poll numbers revealed very, very bad numbers for Mitt Romney. Now, the longer explanation.

I have been ranting quite a bit about how many pundits insist on calling Pennsylvania a swing state when it just isn't. See here, here, and here for examples. And, by the way, there's a new poll out in Pennsylvania this morning that has Obama up by 12 there. Since some have complained that I need to stop ranting about that, perhaps I should re-focus my rants on Wisconsin ... which is also not all that swing-statish. Let's go to the tape:

Obama won Wisconsin by 14 in 2008. Kerry eked out a victory by less than half a point in 2004. Gore won Wisconsin but the margin was even closer in 2000. But, unlike Pennsylvania, which Republicans last won (narrowly) in 1988, you have to go all the way back to 1984 (almost 30 years) to find a Republican candidate who won in Wisconsin. I must admit, I found it curious that Jim Messina recently put out a video from Obama HQ indicating that the Obama campaign sees Wisconsin as a tossup. In the video, Messina discusses the electoral map and puts 243 electoral votes (solidly or leaning) in Obama's column with 191 for Romney and he points to 8 states for a total of 104 electoral votes in the tossup column ... including Wisconsin. Take a look at Pollster.com's latest trend estimate on Wisconsin:



There have been 16 publicly-released polls of the Obama/Romney trial heat in Wisconsin in 2012. One has them tied and one has Romney ahead by 1 (back in mid-January). The rest have Obama ahead by 4 to 17 points. The three most recent polls are all of likely voters and they have Obama ahead by 8, 6, and 10 points respectively. Finally, last night's exit pollsters asked respondents how they would vote in the presidential race in the Fall and Obama was ahead by 7 points.

So, if I'm right that Wisconsin is not as much of a swing state as everyone seems to be saying, why did Walker survive? There are two reasons both of which are pointed out by a very smart piece by First Read this morning. On turnout, Gloria Borger is right that Republicans turned out a lot of voters ... but so did Democrats. First Read provides turnout numbers for the 2012 Recall, the 2010 race that first elected Walker, and for the 2008 presidential race in Wisconsin:

2012: 2,503,745 (Walker 1,331,076- Barrett 1,158,337)
2010: 2,160,832 (Walker 1,128,941- Barrett 1,004,303)
2008: 2,983,417 (Obama 1,677,211- McCain 1,262,393)

Turnout was better last night than in 2010 but not as good as 2008. The better the turnout, the better the Democrats will do. The exit polls last night suggest Obama would win by 7 with last night's turnout. Turnout in November is likely to be closer to 2008 levels than last night's levels. Putting all that together, I think Obama's 7 point lead in last night's exit probably has some upside for November.

The second thing First Read points out about Walker's victory last night is that exit pollsters asked respondents about the legitimacy of the recall mechanism. 60% of respondents said that recalls are only legitimate for official misconduct. Another 10% said that recalls are NEVER appropriate. So, 70% of voters just didn't think this was an appropriate way to deal with policy differences. Now, Scott Walker will ignore those numbers and claim a mandate but the reality is that that means a very small number of voters did not approve of Walker's position on unions but voted to keep him in office anyway. He survived the recall because of a coalition of voters who agree with him on his changes to labor laws (52% according to the exit polls) and voters who disagree with him but think the recall is not an appropriate mechanism.

One thing First Read got wrong in their analysis was this line:

Wisconsin still looks a lot more Pennsylvania (a state floating between Lean Dem and Toss-up) than Iowa (which is a battleground where Obama has some work to do)

Yes, Wisconsin looks a lot like Pennsylvania but Pennsylvania is NOT "floating between Lean Dem and Toss-up." Pennsylvania is hovering around "Likely Dem" and Wisconsin is certainly at least leaning towards the President.

And, since they mentioned Iowa ... well, I'll have more to say on that at another time.

Headlines That Are Maddening

From Political Wire:

Is Pennsylvania No Longer a Swing State?

No, it isn't.

Non-Breaking News

A couple of news items that shouldn't surprise you if you read this blog:

Obama leads in Pennsylvania.

Obama's gay marriage stance made no difference.

Everyone repeat after me ... Pennsylvania is not a swing state ... and neither is Tennessee (see below).

Not Much to Say - Obama Still Winning

A few people have asked me why I haven't been blogging much in the past few days. The main reason is that there isn't much to say ... and that's good news for the President.

There have been lots of polls out but they don't tell us very much that is new ... at least it isn't new if you've been reading here for the last couple of months. Here's a new poll. The President is winning in Maine. Here's one that shows Romney winning in Georgia. And here's one that shows Obama winning in Michigan. There are no surprises here.

Obama is winning right now. If you look at the pollster.com trend estimates by state, you see that Obama is leading by smaller or larger margins in all the "battleground" states. Here's a listing of Obama's lead (or deficit) in pollster.com's current trend estimates nationally and for all the states for which they have multiple polls:

National - 1.2
AZ - (0.5)
FL - 1.2
IA - 10.0
MI - 4.0
MO - (3.0)
MT - (9.0)
NV - 8.2
NH - 8.8
NC - 2.6
OH - 3.8
PA - 7.6
VA - 4.5
WI - 5.7

The only states Obama is losing in this group are states that Obama lost in 2008. But let's look at this from a more conservative angle. Sean Trende recently pointed out that most of these state polls are looking at registered voters rather than likely voters. There is very good reason for pollsters to do this because it is exceedingly difficult to get an accurate read this far out from the election on what the likely voter pool will be. But Trende correctly points out that likely voter pools are usually more favorable to Republicans than registered voter pools and that, on average, the shift from one to the other means about a 3-4-point shift in the Republican direction. So, let's take state polls above (the national polling does include more likely voter polls) and shift all of them 3.5 points in Romney's direction:

AZ - (4.0)
FL - (2.7)
IA - 6.5
MI - 0.5
MO - (6.5)
MT - (12.5)
NV - 4.7
NH - 5.3
NC - (0.9)
OH - 0.3
PA - 4.1
VA - 1.0
WI - 2.2

So who wins in this scenario? Obama. And he's still got a little bit of room to spare. "Really?" you say. Yes, really. In fact, he's at 303 electoral votes. "Well that Ohio result is so close it scares me. What if we give Ohio to Romney? Does Obama still win?" you say. Yes. Obama still wins. "Well, I've noticed Colorado isn't listed there" you say. "You're just cooking the books by giving Colorado to Obama!" Well, I would predict Obama wins Colorado right now (and I don't think it'd be that close) but okay, let's give Colorado to Romney. What happens now? Obama still wins ... with 276 electoral votes. You can play around with the math on this here but I'm telling you ... Romney's path to 270 is VERY narrow right now.

Recently, my aunt attended a lecture and the lecturer (a political scientist) said the election will come down to "FLOHPA," the key states of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and whichever candidate wins 2 of the 3 will win. My aunt was quite alarmed because she thinks Obama is in trouble in Florida. But guess what? The old "FLOHPA is decisive" argument is not necessarily true. 1) I just showed you how Obama can lose Ohio and Florida AND lose Colorado and still win. 2) For the love of all that is holy, let's take Pennsylvania out of the "swing" state column (see my earlier rant on this). Obama is either winning Pennsylvania or he's losing VERY badly. But the election is NOT turning on Pennsylvania.

My broader point for today is this. Take the state polling into account and then shift everything 3.5 points in Romney's direction ... and Obama is still in the driver's seat. I'm not saying the election is over and I'm not saying Obama is running away with it. But Obama is winning right now and nothing happened this week (no, not even the gay marriage stuff) to change that.