Nevada, Wisconsin, Ohio ... Oh My

There's a lot of good articles floating around in the last couple of days about how close the national polls are and how President Obama has an advantage in the state level polling in swing states. A particularly good piece was posted on Huffington Post by Simon Jackman of Stanford outlining a statistical model of both the present national vote/EV split and the history of this split (statistically-speaking).

It got me to thinking about how to express Obama's advantage in the simplest terms, so here it is: Wisconsin, Nevada, and Ohio.

Now let me flesh that out a bit. Take a look at the map below. It shows what I believe to be the state of the race in the most general terms.

Every red state and blue state on the map is highly likely to go to Romney (red) or Obama (blue). Put another way, I don't think there is a single red or blue state on that map that any reasonable person would dispute.

Obama has 237 electoral votes effectively "in the bank" and Romney has 191. There are 9 "battleground" states totalling 110 electoral votes. I've ranked these 9 battleground states below in order of their probability of going for Obama according to Nate Silver's blog:

WI - 79.0%
NV - 73.1%
OH - 70.3%
IA - 65.9%
NH - 62.6%
CO - 52.9%
VA - 46.9%
FL - 32.6%
NC - 15.0%

Notice the three at the top of the list; Wisconsin, Nevada, and Ohio. By the way, Drew Linzer also estimates that Obama would win these three states today predicting the President would get 51.7%, 52.0%, and 51.1% respectively in Nevada, Wisconsin, and Ohio.

Now you can see why I've been saying since ... forever ... that Ohio is the whole ballgame. Let's assume Obama wins the three of those battlegrounds he's most likely to win; Wisconsin, Nevada, and Ohio. Here's the new map:

Obama is now at 271, 1 more than what he needs to win. It isn't just that he needs 3 states out of 9. It is that he needs the 3 states that he's most likely to win. Unless Romney can pick off at least one of these states, he can't win.

State-Level Polling

More evidence of trouble with that Gallup poll comes in the form of state-level polling that is WAY out of whack with Gallup's national numbers. This afternoon, NBC/WSJ/Marist released two state-level polls that are VERY bad for Romney. The President leads in Iowa by 8 and in Wisconsin by 6. Folks, there are two possibilities on these numbers:

1) They're wrong
2) Romney is in very deep trouble

It is entirely possible they're wrong. I would actually be surprised if Obama was ahead by 8 in Iowa right now. I do think he's ahead in both of these states but my guess would have been something more like 4-5 points in Wisconsin and perhaps a little less in Iowa.

If these polls are accurate, here's why Romney's in trouble:

1) States don't usually move by themselves. They reflect national trends a lot of the time. If Obama is ahead by 8 in Wisconsin, he's winning by something like 4-6 points in Ohio and he's winning in Virginia and so on.

2) If the Obama campaign knows they have leads like that in those states, they can move at least some of their resources from those states towards Florida and Ohio and Virginia, etc.

3) Obama's lead is the same in Iowa as it was a month ago. There has been no movement or whatever movement there has been has cancelled itself out. Obama was winning in September and this would mean he's winning now.

4) Early voting appears to be as big a disaster for Romney in Iowa and Wisconsin as it is in Ohio. 34% of likely voters in Iowa say they've already voted and Obama is winning among these voters 67-32. The poll reports that Romney is winning among likely voters planning to vote on Election Day but not by nearly enough. Similarly, 156% of likely voters in Wisconsin say they've already voted and Obama is winning there 64-35. But the race is about even there among those planning to vote on Election Day. So, Obama appears to be winning right now in these states and locking in large numbers of votes right now.

Anyway, coming back to that Gallup Poll, the situation is simple: The two sets of numbers (Gallup and NBC/WSJ) are not consistent or the result of statistical noise. Nate Silver agrees and advises that people "be careful" with the Gallup numbers.

There is something very different going on in the sampling and one of them (Gallup or NBC/WSJ) is just dead wrong. I don't think Gallup is right.

Sullivan Unhinged II

Holy moly has this guy gone off the deep end!

I really don't think his post is worthy of a rebuttal except for the fact that it is so widely read. For that reason, I sent him a lengthy email pointing out the various ways he's just dead wrong. I won't re-print the whole thing here but this is the most important, concluding part:

The President had a bad night and he’s taken a hit in the polls. But it just isn’t nearly what you’ve painted it to be in its effect. Go ahead and show me the path to 270 electoral votes that Mitt Romney has today. We’re now at 12 days since that first debate and the results are pretty cooked into the state polls. Show me Romney winning Ohio. Show me his path without Ohio. Is Romney winning Wisconsin? Sorry. Is Romney winning Nevada? Sorry. If he doesn't win those places, he doesn't win.

Obama is winning today. It’s closer than I wish it would be. The debate made it closer than it could have been. But it wouldn’t have been over without that debate performance. And Romney does not have “the momentum” or the mojo or, most importantly, the lead.

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.”

Some Initial Thoughts on the Ryan Pick

1) The timing makes little sense to me. Romney has just a few opportunities to truly reset the race. The VP pick, the convention, and the debates. Why make this move on a Saturday ... on a Saturday at 8:45AM EST ... on a Saturday at 8:45AM EST during the last weekend of the Olympics? It is as if Romney is trying to get people to ignore the news. Why not wait until Monday or Tuesday when more will tune in?

2) Picking Ryan is a clear admission the Romney team thinks they are behind and need to change the dynamic and conversation in the race. If you're comfortable with where you are, you pick Pawlenty, Portman, etc. Ryan brings many things to the table that are good for Romney. He's respected by tea party people, he's from Wisconsin, he's smart, and he's telegenic. But he's also a candidate who brings risk to the Romney campaign. He reinforces the pre-existing Obama narrative: Romney wants to give tax cuts to wealthy people while balancing the budget on the backs of the rest of us by cutting Medicare, etc.

3) Picking up on that last point, Romney runs stronger with seniors than younger voters. Picking Ryan gives Obama an opening to gain ground with seniors. The Obama campaign has already sent out an email on Ryan highlighting his plans on Medicare which would be devastating to a very popular program. Also, Ryan is a young guy and he looks even younger than he is. Perhaps this was an intentional effort to reach out to younger voters by Romney but it could hurt him just as much or more among older voters.

4) Does Ryan deliver Wisconsin? No. He's popular in his district but I don't think that matters statewide. Many people have misread Scott Walker's recall victory as an endorsement of Walker's policies. It was more a rejection of the recall mechanism in dealing with policy differences. Moreover, the Obama campaign will wrap Walker's assault on unions around Romney. I think that could hurt Romney just a little bit in states like Ohio and Michigan.

5) I've said all along VP picks don't make much of a difference in the long run of a campaign though they can hurt a candidate. Does Ryan hurt Romney? Certainly not in the short term. Indeed, Romney may even get a minor bounce until people learn more about Ryan and the "newness" of the story fades. In the longer run, I figure it makes no difference and could mildly hurt Romney in terms of reinforcing Obama's narrative.

6) This pick looks an awful lot like Jack Kemp in 1996. A smart conservative darling gets picked to try to smooth out some of the "non-conservative" warts of the nominee. Conservatives swoon over the VP pick in the short term and few remember the pick in the long run and it doesn't make a difference.

More Rasmussen

I picked on Rasmussen a bit the other day. Today, Rasmussen has a Michigan poll out that has Obama up 50-42 among likely voters.

So, you've got Romney up by 3 in Wisconsin and Obama up by 8 in Michigan? An 11-point spread? Sorry, but no. One or both of those is wrong and, as I said the other day, there's some reason to believe that Wisconsin poll is just off.

As I've said before, Michigan is not remotely a tipping state. Nate Silver agrees giving Obama (currently) a 91% chance of winning the state and a 0.2% chance Michigan will be a tipping state.

As I said the other day, Rasmussen is generally a decent pollster but there's something wrong with that Wisconsin survey.

Rasmussen!

Generally, Rasmussen is a decent pollster. Nate Silver says Rasmussen has a Republican lean but that is largely because of the likely voter model they use. So long as they are somewhat consistent in what they do and open about their methodology and assumptions, we can assume their results tell us something meaningful.

Today, Rasmussen released a poll of Wisconsin that had Romney up by 3. Those who read here know that is a result that raises my eyebrows so I wanted to take a closer look. I am not a Rasmussen subscriber so I tried to read between the lines of the press release and I did find a few things that jumped out at me.

First, the press release says this:

Though a plurality (46%) of Wisconsin voters recognizes that the government lost money in the bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler, 45% consider the auto industry bailouts a success. Thirty-six percent (36%) regard the bailouts as a failure. However, when told that the government is expected to lose billions of dollars on those bailouts, just 33% consider them a success, and 56% see them as a failure.

Now, there are a couple of issues here. One is that it really isn't quite a sure thing that the federal government has lost money on the auto bailout. To really measure that, you'd have to consider what the counter-factual would be. What would revenues look like if the bailout hadn't happened for instance? There's also another problem with this claim. The federal government still owns 500 million shares of GM. If the government sold them all today, the government would have lost close to $15 billion. But we're not selling today. Not only that, the price of the stock is artificially depressed because voters know Treasury will need to exit. The bottom line is we don't know when Treasury will exit and at what price. So it is not quite right to say this money is lost quite yet.

But there's a potentially bigger problem here. I don't know where in the poll this question was asked relative to the topline question. If the pollster points out that the auto bailout has lost billions of dollars and then asks whether the respondent supports Obama or Romney, that's really problematic.

A week ago, voters in the recall election were asked (in exit polls) whether they support Obama or Romney and Obama came out ahead 51-44. The turnout in November is likely to be a little better for Obama than it was last week. So, either there has been about a 10-13 point shift in Wisconsin in a week or the exit polls were very wrong or the Rasmussen poll is very wrong or some combination of these. The least likely of these explanations is a 10-13 point shift in the last week. I've provided some reasons the Rasmussen poll may be suspect above. That's probably the best explanation but we'll see what other pollsters find in the coming days.

We Got Beat

Most of us received the fundraising email from the Obama campaign this morning with the subject line "We got beat." The email explains that the Romney campaign combined with the RNC outraised the Obama campaign combined with the DNC $78 million to $60 million in the month of May. The story has also been running on the 24 hour news networks as a big deal and some further indication that the Obama campaign is in some kind of death spiral. They don't say those words but that is the feeling they clearly try to evoke (before they run the "comeback kid" stories like clockwork next week).

All this has a lot of people on the left quite spun up. My own particular bellwether (my dad) called me a couple of days ago upset about the Wisconsin recall and the fact that Walker outspent his opposition by 8 to 1 and ... this means Obama is going to be outspent the same way and come up just short.

Look, I think people should give money to the Obama campaign and to Democratic House and Senate campaigns as much as they can. It does help. But I'll also tell you what I told my dad. Obama could lose but he's not going to lose because of money. I do think that Obama plus DNC plus left-leaning superPACs will ultimately have less money than Romney plus RNC plus right-leaning superPACs. But you should know a few things about that:

1) Right now, the left has more money for the presidential race.

2) Money means less in presidential races than all other contests. So much is spent and so much of it is a wash.

3) Even if I'm right that Team Obama will be outspent overall by Team Romney, it is not going to be some geometric difference.

Steve Kornacki has a great piece out about this today that you should read if you don't believe me.

The bottom line is that Obama may win or lose but fundraising is not going to make the difference. But if you want to be extra-sure, stop wringing your hands and send Obama $100.

Nate Silver's Tricky Math Is Cool

Nate Silver's presidential race model is now out and the writeup is worth a full read. Lots and lots of really interesting and clever ways of looking at the race.

A couple of quick reactions on things that jump out at me:

1) Silver's model generates probabilities that look an awful lot like the things I've been saying here throughout the campaign. I think you can fairly summarize what I've been saying as "Obama is a modest favorite." Silver summarized his model's message this way:

The first look at the 2012 FiveThirtyEight presidential forecast has Barack Obama as a very slight favorite to win re-election. But his advantage equates to only a two-point lead in the national popular vote, and the edge could easily swing to Mitt Romney on the basis of further bad economic news.

Mr. Obama remains slightly ahead of Mr. Romney in most national polls, and he has had a somewhat clearer advantage in polling conducted at the state level. Mr. Obama would be about 80 percent likely to win an election held today, according to the model.

However, the outlook for the Nov. 6 election is much less certain, with Mr. Obama having winning odds of just over 60 percent. The forecast currently calls for Mr. Obama to win roughly 290 electoral votes, but outcomes ranging everywhere from about 160 to 390 electoral votes are plausible, given the long lead time until the election and the amount of news that could occur between now and then. Both polls and economic indicators are a pretty rough guide five months before an election.

So, I'd sum that up by saying that Silver's model is just a hair less bullish on Obama's prospects than I am.

2) If you read what I wrote yesterday about Wisconsin, you won't find much different in what Silver's model had to say today about Wisconsin.

although Republicans might be tempted to make a play for Wisconsin after winning the gubernatorial recall election there on Tuesday, the model suggests that it is over-hyped as a swing state. Mr. Obama has had a fairly consistent lead in the polls there, including in the exit poll among voters who turned out on Tuesday. Although Mr. Obama is unlikely to win Wisconsin by 14 points, as he did in 2008, all indications from the polls are that the state remains somewhat more favorable to him than the country as a whole

3) One of the more interesting things about Silver's model is that it estimates the likelihood that a state will be the "tipping point," the state that tips the election. If you've been reading here, you're familiar with this general idea and I was just pointing out the other day that Florida is highly unlikely to be the state that ultimately determines the winner of the election. How unlikely? Silver's model provides a number and it is 3.7%. I've been saying Ohio is the whole ballgame and Silver's model agrees ... at least it is the state that is most likely to be the tipping point at 31.0%. Virginia is next most likley at 24.3%. In other words, there is a greater than 50% chance Ohio or Virginia will determine the outcome in November.

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.

Forays in Bad Polling

A Marquette Law School Poll out today reports that Obama and Romney are tied at 46 among "likely voters."

Now, let me preface this by saying I could be wrong in how I'm interpreting this because the way the methodology of the poll is described is not entirely clear. And perhaps that is the first negative thing we can say about this poll. They are not clear about what they are doing. I'll include more specific caveats along these lines in a bit but, IF I'm reading this poll's methodology properly, it is really, really bad polling technique.

A recent Rasmussen poll of likely voters had Obama up by 4 in Wisconsin and Rasmussen is known to have at least a slight Republican lean. A more recent PPP poll, had Obama up by just 1 among registered voters. So it is possible the race is tied as this Marquette Law School poll indicates. But the methodological problem here has to do with the likely voter screen. As you know, there is a high-profile recall election coming up in just a few weeks and the poll also looked at that race. Just as an aside, the poll found that Scott Walker is up by 6 among likely voters so Obama is running ahead of at least Tom Barrett in the state and Barrett is a good proxy (sort of) for a generic Democrat.

So what's the problem here? The problem is that it seems that the likely voter screen is the same for the recall election as for the presidential race. In discussing the methodology at the bottom of the news release, they say:

The poll interviewed 704 registered Wisconsin voters by both landline and cell phone May 9-12, 2012. The margin of error is +/- 3.8 percentage points for the full sample. There are 600 “likely voters,” those who said they were certain to vote, with a margin of error of +/- 4.1 percentage points. Results for vote in the Governor, Lt. Governor and presidential races are reported for likely voters. All other results are for the full sample of 704 registered voters.

While we don't know for sure what the likely voter pool will be in November, I'm quite sure it will not be the same in terms of numbers or makeup as the recall election in a few weeks. Indeed, even if the recall election was going to be held in November on the presidential election day, we would have slightly different voter pools with more voters casting a voter for president. For a mid-year election day with few races on the ballot like the recall, the likely voter pool will be smaller and, more importantly, more Republican than Election Day in November. So I fear what we have here is a "likely voter" screen for the recall election that assumes the mix of voters in November will be the same as the mix of voters in the recall election. I think it is safe to assume that because we've got the same 600 voters in each pool. In addition, the statement indicates these voters said they are "certain" to vote. I have no doubt they will. But there will probably be some other voters voting who are currently "uncertain" they will vote and those voters are not randomly distributed. Good pollsters adjust for this with various methods including weighting sub-samples and other techniques. Here, we seem to have a very tight likely voter screen and that usually (not always) favors the Republican candidate.

In short, I think this may be a decent poll with respect to the Walker recall race but it is very problematic with respect to the presidential race in Wisconsin.

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.

What's the Matter with Romney in Ohio?

Mitt Romney's got an Ohio problem. When Romney edged Santorum in Ohio, many in the Republican establishment breathed a sigh of relief similar to when Romney edged Santorum in Michigan. It was an important step on the way to Romney locking down the nomination.

But Romney's weakness in Ohio and, frankly, in many of these industrial midwest states like Michigan and Wisconsin seems to be enduring. I have noticed over several weeks and months that Romney seems to be doing a little worse in Ohio than he's doing in his national numbers.

Today, Rasmussen released an Ohio poll showing Obama ahead of Romney 46-42. A week ago, Fox News had a poll showing Obama ahead of Romney 45-39. Let's look at some data. Here is Pollster.com's summary of the race in Ohio:



There have been 10 polls of Ohio with this particular trial heat in 2012 and only one (a Fox Poll in February) showed Romney winning Ohio. The other 9 polls have shown Obama leading by between 2 and 12 points.

Nationally, Pollster's aggregation shows Obama with a smaller lead:



So what's going on in Ohio? I think we can posit a few possibilities: Ohio's anti-union ballot proposition has galvanized union voters to some extent. Additionally, Ohio is home to a lot of parts suppliers for the auto industry and Romney's opposition to the auto bailout hurt him there as much as it did in Michigan. Finally, Ohio's Republicans are more downscale than Republicans in say, New York or California and these are voters more likely to support Santorum than Romney. These same voters won't support Obama and the vast majority of them will vote for Romney in the Fall. But it is not easy for Romney to bring them around and some small number of them staying home can mean big trouble for Romney.

Regardless of the cause of Romney's Ohio struggles, one thing is clear. Ohio is critical for Romney. Romney CANNOT win without Ohio. Obama can win without Ohio though he'd probably have to win Florida and some other states that are tossups and he's not likely to win Florida if he loses Ohio. So Ohio is important and if Romney is going to consistently be weaker in Ohio than his national average, it makes his margin for error in the campaign to come quite a bit slimmer.