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Reflected Ceiling Plans?The Trend Continues on RCP
Reflected Ceiling Plans?The Trend Continues on RCP
On the Day Romney announced Ryan as his VP Obama was plus 4.7 on RCP average, today Obama Plus 1.5, Huh, and I thought Ryan was a terrible pick that would hand Obama the Election, Or at least that is what several Libs on this Board told us the day he was announced.
lol
August 22, 2012, 8:03 am137 Comments
Aug. 21: Romney Showing Improved Results in Swing State Polls
By NATE SILVER
We can get pretty detail-oriented in our analysis of the polls here at FiveThirtyEight. But sometimes there is also value in applying a simpler approach.
One simple thing I’ve noticed is this: Mitt Romney has held the lead recently in quite a few swing state polls. That wasn’t the case in June or July, when Barack Obama held leads in those polls far more often than Mr. Romney did.
Right now, our forecast model classifies the 10 most important states in the Electoral College as follows, and in the following order: Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and North Carolina.
If you simply count the scientific polls that have been conducted in those states since Aug. 1, Mr. Obama has led in 13 of them, Mr. Romney has led in 11, and there have been two exact ties.
This marks a contrast from June and July, when Mr. Obama held leads in polls of the top 10 states about four times as often as Mr. Romney did.
If you read the fine print on the polls, then things don’t look quite as good for Mr. Romney. In the polls where Mr. Obama has held a lead, it has generally been by a somewhat larger margin than when Mr. Romney does. And the polling firms that have been most active in the states recently have been a bit Republican-leaning on balance — and a few of the polls have been outright weird.
It’s also plausible that this is partially a statistical fluke, since we really haven’t gotten all that much data. So far in August, we’ve logged 35 state polls in our database, counting both swing states and noncompetitive ones. That puts us well behind the pace from four years ago, when there were more than one hundred state polls conducted in the month of August.
But our forecasting model, which makes an effort to account for these sorts of factors, nevertheless finds that Mr. Romney has made up some distance in the swing states.
A few weeks ago, we were starting to see a gap between the popular vote and the Electoral College. Generally speaking, our model was giving Mr. Obama about a two-in-three chance (67 percent) of winning the popular vote, but slightly better than a 70 percent chance of winning the Electoral College.
Now? Our popular vote forecast really hasn’t changed very much. As of Tuesday night, our model gave Mr. Obama a 66.9 percent chance of winning the popular vote.
But the gap between the Electoral College and the popular vote has pretty much dissipated. Mr. Obama was given a 67 percent chance of winning the Electoral College in Tuesday’s model — almost exactly the same odds as in the popular vote forecast.
Perhaps a more important qualification is that many of these polls were conducted shortly after Mr. Romney named Representative Paul D. Ryan as his running mate. Candidates typically get a temporary bounce in the polls after naming their vice-presidential nominee, but it usually dissipates soon and their polling may be slightly inflated in the interim. This is not something that our model adjusts for.
Even so, I don’t think we should totally write off the idea that Mr. Romney has made up some ground in the swing states. Apart from his selection of Mr. Ryan, there are other things going on in the campaign. For example, Mr. Romney’s advertising advantage in swing states could be starting to pay dividends.
, and typically those are a bit Republican-leaning — partly because they exclude voters relying on their cellphones, who fall into more Democratic demographics. Still, this is the fourth poll out of four to show Mr. Romney with a lead in Florida since Representative Paul D. Ryan was selected as his running mate. All of those were automated surveys; The New York Times, CBS News and Quinnipiac University will be releasing a live-telephone poll of Florida tomorrow.
The First time I have Ever Seen RCP not have Obama leading.
RealClearPolitics - Election 2012 - General Election: Romney vs. Obama
On the Day Romney announced Ryan as his VP Obama was plus 4.7 on RCP average, today Obama Plus 1.5, Huh, and I thought Ryan was a terrible pick that would hand Obama the Election, Or at least that is what several Libs on this Board told us the day he was announced.
lol
On the Day Romney announced Ryan as his VP Obama was plus 4.7 on RCP average, today Obama Plus 1.5, Huh, and I thought Ryan was a terrible pick that would hand Obama the Election, Or at least that is what several Libs on this Board told us the day he was announced.
lol
You guys had your convention and couldn't get a big enough bounce to even jump ahead in the polls. Seriously, Mitt is in big trouble. If something drastic doesn't happen, Obama is going to win pretty easily. There's still a chance for Romney in the debates, but barring that, it's going to be a long couple of months for him. Let's see what happens after the Dem Convention.
