The Electoral College Map (9/21/12)

Eleven new polls from ten states closed out the work week on Friday. The snapshot offered more of the same even with a series of toss up state polls from Purple Strategies; a firm that has been more favorable to Romney than not throughout the year.

New State Polls (9/21/12)
State	Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Obama	Romney	Undecided	Poll Margin	FHQ Margin
Arizona	Purple Strategies	9/15-9/19	+/- 4.0%	600 likely voters	45	48	7	+3	+6.55
California	PPIC	9/9-9/16	+/- 4.4%	995 likely voters	53	39	6	+14	+19.45
Colorado	Purple Strategies	9/15-9/19	+/- 4.0%	600 likely voters	48	45	7	+3	+2.56
Florida	Purple Strategies	9/15-9/19	+/- 4.0%	600 likely voters	47	48	5	+1	+0.62
Georgia	Insider Advantage	9/18	+/- 4.5%	483 likely voters	35	56	7	+21	+11.30
Michigan	Michigan State University/State of the State	6/12-8/13	+/- 3.08%	1015 adults	39	30	30	+9	+5.40
North Carolina	High Point University	9/8-9/18	+/- 4.7%	448 registered voters	48	44	5	+4	+1.27
North Carolina	Purple Strategies	9/15-9/19	+/- 4.0%	600 likely voters	48	46	6	+2	--
Ohio	Purple Strategies	9/15-9/19	+/- 4.0%	600 likely voters	48	44	8	+4	+3.31
Pennsylvania	Rasmussen	9/19	+/- 4.5%	500 likely voters	51	39	7	+12	+7.39
Virginia	Purple Strategies	9/15-9/19	+/- 4.0%	600 likely voters	46	43	11	+3	+3.10

Polling Quick Hits:
Arizona:
Nowhere was the phenomenon alluded to above more clearly on display than in the Purple Strategies survey of Arizona. Romney has been comfortably ahead in most polls all year in the Grand Canyon state. On average, most have found the race to be well within the Lean Romney category, but a few polls have found the race in Arizona to either be in the toss up area or the strong area. The former occurred more toward the beginning of the year when the Republican nomination race was still ongoing. The latter have popped up -- to the extent they have -- in the late spring and into the summer.  In fact, that had appeared to be the trajectory of polling there -- toward the line separating the lean and strong categories on the Romney side. As such, this latest poll of the state is atypical. The gap may have closed some in Arizona, but we don't have enough evidence to suggest as much at this point. Though it would stand to reason that if the polls have moved in Obama's direction nationally, then that would apply to a peripheral toss up state like Arizona. And Arizona has not really been a toss up state. If it has, it is a toss up state on the order of Pennsylvania on the Obama side: talked about occasionally as a toss up, but with no real evidence to back it up in terms of polling or campaign resource allocation.

California:
PPIC shows a smaller margin than we have seen in other Golden state surveys of late, but a +14 hardly puts California on the board for Romney. It is still blue. Nothing to see here.

Colorado:
Colorado seems to be entrenched in this +2-3 point Obama lead range with very little variability. Sure, the occasional Romney lead will appear -- in the Rasmussen surveys most recently released -- but the evidence continues to point to a small but consistent advantage for the president with few outliers. The changes between this Purple Strategies poll and the last speak to that. There were no changes other than the two candidates dropping a point each since the August survey. Obama still leads by three and that is in line with what the true margin in the Centennial state seem to be.

Florida:
See Colorado. The consistency poll-over-poll that existed in the Purple Strategies polls of Colorado are present in Florida as well. Yes, Obama has the tiniest of leads in the FHQ weighted average of Florida, so the fact that Romney is ahead in this poll is seemingly out of step with average -- unlike Colorado -- but in a state that is basically tied, a one point Romney lead is not any kind of outlier. The Purple Strategies surveys are slightly more Romney-favorable and that tips Romney into the lead in the Sunshine state. But this poll is not only consistent with the last PS poll, but the recent polling in the state as whole.

Georgia:

Changes (September 21)
State	Before	After
Georgia	Lean Romney	Strong Romney

The comedy of the video in the write up to this poll linked above aside -- Obama is at 5% instead of 35% in the graphic -- a 21 point gap in the Peach state is pretty wide. That is not to suggest that it is not possible, rather that we have yet to witness such a margin in Georgia given the scant amount of publicly available data. The Insider Advantage survey represents both the high point for Romney and low point for Obama in Georgia polling conducted this year. Romney had settled into the lower to mid-50s with Obama camped out in the low 40s. This is more polling volatility than anything else.

Michigan:
FHQ will bypass much of this MSU poll. It is outdated and has an inordinate amount of undecided respondents. That has more to do with the fact that the data was gathered over a two month period prior to the conventions than anything else. [Even then, the number of undecideds was very high.] The key thing to look at here -- if there is a key in a poll that was in the field most recently over a month ago -- is the margin. In its proper context, that +9 Obama number is a great deal higher than most of the other polling conducted over the same period. It does, however, fit nicely, albeit out of context, in the post-convention polling of the Great Lakes state.

North Carolina:
One thing that FHQ has been wrong about in the time since the conventions has been the notion that the Obama campaign would pull out of North Carolina sooner rather than later following the Charlotte convention. That Obama is still within striking distance -- much less in the lead in some polls -- in the Tar Heel state says more about the current state of the race than anything else. That Obama is able to play offense in a state that "should" have swung back toward Romney more is not good news for the Republican nominee. That the president is ahead in two non-PPP surveys is even more troubling. PPP had been the only firm showing or continuing to show North Carolina within a point or so for the president. Everything else had shown some movement toward Romney.

Ohio:
There is little to get all that excited about in yet another +3-5 point edge for the president in Ohio. That that type of margin has become customary is, perhaps, the real story. However, in continuing the talking point around the Purple Strategies surveys above. Colorado and Florida may not have budged since last month, but Ohio shifted from Romney +2 to Obama + 4. The intra-firm poll-to-poll consistency is lacking, then, but it does move PS in with other polling in the Buckeye state. Well, the firm is now in line with the FHQ average if still a little behind where the trajectory of looks to be heading post-convention in Ohio.

Pennsylvania:
Look, I'm not one to dwell on the house effects that any given polling firm may have, but if Rasmussen is indicating a twelve point spread in Pennsylvania, then it is pretty clear why neither campaign is actively campaigning in the Keystone state. It just is not all that competitive and the fact that the four point Obama advantage in the July Rasmussen poll has ballooned to three times that is as indicative of that fact as anything else.

Virginia:
See Ohio. An August Romney lead in Virginia is now a September advantage for Obama in the poll-over-poll comparison of Purple Strategies polls. As was the case in Ohio, this survey is in line with the overall FHQ weighted average for Virginia but lags behind where some recent polling has shown the Old Dominion to be.

What all of this means strategically is that Romney is still up against it and even more so with the polls not moving in the Republican nominee's direction where it counts: in the toss up states. The map is only slightly changed with Georgia becoming safer for Romney, but that is a small and inconsequential change when looking at an electoral vote tally that has held steady since July. The stationarity of it all is highlighted by the fact that even with the new data in a series of toss up states, the same basic alignment continues to emerge on the Electoral College Spectrum. Sure, Georgia and Montana switched places as did California and Maryland, but among the toss ups the alignment is the same in the president leads everywhere but North Carolina (...and some of the polling is indicating that even the outlook there may be changing).

The Electoral College Spectrum1
VT-3 (6)2	WA-12 (158)	NH-4 (257)	MO-10 (166)	MS-6 (55)
RI-4 (10)	NJ-14 (172)	OH-183 (275/281)	MT-3 (156)	ND-3 (49)
NY-29 (39)	CT-7 (179)	VA-13 (288/263)	GA-16 (153)	KY-8 (46)
HI-4 (43)	NM-5 (184)	CO-9 (297/250)	IN-11 (137)	AL-9 (38)
MA-11 (54)	MN-10 (194)	IA-6 (303/241)	SC-9 (126)	KS-6 (29)
MD-10 (64)	OR-7 (201)	FL-29 (332/235)	LA-8 (117)	AK-3 (23)
CA-55 (119)	PA-20 (221)	NC-15 (206)	NE-5 (109)	OK-7 (20)
IL-20 (139)	MI-16 (237)	TN-11 (191)	TX-38 (104)	ID-4 (13)
ME-4 (143)	WI-10 (247)	SD-3 (180)	AR-6 (66)	WY-3 (9)
DE-3 (146)	NV-6 (253)	AZ-11 (177)	WV-5 (60)	UT-6 (6)
1 Follow the link for a detailed explanation on how to read the Electoral College Spectrum. 2 The numbers in the parentheses refer to the number of electoral votes a candidate would have if he won all the states ranked prior to that state. If, for example, Romney won all the states up to and including Ohio (all Obama's toss up states plus Ohio), he would have 281 electoral votes. Romney's numbers are only totaled through the states he would need in order to get to 270. In those cases, Obama's number is on the left and Romney's is on the right in italics. 3 Ohio is the state where Obama crosses the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the presidential election. That line is referred to as the victory line.

Outside of Florida and Michigan, none of the other states currently on the Watch List were represented in the polling data released today. And it should be noted that Florida and Michigan remain just where they were on the list before the new information was added to the FHQ dataset. Georgia, on the strength of the wide margin in the latest Insider Advantage poll, went from well within the Lean Romney category to well within the Strong Romney category without approaching the Watch List as it passed. That has as much to do with the number of polls conducted in Georgia as it does the impact of that one survey on the FHQ weighted average. The bottom line overall is that the Watch List is today exactly what it was a day ago.

The Watch List1
State	Switch
Florida	from Toss Up Obama	to Toss Up Romney
Michigan	from Lean Obama	to Toss Up Obama
Minnesota	from Lean Obama	to Strong Obama
Nevada	from Toss Up Obama	to Lean Obama
New Mexico	from Strong Obama	to Lean Obama
Wisconsin	from Lean Obama	to Toss Up Obama
1 The Watch list shows those states in the FHQ Weighted Average within a fraction of a point of changing categories. The List is not a trend analysis. It indicates which states are straddling the line between categories and which states are most likely to shift given the introduction of new polling data. New Hampshire, for example, is close to being a Lean Obama state, but the trajectory of the polling there has been moving the state away from that lean distinction.

Please see:

Frequently Asked Questions about FHQ graduated weighted average methodology.
&
An Update on how to read it in 2012.

Recent Posts:
The Electoral College Map (9/20/12)

The Electoral College Map (9/19/12)

The Electoral College Map (9/18/12)

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