Sunday, September 30, 2012

The Electoral College Map (9/30/12)

After a very quiet Saturday with no newly released polls, there were a handful of new ones out today; five more from five states. In keeping with the theme from the Friday post, 80% of the polls provided calibrating/confirming information. But one did not...

New State Polls (9/30/12)
State
Poll
Date
Margin of Error
Sample
Obama
Romney
Undecided
Poll Margin
FHQ Margin
Iowa
9/23-9/26
+/- 3.8%
650 likely voters
49
45
2
+4
+2.97
Maine
9/12-9/16
+/- 4.0%
618 likely voters
52
36
--
+16
+14.83
Massachusetts
9/21-9/27
+/- 4.4%
502 likely voters
57
30
11
+27
+20.01
Ohio
9/19-9/29
+/- 2.2%
1662 likely voters
51
42
5
+9
+3.83
Washington
9/26
+/- 4.5%
500 likely voters
52
41
4
+11
+13.41

Polling Quick Hits:
Iowa:
There is not a whole lot to get jazzed about in the survey conducted by the typically reliable Selzer firm. That isn't to suggest that this poll is not reliable. Rather, it is in line with other polls that have been in field post-convention. In that span, the trend has been toward the president with poll margin stretching out to as many as eight points. This Selzer poll, conducted for the Des Moines Register, however, is closer to where the FHQ weighted average has the Hawkeye state pegged at the moment.

Maine:
Another day, another Maine poll. The Obama share of support is consistent with the Rasmussen poll released on Friday while Romney's portion of the responses dipped a touch across the two polls. That impact is negligible as the FHQ weighted average stays put in the +14 Obama range. We're talking about a blue state here, folks. That said the congressional district split showed Romney within five points of the president in the second district. That one electoral vote may be borderline competitive in Maine's districted electoral vote allocation (see Nebraska's 2nd district in 2008).

Massachusetts:
FHQ has said this many times, but I'll say it again. The data is nice to the extent we get new presidential line data in any poll testing the Brown-Warren senate race in the Bay state, but it isn't entirely necessary all the same. Massachusetts is blue. Enough said.

Ohio:
The one exception to the calibrating/confirming rule is the Columbus Dispatch poll of the Buckeye state. There appears to be a little bit of a boomlet for Obama in Ohio in the last week or more. The last three polls released there have shown the president up by at least eight points. This Dispatch poll is also the fourth (of the six most recently released polls) to have the president up at least seven points. Now, is this a pattern that fundamentally reshapes the race? From a strategic perspective, a case could be made that moving Ohio off the board makes the electoral math hard for the Romney campaign. But the reality is that this is confirming poll in that it is confirming the movement in the president's direction; that any one of the earlier polls taken alone was not an outlier. This is a different kind of confirming poll, but it is a confirming poll, nonetheless.

Washington:
See Maine and Massachusetts on this one. Washington has had its moments threatening to jump into the Lean Obama category in 2012, but that has never fully manifest itself. The Evergreen state is pretty blue. The new Rasmussen poll of the state does little to deviate from that conclusion.


Looking at the map and Spectrum, what held true on Friday hold true again today. It is a status quo day. The electoral vote tally has not budged. Truth be told, it hasn't moved since FHQ began tracking the state polls back in July. There has, however, been movement on the Electoral College Spectrum. Mind you, this was small movement involving states that are not really in play anyway, but it is movement all the same. Massachusetts traded spots with Illinois. See, a small move, but one worth tracking.

The Electoral College Spectrum1
VT-3
(6)2
WA-12
(158)
NH-4
(257)
MO-10
(166)
ND-3
(55)
RI-4
(10)
NJ-14
(172)
OH-183
(275/281)
MT-3
(156)
KY-8
(52)
NY-29
(39)
CT-7
(179)
VA-13
(288/263)
IN-11
(153)
AL-9
(44)
HI-4
(43)
NM-5
(184)
IA-6
(294/250)
GA-16
(142)
KS-6
(35)
MD-10
(53)
MN-10
(194)
CO-9
(303/244)
SC-9
(126)
AR-6
(29)
MA-11
(64)
OR-7
(201)
FL-29
(332/235)
TX-38
(117)
AK-3
(23)
IL-20
(84)
PA-20
(221)
NC-15
(206)
LA-8
(79)
OK-7
(20)
CA-55
(139)
MI-16
(237)
SD-3
(191)
NE-5
(71)
ID-4
(13)
ME-4
(143)
WI-10
(247)
AZ-11
(188)
WV-5
(66)
WY-3
(9)
DE-3
(146)
NV-6
(253)
TN-11
(177)
MS-6
(61)
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.

As for the Watch List, well, on a day when the polls released did not do much in the way of moving the needle, the list remained untouched. It is still all about North Carolina (Florida) and the quartet of Lean/Toss Up states that the Obama campaign would rather like to keep where they are.

The Watch List1
State
Switch
Georgia
from Strong Romney
to Lean Romney
Indiana
from Lean Romney
to Strong Romney
Michigan
from Lean Obama
to Toss Up Obama
Minnesota
from Lean Obama
to Strong Obama
Montana
from Lean Romney
to Strong Romney
Nevada
from Toss Up Obama
to Lean Obama
New Hampshire
from Toss Up Obama
to Lean Obama
New Mexico
from Strong Obama
to Lean Obama
North Carolina
from Toss Up Romney
to Toss Up 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. Nevada, 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.


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