Final Update: The Electoral College from a Different Angle

Let's take one final look at the Electoral College via the 50% Rule from Scott. For those who missed the first few versions, you can find the first here and the updates here and here. Here's the premise (...from the original post):

There are two basic questions being asked:
1) Is one of the candidates above the 50% mark in a state currently?

2) Has one of the candidates been the only one to surpass 50% in any reputable state poll?
If the answer is yes to both, then that implies there has been some consistency to the candidate being or having been over 50% in those averages. Those are the states that are designated solid states for either McCain or Obama.

If the answer to the second question is yes but the answer to the first question is no, that state is a lean state. In other words, there is some potential there for one of the candidates to cross that threshold. It has happened before. However, that support has either waned and is dormant or is latent in the current period.

If the answers to both questions are no, then that state is a toss up according to this metric. In this scenario, neither candidate has demonstrated the level of support in the polls to translate to an outright win in the state. As Scott put it:

"The idea is that if a state consistently polls 50-47, regardless of the methodology of the poll or the state of the national race, it's very hard for the trailing candidate to win. But if a state has a lot of polls like 46-40, but the leading candidate never breaks 50, the trailing candidate has a chance."

He added:
"There are two different ways a state can end up a toss-up. One is to have neither candidate reach 50 in any poll since McCain became the presumptive nominee. The other is to have both candidates do it, but to have neither break 50 in the pollster.com average."

Finally, Scott includes a couple of caveats to this last update:
"There have been two important changes in methodology for this last map, both designed to make it more sensitive to more recent information:

• The "more sensitive" setting was used at Pollster.com.
• To determine "lean" states, I only looked at polls taken between the first debate and now."

And how does this change things on the map?

Changes (Oct. 27- Nov. 3)
State	Before	After
Nevada	Obama lean	Strong Obama
Ohio	Strong Obama	Obama lean
Rhode Island	Obama lean	Toss Up
North Dakota	McCain lean	Toss Up
South Dakota	McCain lean	Strong McCain

Here's the analysis from Scott:
"Probably the most important changes from the last map are that Ohio has slipped to an Obama lean, but Nevada has firmed up to a solid state for Obama. That still leaves Obama with 287 solid electoral votes, well above the threshold for the Presidency.

[Click Map to Enlarge]

"North Dakota and Rhode Island have slipped to toss up status. For North Dakota that may be legitimate; a recent Research 2000 poll shows McCain up 47 to 46. Rhode Island, on the other hand, is almost certainly an artifact of some strange recent polls by local outifts; the last three show 19, 24, and 26% of the voters still undecided. They also show double-digit leads for Obama, so don't think that Rhode Island is really in play.

"On McCain's side of the ledger, Georgia and South Dakota have firmed up for him again, but that will be small solace for the Republicans [tonight]."


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Update(s): The Electoral College from a Different Angle

It's time for another update of the Electoral College via the 50% Rule from Scott. I've been swamped this last week plus, but he has updated his examination of the electoral college a couple of times over the past week or so, and I thought I'd put a map (or two) up so we can "see" the shifts. For those who missed the first two versions, you can find the first here and the update here. Here's the premise (...from the original post):

There are two basic questions being asked:
1) Is one of the candidates above the 50% mark in a state currently?

2) Has one of the candidates been the only one to surpass 50% in any reputable state poll?
If the answer is yes to both, then that implies there has been some consistency to the candidate being or having been over 50% in those averages. Those are the states that are designated solid states for either McCain or Obama.

If the answer to the second question is yes but the answer to the first question is no, that state is a lean state. In other words, there is some potential there for one of the candidates to cross that threshold. It has happened before. However, that support has either waned and is dormant or is latent in the current period.

If the answers to both questions are no, then that state is a toss up according to this metric. In this scenario, neither candidate has demonstrated the level of support in the polls to translate to an outright win in the state. As Scott put it:

"The idea is that if a state consistently polls 50-47, regardless of the methodology of the poll or the state of the national race, it's very hard for the trailing candidate to win. But if a state has a lot of polls like 46-40, but the leading candidate never breaks 50, the trailing candidate has a chance."

He added:
"There are two different ways a state can end up a toss-up. One is to have neither candidate reach 50 in any poll since McCain became the presumptive nominee. The other is to have both candidates do it, but to have neither break 50 in the pollster.com average."

And how does this change things on the map?

Changes (Oct. 6-21)
State	Before	After
New Mexico	Toss Up	Strong Obama
Virginia	Toss Up	Strong Obama
Colorado	Obama lean	Strong Obama
Michigan	Obama lean	Strong Obama
Minnesota	Obama lean	Strong Obama
Pennsylvania	Obama lean	Strong Obama
Wisconsin	Obama lean	Strong Obama
Missouri	McCain lean	Toss Up
West Virginia	McCain lean	Toss Up
Montana	Strong McCain	McCain lean
North Dakota	Strong McCain	McCain lean

Says Scott:

"While every change favored Obama, it's worth noting that Florida briefly turned solid Obama between updates, before going back to toss-up status.

"I'll also note that under this methodology, the current toss-up's can't go to lean no matter what, because both candidates have had polls showing them breaking 50. They are "battlegrounds"--they can shift to one candidate's camp, but they no longer have the luxury of "leaning," as the race in these states is not due to people who have not yet decided, but rather to people changing their minds."

[Click Map to Enlarge]

What we are seeing here is the continued surge Obama has enjoyed since the economic downturn at the end of September. The Illinois senator's position has been strengthened and in the process the lean category has contracted rather substantially. We can expect to see that to some degree just based on the fact that over time more and more undecideds are filing in behind one or the other of the two candidates. They aren't deciding and then changing their minds, for instance. What that is coupled with here, though, is the fact that Obama has surpassed 50% in a host of states over the two weeks examined here and the McCain has dropped below that point in a couple of his solid states.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
But let's bring that up to the present -- as defined as a couple of days ago* -- and see whether the Obama gains have continued.

Changes (Oct. 21-27)
State	Before	After
New Hampshire	Toss Up	Strong Obama
Ohio	Toss Up	Strong Obama
Rhode Island	Strong Obama	Obama lean
Indiana	McCain lean	Toss Up
Arizona	Strong McCain	McCain lean
South Dakota	Strong McCain	McCain lean
West Virginia	Toss Up	Strong McCain

The short answer is sort of. Both New Hampshire and Ohio have moved over into the solid Obama category as polling in each has shown the Illinois senator surpassing 50% and staying above that point. Meanwhile, West Virginia reversed course, moving from a toss up to a solid McCain state. All the other shifts are intuitive enough except for Rhode Island. To which Scott responds:

"Yes, Rhode Island is only an Obama lean. That's one place where the 50% methodology isn't very good, because the handful of recent polls are showing a bizarre number of undecideds."

[Click Map to Enlarge]

What's interesting here is that some of the states -- Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, for example -- where the margins have decreased moderately for Obama are still solid because of the Illinois senator's position relative to the 50% threshold in the polls. Obama is still above that point consistently enough there that those states are still among the most safe for him.

*I should note that Scott will have another of these ready for what the two of us have been calling election eve. He does include one addendum to that though:

"Incidentally, expect significant changes on the Monday night map in this series, because I've been planning a methodology shift. For the very last update, I'm going to change to Pollster's "more sensitive" average; i.e. the one that reacts more quickly to changes. That way if there is some event that dominates the last few news cycles, it will be accounted for."

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Update: The Electoral College from a Different Angle

I'm a couple of days late getting this up, but one of our loyal readers and commenters, Scott, updated his examination of the electoral college over the weekend, and I thought I'd put a map to it so we can "see" the shifts. For those who missed the first version, you can find it here. Here's the premise (...from that post):

There are two basic questions being asked:
1) Is one of the candidates above the 50% mark in a state currently?

2) Has one of the candidates been the only one to surpass 50% in any reputable state poll?
If the answer is yes to both, then that implies there has been some consistency to the candidate being or having been over 50% in those averages. Those are the states that are designated solid states for either McCain or Obama.

If the answer to the second question is yes but the answer to the first question is no, that state is a lean state. In other words, there is some potential there for one of the candidates to cross that threshold. It has happened before. However, that support has either waned and is dormant or is latent in the current period.

If the answers to both questions are no, then that state is a toss up according to this metric. In this scenario, neither candidate has demonstrated the level of support in the polls to translate to an outright win in the state. As Scott put it:

"The idea is that if a state consistently polls 50-47, regardless of the methodology of the poll or the state of the national race, it's very hard for the trailing candidate to win. But if a state has a lot of polls like 46-40, but the leading candidate never breaks 50, the trailing candidate has a chance."

He added:
"There are two different ways a state can end up a toss-up. One is to have neither candidate reach 50 in any poll since McCain became the presumptive nominee. The other is to have both candidates do it, but to have neither break 50 in the pollster.com average."

And how does this change things on the map?

Changes (Sept. 23 - Oct. 6)
State	Before	After
New Jersey	Obama lean	Strong Obama
Oregon	Obama lean	Strong Obama
Washington	Obama lean	Strong Obama
Nevada	Toss Up	Obama lean
Florida	McCain lean	Toss Up
North Carolina	McCain lean	Toss Up
West Virginia	Toss Up	McCain lean
Arkansas	McCain lean	Strong McCain
Montana	McCain lean	Strong McCain

As Scott said in the comments to the original post the other day:

"There are more toss-up EV's than previously, not less, but all of the gain came out of McCain's lean totals. In addition, Nevada moves out of toss-up status toward Obama, and New Mexico stands right on the edge of doing so."

[Click Map to Enlarge]

What we get, though, is a much darker map. The McCain lean states and the strong McCain states sum to 185 electoral votes while the total of the comparable Obama categories is at a nearly foolproof 269 electoral votes. As is the case in many of the other electoral college analyses out there, the blue states and most of the battleground states are moving toward Obama and some traditionally red states are lining up behind McCain.

Good stuff, Scott. Thanks again.


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The Electoral College from a Different Angle

The other day one of FHQ's loyal readers, SarahLawrenceScott, proposed an alternate way of looking at the presidential race and for mapping the trends to the electoral college. State-by-state trial-heat polls are still the data of choice, but what Scott has done is to set the lines of demarcation between different states based on the 50% threshold in Pollster's averages in the time since McCain became the presumptive Republican nominee following the March 4 contests.

There are two basic questions being asked:
1) Is one of the candidates above the 50% mark in a state currently?

2) Has one of the candidates been the only one to surpass 50% in Pollster's average in a state any reputable state poll?

If the answer is yes to both, then that implies there has been some consistency to the candidate being or having been over 50% in those averages. Those are the states that are designated solid states for either McCain or Obama.

If the answer to the second question is yes but the answer to the first question is no, that state is a lean state. In other words, there is some potential there for one of the candidates to cross that threshold. It has happened before. However, that support has either waned and is dormant or is latent in the current period.

If the answers to both questions are no, then that state is a toss up according to this metric. In this scenario, neither candidate has demonstrated the level of support in the polls to translate to an outright win in the state. As Scott puts it:

"The idea is that if a state consistently polls 50-47, regardless of the methodology of the poll or the state of the national race, it's very hard for the trailing candidate to win. But if a state has a lot of polls like 46-40, but the leading candidate never breaks 50, the trailing candidate has a chance."

He adds:

"There are two different ways a state can end up a toss-up. One is to have neither candidate reach 50 in any poll since McCain became the presumptive nominee. The other is to have both candidates do it, but to have neither break 50 in the pollster.com average."

So where do each of the states fall? Well, Scott provided us with a list, but that wasn't good enough for me. I like to see these things; preferably on a map. [As an aside, if Chad Johnson can legally change his name to Chad Ocho Cinco, then perhaps I should consider a new moniker myself. Josh Mapmaker, perhaps. Ooh, or the hyphenated version, Josh Map-Maker. But I digress...] Here's how the map looks:

[Click Map to Enlarge]

All of the toss up states (the states in white) have been or are toss up states by FHQ's estimate. The exception is West Virginia, where a large swath of undecideds continues to cloud the picture in the Mountain state. As Scott admits, though there is a caveat to the West Virginia result:

"It's true McCain broke 50 in late February, which is just before my cut-off, so it could easily be called a McCain lean. But still, I agree with Josh that Obama should have put some more resources there. Maybe it's not too late."

Hey, if you're the Obama campaign, sending in Bill and/or Hillary Clinton should be a top priority, strategically speaking. Clinton was the last Democrat to carry the state. Is it too late in West Virginia? I don't know, but any Obama effort there is akin to the efforts being made by the GOP to catch up in areas where they are lagging in the ground game. Improbable, but not necessarily impossible.

But how about the two distinctions Scott makes within the toss up category?

"Nevada and West Virginia fall in the first category [neither McCain nor Obama has reached 50% in individual polls]; Ohio, Virginia, New Mexico, and New Hampshire in the second [the 50% line was crossed by both candidates in individual polls but not in the Pollster average]. The first two may be toss-ups because they are underpolled. That second group of four are true battlegrounds--at some point, by some methodology, a poll suggested that each candidate had a victory in hand, regardless of how undecideds break. But Obama hasn't done that in Ohio since June, and McCain hasn't done that in New Mexico or New Hampshire since April. That would suggest that they have the potential to go to either candidate if circumstances changed, but if the election were held today, Ohio would be a McCain lean while New Mexico and New Hampshire would be Obama leans.

"That leaves Virginia. Virginia has had each candidate break 50 in the last week, and at least twice since the conventions. It has also had each candidate break 50 in polls from the same pollster: SurveyUSA. Under this way of looking at things, that makes Virginia ground zero, the one true, get-out-the-vote type neutral battleground. In 2000, it was Florida; in 2004, Ohio; this time, it's Virginia, as improbable as that would have sounded a year ago."

Finally, it is...

"[a]lso notable that Colorado is an Obama lean but New Mexico is a toss-up. Obama winning Colorado and losing New Mexico is not a popular parlay, but it's not out of the question.

"Those are the most notable surprises, although there are a few others that caught my eye (Maine and North Dakota are safe, New Jersey, Arkansas, and Washington not entirely so."

Of course, with the polling out over and since the weekend, Obama is right up against the 50% mark in New Mexico. And if Obama wins the blue states on the map above and adds New Mexico, that gets him to 269 electoral votes. The Illinois senator would be assured of at least a tie and would have to pick up any one of the remaining five white states to secure a victory. Conversely, McCain would have to sweep the toss up states on that map just to get to 274 electoral votes. And that is a tall order. Suddenly, McCain partisans are asking for the more palatable scenarios described on FHQ's standard map and Electoral College Spectrum.


Let me add a special note of thanks to Scott for a solid contribution to our efforts here at FHQ. This is a nice addition to our understanding of the direction of this campaign.


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