It’s more likely that either the national or state polling averages are wrong.
Survey USA shows a tied race in Florida, after a couple of high-quality polls showing the basically the same thing. Furthermore, polls show Obama clearly ahead with both early voters and registered voters which seems to indicate that his ground campaign is working well and has the incredients to pull out a win. Of course that would pretty much win the election with one stroke.
Pharos shows Obama up by 2.7 points in Ohio. Not sure about the quality of this pollster but we should be getting several high-quality OH in the next few days. If they still show Obama up by 2-3 points I would say the race is probably over.OK I just saw some tweets from Nate which indicate he is highly skeptical of Pharos. I noticed he doesn’t seem to list Zogby polls either.
Interesting. Here are the tweets:
And now I feel a bit better. RCP has updated its site with a new SurveyUSA poll that has Obama up +3 in Ohio.
I have a feeling that we are going to be getting a LOT of polls out of Ohio over the next few days. As long as Obama can cling to his lead there between now and, say, Friday, this election should be in the bag. Notwithstanding the hurricane, though, obviously.
Still cold, rainy and windy here in Ohio. Obama may be getting some bonus points for looking presidential in dealing with Hurricane Sandy.
Romney’s whole “I am suspending campaign events on Tuesday” only to hold what was very obviously a campaign event on Tuesday (complete with collections of canned goods that the Red Cross doesn’t even want – seriously, please don’t donate food to the Red Cross, they don’t have the capacity to process it. They need monetary donations) made him look super-douchey IMO. I mean, I understand that he’s in kind of a difficult position, because he has to try to look presidential while not actually being the president, but I don’t think this was the way to do it.
While I understand where your coming from I would say it makes him more out of touch than douchey. I mean really, is there no one on his campaign staff who has any sense? Wouldn’t it have been better to contact the Red Cross and ask what they could do to help or something along those lines? Instead they just assume they know what is best and go forward without getting input from those who might know better.
Ok, MsWhasit, now that I read back over what I just wrote maybe douchey is the right word.
A significant move on 538 to 77.4% on the back of good Ohio polls. Ohio itself moves to 78% which illustrates the massive co-relation between the two.
Mellman has Obama up by 2 in Florida making it now a tossup on 538
In the 50’s we collected blankets and canned goods when disaster struck. If it was good enough for Ike, it’s good enough for New Jersey.
The Washington Post has Obama up by four in Virginia.
And here’s CNN.com on the likely impact of Sandy on the election: http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/31/politics/sandy-voting-election-day/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
Some very good polls for Obama today.
+5 in OH, IA and WI, +1 in FL, +2 in VA
I am not calling it for Obama quite yet but the race is close to being over. 538 will probably go above 80%.
The race is close to being over but I won’t be comfortable calling it until election night when I’ve seen actual vote tallies come in. As good as it might look for the President right now there are too many things that could happen yet. This race has just been too close.
Did you notice also that the electoral vote forecast for Nov 6 is HIGHER than the Nowcast. That’s a good trend.
Also, Silver now shows VA and CO in the 60+% for Obama.
Looks like the Romney campaign may go the way of the Bounty. He really can’t sharply attack Obama any more because of the hurricane. As it is, the campaign is off the radar screen for most of us, we’re all too busy marveling at the storm damage (those of us fortunate enough not to be personally impacted by it). Now his Jeep debacle is costing him whatever chance he had in Ohio, and his desire to destroy FEMA probably isn’t going to win him much love in Florida. It’s getting much harder to imagine a string of states that he can piece together 270 electoral votes from.
Oh, I’m sure we’ll hear some pretty imaginative scenarios from some of our more delusional Romney fans in the next 6 days.
If Obama were to win electoral votes while losing the popular vote, you can be absolutely certain that there will be an immediate “grass roots” [wholly funded and widely covered by Fox News] movement to eliminate the Electoral College, that will dominate political conversations for the next 4 years.
I doubt it. The EC benefits Republicans, so it will never go away, and certainly not at the behest of Fox News.
Remember, getting rid of the EC doesn’t mean that you’d get whatever the popular vote shows in an EC-based election. That’s because you get about 20% of people not voting in uncompetitive states that would vote if the popular vote mattered. And though its far from certain, most analysts think the change would benefit Democrats.
My understanding is just the opposite: that Democrats have a baked-in EV advantage. The largest states (CA, NY, IL) are solid-blue Democrat, only countered by solid-red TX.