Eh, it’s not really all that close. Popular vote, yes. Electoral college, not so much. Obama doesn’t have it wrapped up of course, but I really, in a completely non-biased, non-partisan way, think Romney will have a tough time catching up if some things don’t change drastically pretty soon. I’m basing this on what seem to be the most looked at polls around here, FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics.
Nate Silver pointed out that the state by state polls and the national polls show a discrepancy. Only one can be right. The odds of Obama winning the electoral college by a wide margin while nearly tying the popular vote are miniscule.
Obama 50, Romney 48, can’t happen if the electoral college says Obama 332, Romney 206. It would take unexpectedly low margins in high population blue states like California and New York for that to make sense.
Right now he has about a 5% chance of Romney winning the popular vote but losing the EC. Not large, but not miniscule. About a 1.2% chance of the converse.
Those are actually his most likely outcomes right now. His median popular vote is 50.7% to 48.3%. And his most likely EV count for Obama is 332 with what looks like a 13% probability or so.
And it’s for exactly the reason you state - currently Obama is carrying most of the swing states by a few points. And he’s carrying his solid states by less than he did in 2008. Conversely Romney is absolutely destroying the deep south and plains states.
Consider that as of Tuesday afternoon, President Obama’s lead in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls was 1.3 percentage points over Mitt Romney.
But Mr. Obama led by a mean of 3.5 points in the RealClearPolitics averages for the 10 states (Ohio, Virginia, Florida, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, Michigan, New Hampshire and Wisconsin) that are most likely to determine the election outcome, according to our “tipping point index.” If the list is expanded to cover the five other marginally competitive states where RealClearPolitics calculates a polling average — Arizona, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico and North Carolina — Mr. Obama’s lead averages 3.1 points, according to the numbers.
So there’s a two point discrepancy. Either Obama is actually two points more ahead in the national polls, or he’s two points less ahead in the swing state polls.
A slim popular vote margin with a big electoral college margin wouldn’t be impossible, but it would be very unusual. Logically, if Obama is winning swing states by 5 points, but he’s ahead by only 2 points nationally, then that means Obama is underperforming in non-swing states.
Who said anything about Obama winning by a wide margin?
Currently from Nate Silver: 70.8% Chance of an Obama win with 50.7% of the popular vote, with a +59.6 advantage for Obama in electoral college votes. That’s all I’m saying.
Now here’s a poll that shows the exact opposite:
Obama leads by 10 points nationally, but by only 4 in the swing states.
It’s obviously an outlier, but it shows that the pollsters in the aggregate still can’t figure out whether the swing state polls or the national polls are more accurate.
Huh? why? If Obama is 2 points ahead that means he has to be 2 points ahead in every state? Why can’t he be ahead 3.5 on the battleground states and behind by a large margin on the safe red states?
On what basis do you say that? I mean, it’s not like it’s unheard-of for the electoral vote and the popular vote to disagree: It happened just 12 years ago. Maybe it’s unlikely to happen, but it certainly can.
I could be wrong, but it seems possible that adaher threw in the word “wide” because he knows that Obama winning by a narrow margin in the popular vote, and correspondingly winning the electoral college is a very real possibility. This way, he gets to suggest that an Obama win isn’t nearly as likely as it seems at this point, based on the polls.
That could be the case too, but I’m not seeing any evidence of that in the polling either, although admittedly sure thing states don’t get polled much.
Not by a huge amount. The popular vote margin was razor thin in favor of Gore, the electoral vote margin was razor thin in favor of Bush. A 60 electoral vote margin seems weird with a 2 point popular vote margin. And another projection site, electoral-vote.com, actually has Obama leading by more than 100 electoral votes. The state by state polls do indicate that, but something weird is going on if the national vote is that close.
It’s rather silly to be talking about tiny differences in polling percentages this far out from an election as if they mean anything.
Most people have not really begun to pay attention to the election yet. The real campaign starts after Labor Day. A bad debate performance by either candidate could swing the needle. Romney hasn’t even picked a VP candidate yet, for Pete’s sake.
In 2000, at the beginning of September a Newsweek poll had Gore up 49% to 39% over Bush. We know how that ended. At the start of June in 1992, Ross Perot was LEADING Both Bush and Clinton by 13 points, 37/24/24. He wound up with 18.9% of the vote.
Even in October 2008, just one month before the election, Obama and McCain’s polls swung back and forth by almost 8 points going by the daily Gallup tracking poll. At several points in October they were statistically tied, and at other points Obama had as much as an 8 point lead.
Nate Silver probably has the best odds based on what we know today, but the big caveat is that the error bars around these estimates have to be huge. World events, major gaffes, disclosure of scandal, choice of running mate, the economy, campaign strategy and debate performances are all factors that are not known at this point.
Wait until after the Republican and Democratic conventions. Then we’ll start to see polls that might have a chance of being reasonable predictors. But unless the election is a blowout, it’s going to be a guessing game right up until the end.
Hey kids, Papa is gone. We can start playing again. 
Seriously, nice to see you back, Sam Stone.
It’s by no means unprecedented for something like this to happen. How about Kennedy winning by 0.16% of the popular vote with an electoral vote margin of 84?
Yep, something weird is going on. And I can even tell you precisely what that something weird is: It’s the fact that we’ve got a political system built around the concept of an electoral college. Candidates aren’t competing for the popular vote, they’re competing for the electoral vote. Which leads to very different strategies in “safe” states and “battleground” states, which leads to a very different overall political environment in those states.
@ Sam Stone, I don’t know about that. Right now, RCP has Obama ahead by three points. Now, that’s absolutely not a blowout by any means, but it’s still a higher lead than anything I’ve seen in the past few months.
I think that we’re finally getting to the moment when everybody will start tuning into the presidential race. But the thing is - and I could definitely be off-base here - voters in the swing states have been paying full attention for quite some time now and for far longer than everyone else. I mean, seriously, they haven’t been able to not pay attention for a long time due to the massive ad campaigns that have been waging in each of those states, and yet, in spite of the sluggish economy, Obama continues to lead Romney in virtually all of them (the only one he is losing is NC I believe).
This election is giving me the distinct impression that (1) the economy isn’t going to be nearly as important or decisive as everybody thought it would be, and (2) the more people learn about Romney, the less they fucking like him.
We are 93 days out and counting.