Monday, June 11, 2012

Electoral Map Today

In a previous post, I made my bold prediction for a Republican victory in November's presidential election. I did some research today, and used the interactive map at 270towin.com to show what I thought the state of play of today's election might be. The rules for this analysis are to only use the recent (within the last month) polls of likely voters. If that is a tie, then factor prior polls of likely voters, if still tied, then look at registered voter (RV) polls. If there are no likely voter polls, I also used the RV polls. Also, since Maine and Nebraska split their electoral votes, they present a special challenge; for the purposes of this I am assuming Nebraska will go all red and Maine all blue. Here is my result for the 2012 Presidential Election: Electoral Map (you can click the link to change your own results):


Since this shows an Obama victory, it is certainly a bit disheartening. Two things to remember. First, its a long way to November. Second, what if we assume that Romney will capture undecideds by a 2:1 margin, certainly possible, then the map would look like this:


This is a better result from my perspective. The key point is that the election is still very close, but Romney has a lot of work to do. He could easily lose in a close election. If people think that Obama's gaffs of the last week doom his campaign, look at how challenging the electoral map is for the Republicans. Nate Silver still believes Obama the slight favorite, calling it a tenuous advantage, as does Intrade, which has Obama at 53.6% odds to win. (Silver's forecast is a 288-250 electoral win for Obama, slightly more bullish on Obama than my look today. Silver is certainly more qualified.) The Intrade odds didn't really move much on this past week's news, despite all the feel good for Republicans. However, the odds did drop over the weekend before the Wisconsin primary, so maybe that reflected the implications of the Walker recall, because the polls solidified over the weekend.

I post this not discourage our side, but to be realistic, we have to acknowledge reality and plan accordingly to blunt Obama's advantages. Please check out 270towin.com map and let me know your own predictions.

4 comments:

  1. Once a red state/ blue state map was placed by county rather than by the whole state.

    Mrs. Dawg was in the room whereby she commented on the "overcrowding rats" experiment to explain the map.

    Of course she was referring to the famous Calhoun experiment whereby notable conditions in the "behavioral sink" include hyperaggression, failure to breed and nurture young normally, infant cannibalism, increased mortality at all ages, and abnormal sexual patterns.

    We all learned about this in high school psychology. Every time I see the red/ blue map, I'm reminded of the psychosis resultant of overcrowding. It appears to manifest itself in humans by turning them Democrat among the other above mentioned problems.

    Just an observation,

    Take a look at the same map "by county" and the concentration of Blue in heavily populated areas.

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  2. I was listening very briefly to Rush today and some caller said that every president who's been re-elected got a wider margin in the second election than the first. Seems impossible that Obama could widen his margin, so . . .

    That said, UGH. That map makes me wanna vomit.

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  3. 'Dawg, very funny, so Dems are like rats crowded into too tight a cage? It also fits the theory that leftism is a disease caused by over-socialization as discussed in Kaczynski's manifesto.

    arhooly, sorry to make you sick; but better to face facts and deal with them, no matter how unpleasant. With regards to trends, they always come to an end. Super Bowl winner predicting the stock market eventually ended. U.S. President elected in a year ending in 0 dying in office eventually ended. I don't pay attention to things like that because you can't predict when they will no longer be a trend.

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  4. I guess it would be more like too tight a cage breeds democrats and other aforementioned malfunctions.

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