Obama Wins Big

Here is how the past few election cycles voted based on exit polls in terms of political ideology:

Year	Democrat %	Republican %	Independent %	Notes
2000	39	35	27	Gore Wins by 0.1% Popular Vote
2002	38	40	22	Republicans pick up a few House seats
2004	37	37	26	Bush by 3%
2006	38	36	26	Democrats make big gains in the House
2008	39	32	29	Obama by over 7%
2010	35	35	29	Republicans make big gains in the House
Average	37.6666667	35.83333333	26.5	Democrats by 1.88%

The difficult thing to measure is what is going to be the breakdown in political ideology in the 2012 Election. Here are some poll figures and some simple manipulations to better understand the data and to break it down by voting ideology, ethnicity, and gender (those results are in bold font):

All Numbers are in %
Poll	D	R	I	O		RR	MA		Date
IPOS/Reuters	46	38	19	48		45		D 8		12-Sep
Gallup	38	33	29	48		45		D 5		Daily
Rasmussen	34	36	30	47		45		R 1.5		Daily
NBC	32	25	38	50		45		D 7		18-Sep
FOX	42	36	19	48		43		D 6		12-Sep
PEW	38	30	32	51		43		D 8		19-Sep
CNN	40	29	31	52		46		D 11		9-Sep
CBS	34	27	39	49		46		D 7		14-Sep
TIPP	36	31	30	46		44		D 5		9-Sep
Battleground	44	40	15	48		47		D 1
Survey USA	35	31	34	48		45		D 6		17-Sep
AP/GfK	31	30	30	47		46		D 8		18-Sep
LA Times	39	33	26	48		46		D 6
YouGov	45	36	20	45		45		D 9		20-Aug
ABC	32	26	37	49		48		D 6		9-Sep
Democracy Corps	41	30	28	50		45		D 11		13-Sep
Resurgent Republic	37	30	30	46		45		D 7		18-Aug
American Research	38	34	28	46		49		D 4		7-Sep
Yahoo	33	27	40	50		46		D 6		10-Sep
Poll Average	38	32	29	48		45		5.95		2.737
2012 Model	38	34	28	1		1		0.96
Poll Scale				49		49
Poll	DO	RO	IO	DR	RR	IR	MO	FO	MR	FR	WO	NOW	WR	NWR	M	F	W	NW
IPOS/Reuters	87	4	35	5	90	46
Gallup	91	6	43	6	92	43	43	51	50	42	39	78	54	15	40	60	76	24
Rasmussen	90	6	41	6	90	45
NBC	93	6	48	6	93	52	45	55	49	42	41	78	54	17	48	52	74	26
FOX	91	4	44	5	91	39	42	53	48	39	40	77	52	14	47	53	78	23
PEW	93	5	45	5	92	44	46	56	48	38	44	85	51	10	49	51	82	18
CNN	97	2	40	3	96	54	48	55	47	44	42	88	55	11	47	53	79	22
CBS	92	7	40	5	90	51	44	53	52	41					47	53
TIPP	85	6	41	9	88	41	40	51	48	40	37	80	52	12	47	53	79	21
Battleground																	78	22
Survey USA	91	6	43	6	92	43	43	53	49	42	39	78	54	17	46	54	74	26
AP/GfK	94	7	49	6	94	51	43	50	51	42	37	71	56	21	49	51	70	30
LA Times															46	54	76	24
YouGov															48	52	73	27
ABC
Democracy Corps	90	6	40	7	93	50	43	55	49	41	40	80	55	15	47	53	75	25
Resurgent Republic	90	5	37	6	93	45									46	54	74	26
American Research	85	5	44	11	92	49	41	51	54	45	39	84	57	16	48	52	76	24
Yahoo	87	10	45	10	87	50	46	53	50	42	41	75	55	17	47	53	75	25
Averages	90	6	42	6	92	47	44	53	50	41.5	40	79.5	54	15	47	53	76	24
2008 Averages	39	32	29				21	28.1	23	21.995	30.9	17.9	42	3.38	46	54	76	24
2008 Averages	93	7	51	7	93	49	50	57	50	43	45	86	55	14	46	54	76	24
2010 Averages	35	35	29												47	53	78	22
2012 Model	37	34	28	38	34	28
															47	53	78	23
	33	2	12	2	31	13									1	1	1	0.9
2012 Model Results	47		47	1			49		45	3.115	48		45	2.2
	O	RR
Poll Ave	48	45
Poll Scaled	49	49
Poll Affiliation	47	47
Poll Gender	49	45
Poll Ethnicity	48	45
Average	48	46
Key
All Numbers are in %
D - Democrat
R - Republican
I - Independent
O - Obama
RR - Romney
MA - Margin
DO = Democrats for Obama
RO - Republicans for Obama
IO - Independents for Obama
DR - Democrats for Romney
RR - Republicans for Romney
IR - Independents for Romney
MO - Males for Obama
FO - Females for Obama
MR - Males for Romney
FR - Females for Romney
WO - Whites for Obama
NWO - Non Whites for Obama
WR - Whites for Romney
NWR - Non Whites for Romney
F - Female
M - Male
W - Whites
NW - Non Whites

To determine the ideological breakdowns of some polls I needed to carefully decipher these numbers from the questions within the polls (the information is not readily available). For instance, the latest CNN poll had Obama up by 6 points. However, the poll claims that Romney win independents by 14 points, for this to happen the poll breakdown must give the Democrats an 11 point advantage. Also, the polls seem to do a good job modeling gender and ethnicity voting blocks, but they are skewed on political ideology. The numbers are crunched below.

No matter how you crunch the national numbers, the state poll numbers look very bleak for Romney. He has to win Florida, Virginia, and Ohio and those state poll averages have swelled to about 5% in favor of Obama. In a week that saw widespread anti American protests and a deadly attack against the U.S. embassy in Libya the main news story is not that administration failed to heed to the warning signs about the unrest and denied it was a terror attack, but Romney’s 47% comment. In fact, a new poll suggests U.S. Middle East relations are at an all-time low. Obama got a huge bounce after the DNC despite the federal debt passing 16 trillion dollars and another weak employment report. This means the economy is not really the main concern for many in this election. The Washington Times did a piece about the real Obama and how his childhood was anything but a hardship as he and Michelle claim. Still every misstep Romney takes is magnified while the President gets a pass. I see no way Romney can win, in fact, I think Obama’s margin of victory will be only a point or two less than what he achieved in 2008 and the electoral college will be at least a 332 to 206 margin of victory for Obama. This election is about popularity and for some reason, people like Obama and despise Romney. Romney has 6 weeks to change this perception and I don’t think he will do it (I hope I am wrong).

The average of the last polls by 13 firms (7 since the DNC) has Obama ahead by nearly 2.5 points. My best guess at an ideological breakdown in 2012 is 38-D/34-R/29-I. If that is the case when this election is modeled using these numbers we get the following:

Obama – 49% / Romney 49%

Also, using the above data in the polls when broken out by party, gender, and race (not all polls give this data) then my models show the following (I am expecting 53% / 47% margin for women and a 77.5% / 22.5% margin for white versus non-white voters in 2012).

By Party: Obama 47% / Romney 47%

By Gender: Obama 49% / Romney 45%

By Ethnicity: Obama 48% / Romney 45%

There you have it. I have modeled (scaled the highly liberal polls) the polls 5 ways and Obama comes out on top in all 5. If I average all 5 methods then Obama has opened up over a 2 point lead: Obama 48%, Romney 46%.