Obama Still Leads Big in the Electoral Count

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		46		D 8		12-Sep
Gallup	38	33	29	47		48		D 5		Daily
Rasmussen	37	36	33	48		47		D 1		Daily
NBC	32	26	40	49		46		D 6		2-Oct
FOX	38	32	30	45		46		D 6		10-Oct
PEW	30	34	35	45		49		R 4		8-Oct
National Journal	36	29	30	47		47		D 7		3-Oct
NPR	38	30	32	51		44		D 8		3-Oct
CNN	40	32	28	50		47		D 8		1-Oct
CBS	34	27	39	49		46		D 7		14-Sep
TIPP	39	32	29	46		47		D 7		Daily
Quinnipiac	36	33	29	49		45		D 3		2-Oct
Battleground	43	41	15	49		48		D 2		8-Oct
Survey USA	35	32	22	46		47		D 3		11-Oct
AP/GfK	31	30	30	47		46		D 8		18-Sep
LA Times	39	33	26	48		46		D 6
YouGov	45	36	20	49		44		D 9		3-Oct
ABC	33	30	33	49		47		D 3		1-Oct
Democracy Corps	41	30	28	50		45		D 11		13-Sep
Resurgent Republic	37	30	30	46		45		D 7		18-Aug
American Research	40	34	26	49		47		D 4		21-Sep
Reason	36	28	29	52		45		D 8		21-Sep
Yahoo	33	27	40	50		46		D 6		10-Sep
Poll Average	37	32	29	48		46		5.39		1.957
2012 Model	38	34	28	1		1		0.96
Poll Scale				49		49		-0.2
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	94	5	44	5	93	50	43	54	52	40	39	77	55	18	48	52	74	26
FOX	89	6	32	5	90	44	41	49	51	41	35	79	56	14	47	53	78	22
PEW	94	7	42	5	91	46	43	47	51	47	38	81	57	19	49	51	81	19
National Journal	91	5	41	6	92	49	42	51	52	44	38	81	55	19	47	53	74	26
NPR	91	4	45	4	91	46	45	55	47	40	40	81	53	17	47	53	74	26
CNN	93	4	41	6	96	49	47	53	50	44	41	73	56	22	47	53	74	26
CBS	92	7	40	5	90	51	44	53	52	41					47	53
TIPP	86	3	34	7	95	54	36	50	57	42	34	82	58	13	47	53	78	22
Quinnipiac	94	7	45	5	91	47	42	56	52	38	42	80	53	16	47	53	78	22
Battleground	92	6	46	6	92	48					40	81	57	19			77	23
Survey USA	89	5	41	8	93	44	44	48	49	46	36	78	58	17	49	51	72	28
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	95	5	47	5	95	50	47	53	50	43	41	77	54	22	47	53	76	24
Democracy Corps	90	6	40	7	93	50	43	55	49	41	40	80	55	15	47	53	75	25
Resurgent Republic	90	7	37	6	93	45									46	54	74	26
American Research	90	6	43	5	92	50	45	52	51	43	41	84	55	16	48	52	77	23
Reason	95	5	50	5	95	50	47	56	50	40	41	82	57	15	46	54	72	28
Yahoo	87	10	45	10	87	50	46	53	50	42	41	75	55	17	47	53	75	25
Averages	91	6	42	6	92	48	44	52.1	51	42.12	39	78.8	56	17	47	53	75	25
2008 Averages	39	32	29				20	27.6	24	22.322	30.2	17.7	43	3.9	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	38	34	28	38	34	28
															47	53	78	23
	35	2	12	2	31	13									1	1	1	0.9
2012 Model Results	48		47	1			48		46	1.85	46		47	-0.7
	O	RR
Poll Ave	48	46
Poll Scaled	49	49
Poll Affiliation	48	47
Poll Gender	48	46
Poll Ethnicity	46	47
Average	48	47
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, one poll had Obama up by 5 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. Despite moving to the lead in the national poll averages (My poll averages go back over a month), Obama still has a big lead in the electoral college. Romney has to win Florida, Virginia, and Ohio and those state polls area statistical tie – but slightly favor Obama. In fact, other than Colorado Romney is down in all swing states including – Nevada, New Hampshire, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Right now the electoral count is 294 to 244 if I give Florida’s 29 electoral votes to Romney which is a dead even at this time. My internal polling methods have Obama ahead in Florida by 1.3% and in Ohio by 1.6%. Hence, the true electoral count favors Obama 323 to 215.

There is still reason for hope. Although Republicans are not overly excited by Romney, polls indicate they are more energized than Democrats because they do not want another 4 years of Obama (look at Gallup Poll demographics and which groups of people are definitely going to vote http://www.gallup.com/poll/154559/US-Presidential-Election-Center.aspx - this says a lot about who is excited about the election). The generic congressional ballot between Democrats and Republicans is even and that is good news for Republicans because they historically trail in this poll. Are the poll models above correct? The Gallup poll is a bit concerning for Romney, but it is not as bad as it could be. The average of the last polls by 17 firms has Obama ahead by nearly 2 points (48 – 46). Obama may be much more popular than Romney, but the economy is in the dumps and not getting better so it is hard to believe that Obama will win independents as he did in 2008. However, many of these polls still seem to be oversampling Democrats by large margins when compared to historical trends outlined above. What’s worse, many of these same polling outlets are making the same mistake in state election polls. My best guess at an ideological breakdown in 2012 is 38-D/34-R/29-I. If that is the case when this election 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 48% / Romney 47%

By Gender: Obama 48% / Romney 46%

By Ethnicity: Obama 46% / Romney 47%

There you have it. I have modeled the polls 5 ways and Obama comes out on top in 3. If I average all 5 methods then Obama still has a 2 point lead: Obama 48%, Romney 46%. If Democrats only have a 3% advantage on election day, well Romney can win the popular vote – but the electoral college is another story.