Obama Wins, but the Margins are Getting Slim

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	46		46		D 8		20-Oct
Gallup	38	33	29	47		50		D 5		Daily
Rasmussen	37	36	33	47		50		D 1		Daily
NBC	32	26	40	47		47		D 6		21-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	34	32	48		46		0		22-Oct
TIPP	40	32	28	47		45		D 8		Daily
Quinnipiac	36	33	29	49		45		D 3		2-Oct
Battleground	43	41	15	47		49		D 2		22-Oct
Survey USA	36	33	31	45		48		D 3		22-Oct
AP/GfK	31	25	27	45		47		D 6		25-Oct
WA Times	37	35	28	50		47		D 2		22-Oct
YouGov	45	36	20	48		46		D 9		25-Oct
ABC	34	29	33	48		49		D 5		Daily
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
PPP	35	29	29	47		49		D 6		22-Oct
UCONN	44	38	18	48		45		D 6		19-Oct
Poll Average	38	33	28	47		47		5.17		0.565
2012 Model	38	34	28	1		1		0.99
Poll Scale				48		49		-1.2
Poll	DO	RO	IO	DR	RR	IR	MO	FO	MR	FR	WO	NOW	WR	NWR	M	F	W	NW
IPOS/Reuters	87	4	38	7	92	52
Gallup	91	6	43	6	92	43	42	48	52	45	38	78	56	17	48	52	76	24
Rasmussen	90	6	41	8	92	49
NBC	90	7	40	9	92	50	43	51	53	43	36	80	56	17	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	46	6	89	42	47	50	47	45	40		54		47	53	78	22
TIPP	87	7	38	7	85	44	46	50	45	40	39	83	51	8	47	53	78	22
Quinnipiac	94	7	45	5	91	47	42	56	52	38	42	80	53	16	47	53	78	22
Battleground	90	5	44	6	93	52					38	84	58	14			78	22
Survey USA	91	6	33	6	90	52	40	49	51	45	38	78	57	17	47	53	78	22
AP/GfK	93	7	43	7	93	57	47	50	51	48	37	71	58	21	50	50	65	28
WA Times	93	8	42	6	90	49	49	50	47	47	40	80	58	17	47	53	74	26
YouGov															48	52	73	27
ABC	93	5	45	7	95	55	43	52	51	44	40	77	55	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
PPP	88	5	40	8	94	53	40	49	53	45	39	78	57	18	46	54	72	28
UCONN	88	6	37	9	90	38	41	55	53	38	36	83	56	14	48	52	74	26
Averages	91	6	41	6	92	48	44	51.2	50	43.22	39	79.5	56	17	47	53	75	24
2008 Averages	39	32	29				21	27.1	24	22.908	30	17.9	43	3.79	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
	34	2	11	2	31	14									1	1	1	0.9
2012 Model Results	48		47	1			48		46	1.506	47		47	-0.4
	O	RR
Poll Ave	47	47
Poll Scaled	48	49
Poll Affiliation	48	47
Poll Gender	48	46
Poll Ethnicity	47	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

No matter how you crunch the national numbers, the state poll numbers continue to look challenging 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 are a statistical tie – and Ohio still seems to favor Obama. In fact, other than Colorado Romney is down in all swing states including – Nevada, New Hampshire, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan. And if Romney loses Virginia and or Ohio, he is going to have to win some combination of NV, NH, MI, WI, and IA to win the election. Right now the electoral count is 281 to 257. My internal polling methods have Romney ahead in Florida by 1.1% and Obama ahead in Ohio by 1.3%. If Romney does not win Ohio, his path to the Presidency is going to be hard. I project the final Electoral College count at this time to be 281 to 257 in favor of Obama.

There is still reason for hope. Republicans have become more excited about Romney as the conservative choice for President and 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. Also, for the first time in the campaign Romney’s favorability ratings are higher than Obama’s. Are the poll models listed above correct? The average of the last polls by 17 firms has Obama ahead by nearly 0.5% points (47 – 47). However, many of these polls still seem to be oversampling Democrats by large margins when compared to historical trends outlined above. My best guess at an ideological breakdown in 2012 election is 38-D/34-R/29-I (the polls listed above have an average breakdown of 38-D/33-R/28-I). If that is the case when this election modeled using these numbers we get the following:

Obama – 48% / Romney 49% (Romney by 1.2%)

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% (0.8% advantage for Obama)

By Gender: Obama 48% / Romney 46% (1.5% advantage for Obama)

By Ethnicity: Obama 47% / Romney 47% (0.4% average for Romney)

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 has a slim 1 point lead: Obama 48%, Romney 47% (actual spread is less than 0.2%). If Democrats only have a 3% advantage on Election Day, well Romney can win the popular vote hands down – but the Electoral College is another story. At this point I see Obama winning the popular vote 48.7% to 48.3% with 3% voting for another candidate.