A new Survey USA poll of Florida shows Obama leading Romney 48%-43%. Even better, registered Republicans are significantly overrepresented in the poll. Mitt Romney must hope that these numbers are badly off, because a look at the electoral college calculator shows conclusively that Romney must win Florida. Let me explain.
If Obama wins Florida, he can lose the following states that he won in 2008 and still be elected with 271 electoral votes (one more than is needed to become president):
New Hampshire
Pennsylvania
Ohio
Indiana
Iowa
Virginia
North Carolina
Alternatively, if Obama were to win Florida and hold Pennsylvania, he could win with 271 votes while losing the following states that he won in 2008:
New Hampshire
Ohio
Indiana
Iowa
New Mexico
Colorado
Nevada
If you want to introduce Wisconsin into the conversation the math is a little different. But Romney would have to pretty much run the table on these states even if he won Wisconsin. For example, if Obama simply held Colorado and lost all the others, including Wisconsin, he’d still hit the 270 mark.
Romney cannot afford to lose Florida. If he loses Florida, it would take a miracle for him to win the election.
Repeat after me, Democrats:
The Ryan budget plan is the “Catfood for Grannie” plan.
Have you not been paying attention? Carville & Greenberg’s focus groups can’t even believe the GOP would propose such a thing. So that presents a problem.
Which is why the Obama campaign’s strategy of going after Romney’s biography (business career at Bain Capital, personal finances/tax returns) this summer is a good strategy.
Part of why voters don’t believe Romney would enact the agenda he’s endorsed is because he’s not campaigning on it. Instead, because he knows it’s an unpopular agenda, he’s campaigning on 1) the bad economy under Pres. Obama and 2) his own business career as the primary credential for why Romney would handle the economy better.
By putting doubt in the minds of voters in swing states about Romney’s biographical credentials, the Obama campaign sets up a plausible narrative that makes it easier for voters to (eventually, when those issues come up in the fall) believe that Romney really would do all those terrible things.
well, Charles Pierce does call Ryan
“The Zombie-Eyed Granny Killer”
Can someone explain to me how we went from declaring the election O.V.E.R. last week after Romney’s Bainapalooza (something, something, felony!!!, arglebargle) to all of the sudden be right back to warily double checking the electoral math again this week? What changed exactly?
On an unrelated note, I was just randomly surfing the news sites, and I saw this on bloomberg:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-20/obama-raises-45-9-million-in-june-to-33-million-for-romney-
1-.html
97%, huh? Good god. Swing state voters might just kill themselves before we even make it to November. Our fine country sure knows how to make elections pure torture for our citizens.
Well, the ads I’ve seen here have only been the America the Beautiful spot. And you can’t make an ad better than that…
Even if you conclude that an election is already effectively decided three-plus months out, you still can look as the mechanism of defeat.
Also, there’s the allocation of resources. Florida is incredibly expensive. Tying Romney down there makes it harder for him to devote resources, including his body, to the more than half dozen other states he needs to flip.
You can, or you could just cop to basking in the warm glow of favorable poll results and not pretend like there’s anything novel to your analysis.
Do you even honestly care about this election, beyond being emotional/sentimental towards the President? Is there anything interesting about this race? The only questions that matter regard the congressional races.
I’d just as soon never see the name Mitt Romney again for as long as I live. Alas, the calendar swears it’s only July.
On issues like the ACA, the presidency is consequential. If Obama wins, he can veto any attempt to repeal it. If Obama loses, suddenly ACA supporters are biting their nails hoping the Dems can keep their majority in the Senate (since the ACA can be effectively gutted by using reconciliation to repeal all the spending parts).
Through 6/30/12 outside PAC spending identified as candidate specific for Obama was $15 million and for Romney $55 million. So, the disparity between anti-Mitt and anti Obama ads might be less than that report states.
At this point, both campaigns are still spending primary funds. With such a small base of small donors, Mitt’s campaign is more challenged than Obama’s. The entire GOP primary field collected $101 million from $200 & less donors; whereas, Obama collected $183 million from small donors.
Last week, I was convinced that the attacks on Romney were devastating, that he was in free fall, and that he was the worst major party candidate since (at least) Thomas Dewey.
I keep looking to see Romney’s dive in the polls, and it just isn’t happening. So, yeah, I’m pretty surprised that it’s still all about Florida and Ohio.
It may be that there won’t be any movement in the polls all through the campaign. Maybe the voters have already made up their minds, and nothing is going to have an impact.
the manipulations of the groups in the polls is very interesting.
Romney’s in the low 20’s with Latinos.
and, is losing women by 15 points.
but, someone is still trying to BS that this is a close race.
You can’t really tell anything about the structure of a race until after both conventions. Anybody who remembers Mike Dukakis’s huge leads over George H.W. Bush in early 1988 knows that.
And if Romney’s presumptive candidacy imploded spectacularly over the next couple of weeks?
I don’t know. Give me a few scenarios to ponder.
It has long been my contention the Reaps threw the ought-eight election to the O, and that they are doing so now. There is no other explanation as to why they’d let this thing going forward, they had to know he wouldn’t withstand this kind of scrutiny, that this couldn’t possibly stay tucked away, And just isn’t going to get any prettier.
Ron Paul actually holds a substantial number of delegates.
to note in the Survey USA poll is this:
Landline users: 50-44 Romney
Cell Phone users: 59-25 Obama
People really need to understand that polling is significantly undercounting the young. Even PPP polling is showing the 18-29 vote way below 2004 and 2008. The reason is that the young and minorities are far more likely to have no landine. Many pollsters do not poll cell phones (neither Rasmussen nor PPP).
I wrote a diary about this two weeks ago – but there is a very good reason to think that there is a hidden Democratic vote only some pollsters are going to find.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/14/1099955/-Are-cell-phones-resulting-in-biased-polls?showAll=
yes
Have been hearing this argument since 2002. So far, there hasn’t been a large disconnect between pre-election polls and election results or any disconnect that can be attributed to under-polling of cell-phone exclusive voters.
leaned GOP by more than the MOE. I didn’t hear this argument in 2008 – I don’t the effect was nearly so big.
And who won in 2010? Not that my question isn’t as imprecise and undefined as your assertion about 2010 polls.
btw — the MOE is the statistical fluke fudge factor. For example, if A and B poll respectively at 50/50 with a MOE of 3 and election results end up being 47/53, the poll was accurate.
Nate Silver’s model allows estimating the error in assuming that the polls (if the election were held today) forecast the election on the date it will be held. The difference is between an 81.8% chance of winning and a 67.2% chance of winning. Or between 305.5 (305) electoral votes and 292.8 (293) electoral votes. How many states need to change to produce 12 electoral votes?
His model predicts that Ohio is the most likely tippng point state.
The expected popular vote in Florida is Obama 49.4% Romney 49.6% with a 6.3% margin of error. Obama is likely no lower than 43.1% and no higher than 55.7% in Florida. Romney is no lower than 43.3% and no higher than 55.9%.
All of that is with the assumption that all factors are equal to what they were over his historical sample of polling errors.
Of course, in the case of Florida like in 2000 the actions of the Governor and the election supervisors might not all be equal. The same is true for other states where the GOP is actively trying to structurally suppress the vote.
But the critical races for the country are down-ticket. And polls are notoriously inaccurate there even when they exist.
I don’t see any reason why Romney shouldn’t win Florida. He already owns the Confederate third of the state. Same-party governor, same-party state legislature, the latter with a veto-proof R majority.
— McCain was the only candidate in at least 40 years to win the 60+ vote, and not win the election.
— McCain was +10 in the 65-and-over age group in 2008.
— Republicans were +20 in the same demographic in 2010.
Old people really don’t like Obama as it is.
Demagogue ‘Obamacare spells the end of Medicare’ sufficiently and Romney should win the state by 4-6%. Could be 6-5% depending on the success of vote suppression.
Old people could relate better to the old Vietnam War POW guy than the not so old looking guy that spent those years pitching the Book of Mormon in France.
Mr. Romney is and Mr. Obama is not, last time I checked, white. That’s the equivalent of a lot of service time.
As McCain lost FL in 2008, Romney would have to improve upon McCain’s performance among that demographic. Have difficulty buying that the racist vote in FL wasn’t maximized in 2008.
.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I play around with 270 to win all the time.
I can only see the President losing Indiana and North Carolina this time around.
Unfortunately you are looking at this in a misguided light.
Let’s go through a few points:
Glitchy voting machines will w/out a doubt flip more votes for Romney this election. If you look at the latest news in Wisconsin, it is becoming obvious that the DNC dropped the ball on Walker race. It is becoming quite clear that votes were most likely flipped for Scott Walker
These 4 factors are serious concerns for this election. W/ this economy we could be looking at another Bush/Gore. It doesn’t matter what candidate makes you feel better, if you have these numbers hovering over your head, this will be a up hill climb til November especially w/ the vote flipping that democrats still are terrified to talk about. This isn’t Mccain, it is a whole new perfect storm brewing for this president if the campaign isn’t careful. Imo, Vote flipping through E-Voting will be the final nail in the coffin for this campaign race if Romney wins.
what Citizens United states will be delivered for Romney?
what do you see flipping?
I don’t know exactly what states, I do know that Pennsylvania will likely be close to the line. The republicans want to make this a close election at least. The rules they put in place this time around looks like a Gore/Bush repeat w/ all the hi jinx regarding voting laws.
The Walker race is interesting for a number of reasons. The numbers are too high in Walker’s favor. Even Maddow was puzzled by it. The DNC doesn’t want to touch this race but it does loom not well for future election campaign races where much is at stake.
I just don’t see a blow out of electoral votes this time around. If you look back at Carter/Reagan election, you will see distinct parallels. Everyone laughed at Reagan in the same way they laughed at Mitt. The headwinds are way too volatile this time around to predict what states are going to go Mitt’s way. There are just too many components to scoff at it.
I try to tell bloggers/progressives/ that vote flipping doesn’t just stop if you use a paper ballot. The optical scanners for counting the votes have been proven to be easily rigged as well. But it is hard to discuss this because most democrats/progressives have no idea that the optical scanner can be infiltrated easily as well. Lot of disinformation out there, but the peer studies from Universities tell us differently.
Watch this for evidence:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYbC9KtGxSg
We are WAY past conspiracy theorist,tin foil hat, & this is in every ppoll station in America.
If you want to see something eerie, go back and look at the Chuck Hagel race. The odds were completely against him but he had one thing going for him, he was a partner in a electronic voting corporation. That race shows the numbers were too high for a republican in that area.
We can go to other key races where “miracles” for the republicans happened as well. But the one pattern you see over n over, these privatized electronic voting machine corporations always follow the “miracles” Yet the democrats pray it will all go away, if we dont talk about it. But it is getting worse in key races.
I wouldn’t be surprised if millions of votes have been lost already. What scares me everytime is how a democrat will say “You can choose to have a paper ballot” But still not understand you are still in the lions den for this voting technology. The Optical scanner is equal to the touch screen, the same glitchy interface 6 the same hack methods.
The headwinds are just too strong, this time around. Romney could take it with all these factors in consideration for this campaign.
Heard an analyst on Bloomberg radio saying that Romney needs to win Ohio, Virginia, and Florida to win. All of them.
For what it is worth.
More surprisingly I heard a clip of Romney saying “We are all Catholic now” and saying he supported “the religious freedom to not dispense contraceptives.” This must have been from the primaries, but why is Bloomberg Business News reminding us of it? Could it be that business leaders (minus the Koch Brothers) recognize Romney as a loser and don’t want Obama to think of them as the enemy? Cutting Romney loose to cozy up to Obama? It wouldn’t be the first time that business abandoned a crazy Republican for a moderate Democrat. Not advancing that as a DLC mantra, just a fact.
I think Ohio (my home state) may be Romney’s Achilles’ heel. All the Obama campaign has to do is remind everybody of Romney’s opposition to the auto bailout. There are a lot of auto workers and ex-auto workers in this state who are happy that some of their colleagues are getting jobs back at GM and Chrysler.
AND Willard’s support for SB5
Just for kicks, here’s a worst-case third-party scenario. Not probable but the best that a third party is likely to do if lightning strikes.
Suppose Jill Stein takes Washington State, Vermont, Delaware (yep, that really is counter-intuitive), and Oklahoma (even more so). The states I selected are those where Jill Stein leads on this very interesting web site: ISideWith. That would take away 25 electoral votes. That still leaves Obama with 273 electoral votes under Nate Silver’s model. IMO, if the Green Party won just one of those states (Vermont being the easiest), it would change the tilt in US politics.
OK, beat me up on this one.
If by “just for kicks” you mean, “if you were dropped on your head as a child, like me.”
Lol, Green Party. Fucking Naderites just don’t know when to quit…
No, just for kicks as an unserious examination of a three-sigma worst case scenario.
And neither do:
America’s Party (Hoefling-Ellis)
Constitution Party (Goode-Clymer)
Grassroots Party (Carlson-McMahon)
Green Party (Stein-Honkala)
Justice Party (Anderson-Rodrigues)
Libertarian Party (Johnson-Gray)
Party of Socialism and Liberation (Lindsay-Osorio)
Prohibition Party (Fellure-Davis)
Socialist Party USA (Alexander-Mendoza)
Socialist Equality Party (White-Sherrer)
Socialist Workers Party (Harris-DeLuca)
All of these have gotten on the ballot in at least one state.
And then there are the independent and write-in candidates who can tell their grandchildren, “I once ran for President of the United States”:
Dorothy “Doc” Adams (Independent-Texas)
Jeff Block (Independent-Georgia)
Tiffany Briscoe (Independent-Maryland) Whence Brown (Independent-Washington)
Darryl Bryant (Write In-Georgia)
Robert “Naked Cowboy” Burck (Independent-New York)
Lester Byerley Jr. (Tea-New Jersey)
President Emperor Caesar (Independent-Florida)
Hal Chad Carrington-Hayes (Independent-Arizona)
Jerry Carroll (Independent-California)
Joseph Charles (Independent-Texas)
Paul Chehade (Independent-Florida)
Liza Dawn Cherricks (Independent-Delaware)
Todd Clayton Jr. (Constitutionalist-Washington)
Douglas Clement (Independent-Missouri)
Floyd Conover (Independent-Tennessee)
James Cooper (Michigan)
Don Cordell (Write In-California)
Sanford Cramer III (Independent-California)
Ken Cross (New Populist Party-Arkansas)
Christopher Dardzinski (Write In-Michigan)
Fred Donald Dickson Jr. (Write In-Maryland)
Michael Doname (Independent-New York)
Jim Duensing (Boston Tea Party-Nevada)
Stephen Durham (Freedom Socialist Party-New York)
Michael David Elder (Independent-Texas)
John “Green” Ferguson (Eco Green Party-Texas)
Ronald Gascon (Write In-Pennsylvania)
Jackie Gouge (Independent-Texas)
Mark B. Graham (Citizens-West Virginia)
Ken Grammer (Independent-Virginia)
J. Paul Hadd (Write In-Pennsylvania)
Bob Hall (Independent-Illinois)
William Harney (Independent-Florida)
Rutherford Bert Hayes (Independent-Arkansas)
Craig Hermann (Independent-Florida)
RaeDeen Heupel (Independent-Montana)
Thaddaus Hill (Madisonian Federalist-Texas)
Darrell Hillis (Independent-Tennessee)
John Hoelzel Jr. (Independent-Texas)
Samuel Hoff (Independent-Delaware)
Brian Holland (National Socialist Movement-Virginia)
“Mad Mike” Hughes (Independent-California)
Darrell Hykes (Independent-Georgia)
Michael Jenkins (Write In-Texas)
Ronald D. Jones (Independent-Florida)
Terry Jones (Independent-Florida)
Scott Keller (Independent-Florida)
Tollefsen Kristen (Independent-Virginia)
Gott Johan Josephe Lally (Independent-Vermont)
Temperance Alesha Lance-Council (Anti-Hypocrisy-California)
Jerry Lanser (Independent-Colorado)
David Larson (American Independent-California)
Robert Lee (Independent-Virginia)
Brad Lefler (Independent-Ohio)
Michael “Lev” Levinson (Independent-Florida)
Sophia the Logos (Independent-Virginia)
Ed Maddox (Independent-South Dakota)
James McCall (Independent-Ohio)
Richard McCormick (Kis-Washington)
Ron McCune (Independent-Florida)
David McFadden (Independent-Ohio)
J.L. Mealer (Independent-Arizona)
Merlin Miller (American Third Position-California)
Albert Morzuch (Independent-Florida)
Bill Nees (Write In-Georgia)
John Parmele Jr. (Independent-Virginia)
Mark Pimentel (Independent-Florida)
Matthew David Pinnavaia (Independent-California)
Samuel “Uncle Sam” Powell (Independent-District of Columbia)
Rajesh Raghavan (Independent-Maryland)
Arthur Rakowitz (Independent Party-Texas)
Luis Ramos Jr. (Write In-New York)
Jill Reed (Twelve Visions-Nevada)
Rich Reed (Independent-Kansas)
John Karl Reiman (Independent-California)
“Mad Max” Riekse (Citizens-Michigan)
Platt Robertson (Write In-Nevada)
Billy Roper (Nationalist-Arkansas)
Paul Rosenberger (Independent-California)
Laurie Roth (Independent-Washington)
Dan Rozelle (Independent-Indiana)
Donald Sauter (Independent-Delaware)
Francis Savarirayan (Independent-Illinois)
“Average Joe” Schriner (Independent-Ohio)
Larry Schuetter (United Third Party-California)
Stephen Shadden (Independent-Oklahoma)
William Shaw (Independent-Illinois)
James Dee Shinn (Independent-West Virginia)
Montgomery Blair Sibley (Write In-District of Columbia)
Jeff Siggins (Write In-Delaware)
David Jon Sponheim (America’s Third Party-Washington)
Scott Allen Meek Stephens (Independent-New York)
Tom Stevens (Objectivist-New York)
Vincent Stieber Jr. (Ohio)
Charles Tolbert (Independent-Florida)
Donald Trump (Independent-New York)
Anthony Tubbs (Independent-Louisiana)
Douglas “Dutch” Van Raam (Independent-Arizona)
Former Governor Jesse Ventura (Independent-Minnesota)
Da Vid (Light Party-California)
George Washington Williams (Independent-Ohio)
Andrew Wildman (Independent-Louisiana)
Jerry Wilson (Write In-Tennessee)
Michael “Doc” Witort (Independent-Illinois)
Danny Woodring (Write In-Florida)
Notice that one of them is “The Donald”.
I hadn’t realized until I looked it up just now that Lyndon Larouche finally threw in the towel in ‘008. And he’s only 90.
I took that test and I think I got Stewart Alexander. Romney I got like 2% lol.
Another one of those mainstream Democratic Party socialists are you? (Ducks)
If it wasn’t for his United Nations stances, we would probably had had 85%+. It went like 78% Alexander, 76% Stein, 61% Obama, 40% Paul…then the rest.
That was a good test. I agree most with Jill Stein, which was what I expected. I was planning to vote for her, if she’s on the ballot in Wisconsin.
I’m seeing different results from you, though. I guess there is a lot of volatility in the electorate. Stein leads only in Vermont. Romney looks like he will carry Utah, Alabama, and South Dakota. It appears that this election is going to the House, with Gary Johnson, Ron Paul, and Obama being the choices. (Why is Ron Paul on the site anyway? Is he on the ballot anywhere?)
I would suspect that the ISideWith poll is very volatile. It is not clear from the data that Stein leads in any state. The states that I listed were the only ones in which she had strength.
I don’t know why Ron Paul is on the site nor why Rocky Anderson is not. Nor why Spencer Alexander is there but none of the other Socialist parties that made the ballot.
That’s why I suggested that looking at it was just for kicks. I don’t think the folks who put together the sites have done a serious enough job to make it useful.
Plus, any internet thing like this is bound to be picked up by Paulista minions, who also like Gary Johnson, and thus skew the results heavily in his favor.
That’s what is interesting about it–looking at the geographical distribution of the data. Especially since it is kinda difficult to game the questions beyond a certain point. I suspect that it oversamples those who are third-party advocates. And Libertarians seem to be the most organized of that bunch.
I heard Jill Stein recently on NPR. When asked if she understood that enough people voting for her could swing the election to Romney, and if she was okay with that, she proceeded to blather on for several minutes about — ah, I was too busy screaming at the car radio “Answer the question! Answer the f-ing question, you sanctimonious narcissistic asshole!” to grok more than it was her standard “fight the power” bullshit. She never did answer it, and the interviewer didn’t follow up, perhaps because wily ol’ Jill had run the clock on the interview and the hour was over.
I have as much use for her as I do for Nader. +spits+
No one asked Ross Perot if he thought he could swing the election to Bill Clinton. (Given his personal animus against the Bushes, that might have been his intention.)
So really it is a bit of an unfair question. But the answer to give is “I’m out to win, so that is not one of my considerations.” The problem with that answer is given the minority status of third parties in US political system, it makes the speaker look ridiculous or self-delusional.
In point of fact, what a third party strategy should do in order to change the terms of debate is to win at least 1 to 4 states without damaging the candidacy of party closer to them in the political spectrum. The classic case of this was how George Wallace’s candidacy drew the Nixon campaign to a Southern Strategy and how Wallace winning four states locked that position into the Republican Party to the point that the Republicans are indistinguishable from Wallace’s old party.
Finally, my analysis above shows that Stein can win 1 to 4 states without hurting Obama if Nate Silver’s model is correct–if they are low population states. Florida 2000 is sort of an anomaly in the history of third parties and resulted because of voter suppression by Jeb Bush and ballot flipping in Palm Beach County (which had a Democratic election supervisor) that recorded Gore votes for Buchanan (“butterfly ballot”). In fairness, Ralph Nader could not have foreseen that situation. And no one has done the analysis of whether Nader’s presence in the campaign caused Al Gore to position himself less in a DLC position than he might have and move more towards progressives.
Finally, the voters in the 2000 election didn’t matter. The vote totals were 5-4 for Bush. Only nine people voted.