Even the Huffington Post has to admit, although they would never come out and say it, that Barack Obama’s reelection prospects are not moving in the right direction.
I’ve been watching the electoral map the Huffington Post has for the last few months. If you’re able to make it past all the anti-Romney, anti-Ryan, and anti-Republican headlines that they’ve been churning out lately, you can reach the part of the site where they’ve been tracking polls and making projections for the general election.
This map, which is “based on HuffPost pollster charts and analysis,” is a revealing glimpse into how the Presidential election has evolved since the early summer months.
I took this first screen shot on July 18. HuffPo’s formula was then declaring that the President’s reelection was essentially a lock, with Barack Obama already laying claim to 274 electoral votes. In order to win, a candidate need only secure 270.
Below is a screenshot from August 29th. HuffPo had apparently calculated that the President’s lead was now below the “guaranteed win” mark, but still very comfortable. All that would be necessary is to grab one or two of the swing states, and President Obama’s reelection would be sealed.
This morning, I captured another screen shot which showed yet another drop for President Obama (Romney still holding at 191). Although HuffPo confidently declared this morning that last week’s RNC gave Romney “No Bounce,” by their own electoral count, the President lost hold of another 15 electoral votes.
While HuffPo makes no representation that the earlier electoral counts were guaranteed to remain static, its interesting to see just how quickly the President’s advantage is being winnowed away.
Perhaps there hasn’t been a “bounce.” Perhaps its actually something much worse, a steady trend. Mike Flynn at Breitbart.com has reached a similar conclusion.
For the past several days, the media have consoled themselves that Romney didn’t receive any kind of bounce from the RNC convention last week in Tampa. Torture polls with enough Democrat bias in their samples and you can convince yourself of anything. Really, their willful ignorance of reality is their most precious trait. So, if there was no bounce, why are all the battleground states moving towards Romney. Obama won the 11 battleground states by 7 points in 2008. Today, Romney leads by 2.
Flynn went on to say:
So, sure, let’s all pretend Romney didn’t get any kind of bounce out of the convention. Let’s pretend that Romney has a very narrow path to 270 electoral votes and Obama has all these mythical ways to get there. The trend is your friend, though. And the trend is looking very good for Romney.
Indeed, even the Huffington Post has to admit it. That pesky trend is scary when its not on your side.
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Comments
“See, Romney has a ceiling of 191 EV, Obama’s sure to win!”
It would be interesting if on November 6, the HP map still showed President-elect Romney at 191. (As Instapundit would say, “don’t get cocky.”)
Extrapolating, and excluding dead voters [Illinois is already solidly blue], by Oct 1, the results should be Obama 190, Romney 191. Is is possible to have no winner?
It’s hilarious (and expected) that even though they (reluctantly) DECREASE the OBOZO number, they DO NOT INCREASE the Romney number – ever, ain’t gonna happen, no way. My guess is that if OBOZO loses, they hope that Romney will lose also, but with a GREATER loss!
IMHO the trend is real. Other than a stroke of luck, the debates or a manufactured crisis are the obvious ways Obama might reverse the trend.
The debates are double-edged for Obama. With the connivance of the media and possibly the moderators, he might jive and BS to a perceived win even though Romney prevails on the merits. Otoh, if Romney can expose Obama’s thin skin, HuffPo’s trend could be reinforced into a no-doubt-about-it rejection of Obama.
I
am surehope that the Romney campaign recognizes the stakes and prepares accordingly. (I softened the previous sentence because the campaign’s reaction to the populist bonanza Eastwood handed them has seemed like a miffed We didn’t script that.)Real Clear Politics is pretty close with 221 for Obama and the same 191 for Romney. They have toss ups as
Toss Up (126)
CO (9) FL (29)
IA (6) MI (16)
NV (6) NH (4)
NC (15) OH (18)
VA (13) WI (10)
I assume then HP still considers WI as an Obama state.
But yes…going back many states went from Obama to Tossup territory
No bounce for Romney? Maybe so, but the loss to Dear Leader is a helluva lot of dead cats, if you ask me.
http://www.mittromney.com/forms/legal-volunteers
Thought the lawyer types would want to know about this.
Prof., you, too.
I often check out realclearpolitics, but generally do my own recalculating because PPP tends to skew all the poll averages. They can be found polling in pretty much every battleground state and their polls are always out-of-whack with all the other polls, and always wildly biased towards Obama.
As of this morning, few polling institutes other than PPP had provided post-RNC polling in any battleground states. It’s too early to state that Romney didn’t get a bounce.
If I recalculate the RCP poll averages without PPP, it was a toss-up election BEFORE taking into account an RNC bump. Plus, I suspect that PPP is not the only biased polling organization (I am captain obvious today).
The undecideds know Obama, but Romney has time to win them. History would indicate that incumbent Obama can gain little from his 47%, but Romney will be winning undecideds.
Big media has played their race card, murderer card, woman hater card, etc. … their wheels are spinning ‘cuz their integrity has lost traction.
So the convention will promote free contraception, the union label, late term abortions, Obamacare, and wind turbines. These all seem like losers, and people are fed up with Obama needing more time to deliver his promised rainbow colored unicorns.
I suspect we have few ‘undecided’ voters this time. Most everyone knows Obama. You’re either going to vote for him or you’re not. There’s nothing to decide in September, you’ve made your decision by now.
There are a few ‘undecided’ voters who haven’t yet declared whether they’ll sit on their hands or vote for Romney.
This isn’t an undecided election, this is a turnout election. I sure hope Mittens has his ground game organized because that’s one thing the Dems traditionally do well, and Obama for sure will do. Yes, the convention bounce, the debates and the usual Democratic ‘October surprise’ will matter, but what matters most is whether the Pubs get their voters to the polls.
So while PPP and other pollsters skew to the D like iron filings to a magnet, it’s perfectly conceivable that Mitt stays at a ceiling of 191 firm electoral votes and a whole bunch of ‘yellow’ (per the maps above) states from now to election eve. We don’t know his turnout in those states yet. He could sweep them all, or Champ could resurrect the dead like only Democrats can do and squeak by.
To ShakesHeadOften, above: I do the mental math just as you do and adjust PPP polls by 3 to 5 points towards the R. If you do that most of the swing states barely lean Romney right now. PPP has a reputation to maintain, so look to their mid-October polls to start getting their fundamentals right.
Point taken about turnout. Off the top of my head I guesstimate that base turnout and currently undecided voters will be important. IMO both will be affected by the debates and by how well the presumed October surprise is staged.
Interesting. A reverse bounce. I suspect that many prior Obama supporters don’t want to vote for him this time around. They are not happy. But they also still have reservations about committing to Romney (or, for staunch Democrats, voting Republican). This is hairy. Where will these wavering voters, now torn by weighing the issues, default when their think time is up. Will they even bother to vote.
Just realized I was writing much the same thing at the same time as Doc White, but he said it better.
It popped back up to 247 today–I think it was PA changed.
Seems like I have read that when it is tied, the incumbent usually loses. Is that right?
2 more “trends” of note courtesy of the Justice Dept. 1. They dropped the larger part of the Joe Arpio case. 2. They’ve now stopped the probe into CIA Interagation techniques. Old Navy D.C. Outlets now feature a special on Posterior Covers.
If you look at the changes in the Real Clear Politics map (changes are shown in a table below the map which can be expanded to go further back in time), you can see that most of the states are trending to Romney.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/2012_elections_electoral_college_map_race_changes.html#previous_changes
These won’t necessarily reflect a change in the EV, because a state might go from likely O to leans O; but the trend is clearly our friend. And where it is not, you can usually spot a reason (e.g. MO b/c of Aiken).
They still show New Mexico as Solid Obama and yet, just this week, as the campaign heats up and Obama’s fundraising has been lagging, when they most need to spend their money wisely, the Obama campaign is doubling the number of field offices and hiring new staff in this “safe” state.
If that makes any sense, kindly explain it to me.
People are eyeing the exits. Moving closer. They haven’t broken out into a full run yet….
Letting the moonbats down easy. If you spook them, all sorts of bad things can happen. Best to ease them down.
The Huffpo results are simply indicative of the inevitable.
O’bammy is toast UNLESS the democrats somehow pull the proverbial magic bunny of fabrication out of a tattered hat and cause it to stick.
My bet is that the anointed one will receive a notice of eviction on November 6, 2012…
Professor, I’d like to add my two cents on this issue. I believe we are seeing a change more serious than the HuffPo is indicating with its chart. I live in NH and have been polled every day for the last week on my race, age, political status, if I’m a likely voter, and who I’d vote for.
I realize the chart shows NH leaning left, but from what I see driving around Southern NH tells a different story. Since most MA transplants migrate to the southern part of the state when they flee taxachusetts, you would expect the bottom part of the state to be strongly blue. However, if the 2010 elections and what I’m seeing now is an indication of the 2012 Presidential election, then Obama has lost the state.
I can’t imagine the folks frustrated in 2010 who voted to strongly swing the state to the right are now somehow leaning left again. The folks in the Live Free or Die state have long memories. Something is brewing in the air, but I can’t quite put my finger on what the scent is….
http://elections.nytimes.com/2010/results/new-hampshire