2012 Race for the White House II: The Two Towers

When has a GOP nominee not started 75-85 votes away?

 

Obama has a better shot at Arizona than Romney does Michigan. And I'm not going on my gut feeling. I'm going off of math. An average of polls for Arizona since New Year's Day has Obama down by 41.2-45.7% against Romney. That's out of 6,193 respondents, giving us a Margin of Error of less than +/-2%. Conversely, Obama is ahead in five polls since New Years in Michigan, 49-38.8%. That's with 5,509 respondents, giving us a Margin of Error of less than +/- 2.5%.

That means that a total of seven polls with over 6,000 respondents tell us that the worst they predict Obama can do in Arizona is 39-48% against Mitt Romney (echoing the 2008 election), and the best he can do is a 43-43% tie against Mitt Romney. Moreover, the best Obama can do against Romney in Michigan is 51-36%, and the worst is 47-41%. So it means that Obama is within striking distance of Romney in Arizona but Romney is at best - AT BEST - 6 points behind Obama. A six-point swing in a big state like Michigan is somewhere on the level of 500,000 votes. That means ground game, organization, and an inspiring candidate. The Romney campaign has none of those qualities.

I don't want to call you stupid - yet - because it's clear you just haven't done any real thinking or research on the election. I'm asking you now, politely, to stop posting on things you lack timely or accurate information until you read through the polling data, the economic data, the demographic data, and have visited election-aggregate sites such as 538.com, Pollster.com, the Monkey Cage, electionprojection.com, electoral-vote.com, Intrade, or even reading older posts on this very thread.

For everyone else, the information to create a very accurate map of Obama's election chances is available in the wikipedia page, which has dutifully collected all of the polling done thus far statewide. Their projection gives Obama 275, Romney 152, and have no data or shared leads on 111. Now, that 111 includes blue states such as Maryland and Delaware, red states such as Wyoming and Oklahoma, as well as potential swing states Alaska and North Dakota (see 2008 election, June)...a more accurate total would be Obama 288, Romney 178, rest undecided. I love to play with 270towin like everyone else, but one of the flaws of their site is that they don't provide nearly the amount of data that Intrade and Wikipedia's page provide.

 

When has a Dem started 17 points away?

 

That's the situation in Michigan/Arizona from the last five months, however it's really only the NEXT five months that will matter. The campaign has really just started, and a lot of this will be hammered out in the debates.

 

2000, 2004, 2008, etc.

 

Well you can't say I didn't ask politely. Fine. You're an idiot.

 

Hah, no worries bro.

 

What's going on in Wisconsin? Last week, a poll showed Obama up four, now a new poll has him up just 1 point. I'm thinking it may have something to do with the fact that there seems to currently be a groundswell of support for Walker.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/wi/wisconsin_romney_vs_obama-1871.html

 

Umm, no. Prior to this election PA, MI, NM, etc were swing states. Hell, New Mexico was a solid Republican state. So was Colorado. Now NM is blue and Colorado is, at worst, a swing state. This is the best starting position a Dem has had in decades.

 

Pennsylvania hasn't gone red since 1988. Michigan since 1992. Kerry started with 248, whereas RCP currently has Obama at 243.

 

As always, it is very difficult for me to understand why ASF doesn't ban people from P&CE who don't understand polling. There are 3 polls RCP shows, but 10 in the Wikipedia page since New Year's Day. The RCP average is +4.7, and with only 3 polls we'd expect a MoE of about +/-3%. However, the ten polls have 8,029 respondents, or a margin of error of less than +/-1.5%. The ten polls show an average of +9.4. Adding in that new poll, you still have a MoE of +8.6 for Obama. All of this means that Obama has at worst a +7% lead in Wisconsin and at best a +10% lead. That's rougly where he was for most of last election. Again, cherry-picking polls in this forum ought to be an exile-worthy offense, but that's why they will never make me mod.


Seriously, mate, are you trolling me?

 

Most of those polls were taken before Romney locked up the nomination. Support for all potential nominees was poor during that time. I would start to take polls a bit more seriously once the campaigns really get going

 

Romney hasn't locked up the nomination now, either. Should we discount them, too? God dammit.

 

Between Romney and Obama, Obama wins in a landslide. Romney can't pull in the independents. Romney doesn't make the right very enthusiastic either. Besides their is a change going on in the Republican party right now. The Neocons are at war with the Ron Paul movement. And The Ron Paul supporters won't support Romney because he repesents everything they hate.
So to put it in a simple way Romney won't beat Obama.

 

RCP is no longer showing polling for Ron Paul. Romney had a few more wins tonight. He's got it locked up and no political pundit would disagree.

 

Rule 38 of the RNC. If rule 38 stands then Romney might have alot of trouble locking up the nomination.

 

Not according to this poll:
http://images.politico.com/global/2012/05/bg_47_questionnaire.html

Or this one:
http://www.examiner.com/article/romney-leads-gallup-s-obama-v-romney-daily-tracking-poll

Or this one:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57434153-503544/poll-romney-has-slight-edge-over-obama/

 

This is infuriating. Germamerica, you don't know the first thing about digesting polls, so I will provide you a post I wrote (i.e. plagiarized from one of my textbooks) on understanding polling data:

 

There is nothing wrong with what you've posted, but polls from May-October are going to be much more indicative of how the race will play out then those from January-April. I'm not ready to call this election yet, but you are free to do so.

 

Actually, that graph I posted in my re-post shows that is not true, either. 150 days before the election is 6 months, no? So at 6 months, the polling averages were 6, 4, and 3 points off of each final result, respectively, for an error of 4.33%. 50 days away (that's almost two months), the polling averages were off by 2, 3, and 6 points, respectively, for an error of 3.67%. So 100 days of additional polling nets us only half a point of additional accuracy. Moreover, 150 days away the polls accurately predicted only one of the three final results, but 50 days out they had picked a winner (Gore/Bush polls constantly see-sawing) for only one of the other two (Kerry). Again, you are wrong. Again, I have told you to go do some book-lurnin' before coming back here to post such inanity. And again, you've ignored me because of tired pundit cliches and tropes. The matter of the fact is, Obama has led Mitt Romney for all but two weeks of the last year, and polling has become more prolific in the past eight years, providing much more accuracy thanks to the Central Limit Theorem. The only people who are not calling the election for Obama are those who either willfully ignore/distort polling data, or those who have a direct financial stake in a close election.

 

Well, I suppose we'll have to see if you're right, but I predict a lot of close races in the swing states on election night. Obviously things could change depending on how things go in Europe.

 

You really expect that "Europe" will make Romney electable? It's bizarre that the best thing a candidate has going for him is that he may collect some default votes is there's a serious economic downturn in Europe. Talk about Hail Mary passes.

 

If Europe goes into a serious economic downturn, it will drag down the US's economy as well, which will make Obama less electable than Romney simply because Obama is the guy leading the ship right now. But yes, it is a poor reflection on the quality of the Republican Party that the best they can come up with to take on Obama is a guy whose only chance to win the election is if something bad happens in Europe.

 

Agreed. Romney is a very weak candidate. RCP now has him leading in North Carolina. It really shouldn't even be this close.