Monday, October 8, 2012

Electoral Math 10/8/12


No changes on the map tonight, although Mitt Romney picks up about 94,000 net votes in the popular vote count tonight.

A couple of interesting developments in national polls today. Rasmussen 3-day tracking poll came out a tie today. This is in contrast to yesterday’s release where Romney was ahead by 2. The implication is that there may be some softening in the effect of last week’s debate.

Further, in Gallup’s 7 day tracking poll, Obama is ahead by 5. Even more, Gallup released a 3-day result to show the effect of the debate. It too, was a tie, 47-47.

My take? I think we’re in a place where the race overall is too close to call. It will likely take about 2 weeks for my projections to catch up to the state of the race, even in battleground states. In states that are not expected to be close, it will likely be harder to predict than the correct margins than it was in 2008 because there will be fewer polls. The game changing event in 2008 was in late August vs. the beginning of October this year. Additionally, the race in 2008 was considerably more stable in September and October than this time around.

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