It’s been a more active past two weeks than one might pre­vi­ously have thought. In elec­toral vote land, one state has moved in the past two weeks, but expect to see more move­ment in the future as the zone for tossups nar­rows with the increas­ing num­ber of polling data points and a decreas­ing amount of time for shifts.

So, how are things going for the Pres­i­dent lately? Let’s dive in.

National Polls

No real news on Obama’s approval/​disapproval rat­ing in the Real Clear Pol­i­tics aver­age. It’s been the same story for the past few months. Like­wise with the Right Track/​Wrong Track polls.

Much the same can be said for Congress’s approval spread, though there has been a now-​​visible slow but steady improve­ment over the past six months. The generic Con­gres­sional bal­lot mostly shows a trend of unde­cid­eds becom­ing decid­eds, though pretty equally to both parties.

The national pop­u­lar vote matchup of Obama ver­sus pre­sumed Repub­li­can nom­i­nee Mitt Rom­ney appears to be tight­en­ing slightly, with Obama’s lead shrink­ing to less than a point. Both can­di­dates con­tinue to trend in tan­dem, though Obama has had a recent fall that wasn’t matched by Rom­ney (hence the decline in Obama’s lead).

As of yes­ter­day, Intrade had Obama at a 52.6 per­cent chance of reëlec­tion, down two points from last time. The trend of deflat­ing Intrade odds con­tin­ues, and is rapidly approach­ing even odds.

Things are still in a pro-​​Obama state on the national scene, but just barely, and with a con­tin­u­ing trend mov­ing toward an even race.

The Econ­omy

The unem­ploy­ment rate rose in 18 states in May. How­ever, the key state of Ohio had improv­ing employ­ment for its tenth straight month. This will give us an oppor­tu­nity to see whether the national employ­ment trends out­weigh the local trends when vot­ers are mak­ing their can­di­date choices. We need to see if Ohio out­per­forms the national trend for Obama over the next month or two.

I expected to see a big­ger drop in the Dow Jones Indus­trial Aver­age before its rebound; it dropped another 100 points, and I pre­dicted that it would bot­tom out about 400 points below that. It has rebounded about 700 points since its intra­day low on June 4. The United States stock mar­kets have been react­ing strongly to activ­i­ties in Europe, which sug­gests that its behav­ior is affected more by the whims of Euro­pean gov­ern­ment offi­cials than by any­thing domes­tic. That said, domes­tic employ­ment reports have also had an impact. I remain mod­estly con­fi­dent that, absent some espe­cially com­pelling evi­dence of a sig­nif­i­cant improve­ment in the US econ­omy, the Dow will not rise above about 13,500 between now and the election.

In terms of oil, West Texas Inter­me­di­ate crude is up slightly from its recent low of $83. It’s now at about $84, a one-​​percent rise. Brent crude (rep­re­sent­ing the Euro­pean mar­ket), though, has fallen an addi­tional two per­cent to $97. These num­bers are indica­tive of sta­bi­lized prices, sug­gest­ing that recent eco­nomic shrink­age has come to an end. While the unsea­son­ably low prices pro­vide some fuel for eco­nomic growth, time is run­ning out for any such growth to be reflected in the elec­tion. Unsur­pris­ingly, gaso­line has fol­lowed the oil price drop; the national aver­age is $3.52 per gal­lon, down nine cents from two weeks ago, and 17 cents below the same week last year.

Nat­ural gas prices are falling again, most likely a reflec­tion of near­line stor­age approach­ing sat­u­ra­tion, cou­pled with the nat­u­rally declin­ing demand that comes with warmer sum­mer tem­per­a­tures. While the prices are still above their March bot­tom of two dol­lars per mil­lion British Ther­mal Units, they are rapidly approach­ing that price point again.

The recent eco­nomic dip appears to be com­ing to a close, with lead­ing indi­ca­tors point­ing up, and trail­ing indi­ca­tors point­ing down. I’m increas­ingly cer­tain that any eco­nomic improve­ments between now and Novem­ber will not per­co­late into the vote, which means that Obama will have to abide by the cur­rent econ­omy as his ref­er­en­dum yard­stick. For this rea­son, I’ll be drop­ping the eco­nomic sec­tion soon, though it could return if a major shock occurs between now and the fall.

The Elec­toral College

As I men­tioned above, I’ll be nar­row­ing the Tossup zone from here on out, and widen­ing the Likely zones. This is in part because we will have more polls in more states by more poll­sters; more data points reduces sam­pling error and clar­i­fies house biases. It’s also in part because things tend to sta­bi­lize in the sum­mer in Pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, and so we can be con­fi­dent that, say, a ten-​​point lead for a can­di­date will not trans­late to a loss for that can­di­date in November.

For now, let’s see what the cur­rent Elec­toral Col­lege looks like, based on cur­rent polling data:

Here are the states with new data since last time, cov­er­ing only those dis­cussed around the Inter­net as “leans” or “tossups”, from red­dest to bluest:

  • South Car­olina and Geor­gia shouldn’t even be men­tioned, but Real Clear Pol­i­tics has this funny notion that they are “Leans Rom­ney” states. True, some very old South Car­olina polls show small mar­gins for Rom­ney, but those polls date back to the time when South Car­olini­ans believed for­mer House Speaker Newt Gin­grich was going to be the Repub­li­can can­di­date. More recently, Georgia’s Rom­ney polling mar­gin is “only” about a dozen points. But it would take the move­ment of moun­tains to turn either of those states into any­thing near a tossup, let alone into Obama’s ter­ri­tory. They’re sim­ply not cred­i­ble as any­thing but safe Rom­ney states.
  • Indi­ana is a state that Obama cap­tured by a whisker in 2008. While there hasn’t been much Pres­i­den­tial polling of Hoosiers, it’s hard to imag­ine Indi­ana going to Obama this time. And, if it does, the Pres­i­dent will have a com­fort­able mar­gin of elec­toral votes, ren­der­ing Indi­ana as any­thing but deci­sive in the upcom­ing elec­tion. I’m merely wait­ing for some polls to con­firm that it should be col­ored dark red.
  • Ari­zona is still being called a tossup by Real Clear Pol­i­tics. With the now-​​clearer pic­ture regard­ing Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling shad­ing a few points to the left, their most recent poll (men­tioned last time), show­ing Rom­ney with a seven-​​point edge, puts it far into “Leans Rom­ney” territory…nearly as far as Indi­ana. Obama’s one play in the Grand Canyon state is a huge GOTV effort with His­pan­ics, and that’s prob­a­bly not worth the effort. If Ari­zona is truly in play, then Obama has already safely made the req­ui­site 270 elec­toral votes elsewhere.
  • Mis­souri got a new Ras­mussen poll, show­ing a seven-​​point Rom­ney lead. Just as with the less-​​recent result from Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling, it looks like Missouri’s on the bor­der between “Tossup” and “Leans Rom­ney”. If it’s still in the same spot in July, I’ll start col­or­ing it light red.
  • North Car­olina has one new poll from Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling, which shows a small lead for Rom­ney, just like all of the oth­ers for the past month. Things appear to have sta­bi­lized among the Tarheels slightly on Romney’s side. Like Mis­souri, North Car­olina is on the bor­der between “Tossup” and “Leans Romney”.
  • Florida, had two new polls, one from Pur­ple Strate­gies and one from Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling. The polls con­tinue to strad­dle the even mark. How­ever, with the more com­plete his­tory on bias, it’s become clearer that the unbi­ased view puts Florida a cou­ple of points into Rom­ney ter­ri­tory. And it has sta­bi­lized there for a cou­ple of months. It’s not as clearly in Romney’s camp as North Car­olina, but it’s on the red side of the mid­dle. I’m call­ing the Sun­shine State a “Tossup”, but if pressed would call it “Leans Rom­ney”. If Florida stays in this posi­tion through August, it will be painted light red.
  • Iowa was polled by Ras­mussen this week, and the Republican-​​leaning poll­ster found Rom­ney with a mere one-​​point lead. The over­all trend sug­gests that Iowa has a very slight lean to Obama, but not enough to over­come daily noise at this time.
  • Ohio had one new poll from Pur­ple Strate­gies, point­ing to a two-​​point Rom­ney lead. This one poll looks more like an out­lier than a trend, but there’s some­thing to con­sider here. Obama’s num­bers have been steady, while Romney’s have been ris­ing. This sug­gests that the Buck­eye unde­cid­eds are break­ing for Rom­ney, a trend that we should watch closely.
  • Col­orado has two new polls, one from Pur­ple Strate­gies and one from Ras­mussen. Those two alone sug­gest a very slight lean to Obama. With the broader pic­ture of more polls from the past month, it’s a state that I’d call for Obama if I couldn’t have any tossup states. But I can have tossups, so Col­orado is purple.
  • Nevada is in a sim­i­lar posi­tion to Col­orado. There’s only one new poll of late, from Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling, and it gives Obama a six-​​point lead. But if you look at the longer view, it appears that Nevada has had a con­sis­tent three-​​point Obama edge for a few months. That’s small enough to still sit in Tossup land, but large enough to be bluer than Colorado.
  • Vir­ginia is a state where both Obama and Rom­ney are accu­mu­lat­ing unde­cided vot­ers, and at roughly the same rate. This has been keep­ing Obama’s mar­gin some­what con­stant at about three points. This is con­sis­tent with the results of the three newest polls, from Pur­ple Strate­gies, Quin­nip­iac, and Ras­mussen. Vir­ginia is roughly as strongly in Obama’s favor as North Car­olina is in Romney’s.
  • Ore­gon is worth a look. Nobody but Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling has been there, and their last poll, from about a month ago, gives Obama a mere four-​​point edge. With PPP’s bias, that may put Ore­gon as far to the right as a point or two in Romney’s favor. I’m leav­ing Ore­gon as a “Leans Obama” state until we can get some num­bers from some­one else for comparison.
  • Wis­con­sin was polled this week by WeAskAmer­ica, who found a five-​​point mar­gin for Obama, on a Likely Voter model. This is con­sis­tent with other recent polls, giv­ing us enough data points to be con­fi­dent that Wis­con­sin belongs in the “Leans Obama” column.
  • Michi­gan was polled four times in the past two weeks. Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling shows Obama with a 14-​​point lead, while EPIC-​​MRA found Rom­ney ahead by one. Baydoun/​Foster indi­cated a one-​​point Obama mar­gin, and Ras­mussen came up with remark­able eight-​​point lead for the incum­bent Pres­i­dent. Real­ity is prob­a­bly about an aver­age of the four, keep­ing Michi­gan in “Leans Obama” territory.
  • Penn­syl­va­nia has the oppo­site trend from Ohio; Romney’s num­bers have been steady, while Obama’s are climb­ing. Quin­nip­iac and Franklin & Mar­shall show Obama with six– and 12-​​point leads, respec­tively. The Key­stone State still “Leans Obama”.
  • New Hamp­shire is called “Tossup” by Real Clear Pol­i­tics. Even account­ing for the Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling’s bias, it looks more solidly “Leans Obama” than does Pennsylvania.
  • Min­nesota was polled recently by Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling. Even account­ing for PPP’s left bias, Min­nesota is a solid Obama state, and there’s lit­tle rea­son to expect that to change. Like Ari­zona, Min­nesota will not be a deci­sive state; if Rom­ney wins here, he will have amassed a com­fort­able mar­gin above 270 elec­toral votes.

While all of the bul­let points above help to solid­ify the tal­lies in each col­umn, only Wis­con­sin moved columns in the past two weeks, from “Tossup” to “Leans Obama”. Obama still needs 19 elec­toral votes (down from 29 last time) out of the 106 in the tossup group. Many com­bi­na­tions would get him there. Rom­ney would still have to nearly run the table of tossups to eke out a victory.

Con­clu­sion

It’s rapidly approach­ing tossup if you look at the national polls, but the Elec­toral Col­lege sug­gests that Obama con­tin­ues to hold the edge. Recent weak employ­ment reports do not appear to have had an impact on the states’ polling, either.

If I had to pre­dict an Elec­toral Col­lege result, I’d put the divid­ing line in the above list between Florida and Iowa. That would give Obama 303, and Rom­ney 235. In that sce­nario, Obama would be 62 votes shy of his 2008 tally.

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