The past two weeks have been par­tic­u­larly busy for the poll­sters. What I found prob­a­bly won’t sur­prise you, but it’s still worth look­ing at.

How are things going for the Pres­i­dent now? Let’s dive in.

National Polls

There’s been just enough of a shift in Obama’s approval/​disapproval rat­ing in the Real Clear Pol­i­tics aver­age to call it a trend. It’s been the same story of oscil­la­tion right around zero for the past few months, but has now set­tled just a hair in neg­a­tive ter­ri­tory. The slight wors­en­ing in the Right Track/​Wrong Track polls I men­tioned the last two times still appears to have peaked.

The improve­ment in Congress’s approval spread con­tin­ues seems to be lev­el­ing off. The generic Con­gres­sional bal­lot now shows a per­fect tie between the two par­ties, though still with a degree of noise. We’re get­ting more fre­quent polling on this met­ric, so we can expect the noise to dimin­ish over the next month or two. It does look mighty close, either way.

In the national pop­u­lar vote matchup of Obama ver­sus pre­sumed Repub­li­can nom­i­nee Mitt Rom­ney, the Pres­i­dent main­tains his nar­row lead, which appears to have nar­rowed a bit recently. How­ever, keep in mind that there are enough peo­ple in the unde­cided col­umn to exceed by a fac­tor of eight the gap between the two can­di­dates. If the elec­tion were based on the national pop­u­lar vote, it would be anyone’s game.

Obama’s favor­a­bil­ity polls con­tinue to be gen­er­ally over 50 per­cent favor­able among “Amer­i­cans” or “reg­is­tered vot­ers”, but less so on polls of “likely vot­ers”. The polls are still noisy, though. A CBS News/​New York Times poll, clearly an out­lier when look­ing at the trend, showed Obama with a 12-​​point deficit. The other recent polls sug­gest that there aren’t any sta­tis­ti­cally sig­nif­i­cant changes of late. Romney’s favor­a­bil­ity polls haven’t changed in a sta­tis­ti­cally sig­nif­i­cant man­ner, though for the first time he’s get­ting favor­ables in some polls that exceed Obama’s.

While these polls still indi­cate a pos­si­ble Obama vic­tory, they are typ­i­cally far­ther removed from the key sig­nal of elec­toral votes than are many other indi­ca­tors. We’ll hit the oth­ers down below.

As of yes­ter­day, Intrade had Obama at a 56.5, up a point from last time. This is the third increase in a row, and big enough to indi­cate a trend, revers­ing his April-​​through-​​June decline.

Things remain in a pro-​​Obama state on the national scene, though the out­look is a lit­tle more mixed than last time.

The Com­pe­ti­tion

Mitt Romney’s sup­port­ers remain more anti-​​Obama than pro-​​Romney, which is a prob­lem for a chal­lenger. This elec­tion, more than per­haps any in mod­ern Amer­i­can his­tory, will be more about get­ting the base out to vote than cap­tur­ing the middle.

And Amer­i­cans are still being reminded of why they aren’t enthu­si­as­tic about the for­mer Gov­er­nor of Massachusetts.

This time, as noted over the past cou­ple of days, Rom­ney went to Lon­don, where he pro­ceeded to tell them that they don’t know how to run an Olympiad. Even if he were cor­rect about this (and it’s far from clear that he is), one doesn’t go to somebody’s house, sit down to din­ner, and then crit­i­cize the cook…even if the food is ined­i­ble. This event rein­forces the Rom­ney Meme of being out of touch, result­ing in say­ing the wrong thing to a host. Remem­ber his cook­ies gaffe? Remem­ber him try­ing to con­nect with NASCAR vot­ers by telling them that he has friends who own NASCAR teams? Whether or not Mitt is truly that socially inept, these are the sorts of sit­u­a­tions that rein­force the meme.

As a reminder of the power of such memes, recall that Pres­i­dent George H. W. Bush appeared out of touch in his reëlec­tion bid in part because of the meme-​​reinforcing story that he didn’t real­ize gro­cery stores had bar­code scan­ners. These memes do have a last­ing impact.

The Elec­toral College

This is the last July Reëlec­tion Watch. Start­ing next time, we’ll again have a slightly nar­rowed band for tossups. This time, though, we’re using the July bands.

Here’s what the Elec­toral Col­lege looks like, based on cur­rent polling data:

Real Clear Pol­i­tics has added a new cat­e­gory on each side, draw­ing a dis­tinc­tion between “likely” and “solid”. I’m not both­er­ing to do that; I draw no dis­tinc­tion between “likely” and “solid”, since they really don’t tell us any­thing mean­ing­ful with respect to the pro­jected out­come of the election.

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:

  • Mis­souri had a new poll from WeAskAmer­ica, who found a nine-​​point lead for Rom­ney. WeAskAmer­ica seems to be pretty noisy, swing­ing wildly away from the trend in both direc­tions in many instances…so it’s really hard to use them for much. Even so, with the lat­est poll cor­rob­o­rat­ing the ear­lier trend, Mis­souri is show­ing me that it’s a “Leans Rom­ney” state.
  • Iowa was polled by Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling, who showed an unad­justed mar­gin of five for Obama. This cor­re­sponds to an adjusted result of about a half-​​point for Obama, which is in line with polls over the past two months. It’s a per­fect “Tossup” state.
  • Florida had three new polls this time. Sur­veyUSA and Mason-​​Dixon give Obama a five– and one-​​point lead, respec­tively, while Pur­ple Strate­gies shows Rom­ney up by three. The noise is still of larger mag­ni­tude than the mar­gin, mak­ing it impos­si­ble to deter­mine a lead­ing can­di­date in the Sun­shine State from polls alone. Florida remains a total enigma, and thus an up-​​the-​​middle “Tossup”.
  • Col­orado has one new poll from Pur­ple Strate­gies, indi­cat­ing a one-​​point lead for Obama. This is in line with the past two Pur­ple Strate­gies polls, all of which use “likely voter” mod­els, and so Col­orado remains on the blue side of the mid­dle, but still within Tossup range.
  • Vir­ginia had three new polls, from Quin­nip­iac, Ras­mussen, and Pur­ple Strate­gies. The range of mar­gins is zero to two for Obama, which keeps Vir­ginia a Tossup, but on the blue side of the middle.
  • Ohio was polled by WeAskAmer­ica, Ras­mussen, and Pur­ple Strate­gies in the past two weeks. All three showed Obama with a lead, rang­ing from two (Rasmussen’s unad­justed, cor­re­spond­ing to three points adjusted for the house effect) to eight (noisy WeAskAmer­ica). Ohio’s polling con­tin­ues to be noisy over­all, but the broader trend sug­gests that we’re now pulling away from the point where the noise is a larger ampli­tude than the mar­gin. Ohio now looks like a “Leans Obama” state, though just barely.
  • Nevada was thrice polled in the past two weeks. Ras­mussen, Republican-​​funded AFP/​Magellan, and WeAskAmer­ica all found Obama ahead by four to six points. I have long doubted that Nevada would cast its elec­toral votes for Obama, but with such a long and con­sis­tent trend, I’m now con­vinced that the Sil­ver State “Leans Obama”.
  • New Hamp­shire was polled by WMUR/​University of New Hamp­shire, who came away with an Obama lead of four points. Rom­ney hasn’t been ahead in a New Hamp­shire poll since April, and Dart­mouth, who con­ducted that poll, has con­sis­tently been to the right of the trend. It’s hard to see New Hamp­shire as any­thing but “Leans Obama”.
  • Michi­gan had three new polls in the past two weeks. Mitchell Research showed Rom­ney up by one point, while Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling gave Obama a 14-​​point unad­justed lead (cor­re­spond­ing to a nine-​​point Obama lead), and Rasmussen’s unad­justed poll gave the edge to Obama by six (cor­re­spond­ing to seven points when adjusted for house bias). We don’t have enough data to deter­mine what, if any, house bias Mitchell has, but it looks like an out­lier poll com­pared to the over­all trend. Michi­gan looks like a “Leans Obama” state.
  • New Mex­ico had been lightly polled for a long time. We finally have two new polls in the Land of Enchant­ment, one from Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling, and one from WeAskAmer­ica. PPP gives Obama an unad­justed five-​​point lead, which adjusts to a tie, while the noisy WeAskAmer­ica shows an 11-​​point Obama lead. With such con­flict­ing data, par­tic­u­larly since the his­tor­i­cal trend looks more like WeAskAmerica’s num­bers, I’m inclined to con­sider the PPP poll an out­lier until we get a con­fir­ma­tion to the con­trary. I’m leav­ing New Mex­ico in the “Leans Obama” column.
  • Min­nesota was polled by KSTP/​SurveyUSA, who con­cluded that Obama has the edge by six points. That’s a bit smaller than the over­all trend has been, but not so far as to move the state to a new col­umn; Min­nesota stays “Leans Obama”.
  • Wis­con­sin was polled by Ras­mussen, who indi­cated that Obama has an unad­justed three-​​point lead (which adjusts to four) and noisy WeAskAmer­ica, who found Obama up by seven. These are both within the bounds of the long-​​term trend. Wis­con­sin belongs in the “Leans Obama” col­umn, and Real Clear Pol­i­tics agrees, hav­ing moved it from Tossup to Leans Obama in the past two weeks.
  • Penn­syl­va­nia was polled twice in the past two weeks. Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling found an unad­justed six-​​point Obama lead (adjust­ing to about 1.5 points), while Ras­mussen came away with Obama ahead by five (adjust­ing to six). Together, they line up with the over­all trend that calls the Key­stone State a “Leans Obama” state.
  • Wash­ing­ton was recently polled by Sur­veyUSA, who found a nine-​​point lead for Obama. It fits the long-​​term trend of Wash­ing­ton being a “Likely Obama” state.
  • New Jer­sey was polled twice in the past two weeks. Mon­mouth Uni­ver­sity found an eight-​​point Obama lead, while Quin­nip­iac found that Obama is up by 11. There’s no rea­son to move the Gar­den State out of the “Likely Obama” column.

In the past two weeks, nearly every state of inter­est was polled, most by mul­ti­ple com­pa­nies. Mis­souri moved toward Rom­ney, while Nevada and New Hamp­shire moved toward Obama. This gives Obama a likely 275 elec­toral votes, a far cry from two weeks ago. It’s the first time the Log­a­rchism elec­toral vote pro­jec­tion has put Obama into a vic­tory stance, even if he loses all tossup states.

Con­clu­sion

Rom­ney has been improv­ing in some polls, but it may not be enough to change the occu­pant of the White House. The Elec­toral Col­lege con­tin­ues to show signs of mov­ing in Obama’s direction.

If I had to pre­dict an Elec­toral Col­lege result, I’d keep things exactly where they were last time, though I have greater con­fi­dence today than I did two weeks ago. That pre­dic­tion would give Obama 303, and Rom­ney 235. In that sce­nario, Obama would be 62 votes shy of his 2008 tally.

How do you feel about these pre­dic­tions? Do you dif­fer on them? If so, how, where, and why?

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