Polling con­tin­ues to heat up in the Pres­i­den­tial race.

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

National Polls

The trend I men­tioned two weeks ago of Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s approval/​disapproval rat­ing in the Real Clear Pol­i­tics aver­age appears to have reversed. We’re back to the same old story of oscil­la­tion right around zero, as it has been since the begin­ning of spring. In other words, it’s reverted to the mean, after a brief dip into neg­a­tive ter­ri­tory. The peak of neg­a­tiv­ity I men­tioned last time in the Right Track/​Wrong Track polls remains steady.

The improve­ment in Congress’s approval spread con­tin­ues, mostly through increases in approval rather than decreases in dis­ap­proval. The generic Con­gres­sional bal­lot moved back into Repub­li­can ter­ri­tory, but we’ve seen oscil­la­tions there around zero in the same way that we’ve seen oscil­la­tions in Obama’s approval/​disapproval gap. I expected the noise to dimin­ish as we got more fre­quent polls, but that has yet to mate­ri­al­ize. At this point, I don’t expect the generic bal­lot to tell us much of use any­way. It’s time to put it up in the top shelf of the closet, in the back.

In the national pop­u­lar vote matchup of Obama ver­sus pre­sumed Repub­li­can nom­i­nee Mitt Rom­ney, the President’s lead has grown sharply in the past two weeks, man­i­fest­ing itself in a com­bi­na­tion of growth for Obama and shrink­age for Rom­ney. It’s a large enough and sud­den enough shift that it leaves me won­der­ing if it’s going to be a blip that will be fol­lowed by a rever­sion to the mean. If it’s a trend, it’s one that’s sig­nif­i­cant enough to put Obama in the ter­ri­tory of a con­fi­dent national pop­u­lar vote win. We’ll see in a cou­ple of weeks how sticky this shift really is. Inter­est­ingly, Obama’s lead over Rom­ney today is about the same as his lead over Sen­a­tor John McCain on this date four years ago. On the other hand, Sen­a­tor John Kerry had a lead, albeit a bit smaller, over Pres­i­dent George W. Bush on this date in 2004.

Obama’s favor­a­bil­ity polls remain pretty con­sis­tently over 50 per­cent favor­able among “Amer­i­cans” or “reg­is­tered vot­ers”. Oddly, we haven’t had favor­a­bil­ity polls of “likely vot­ers” recently. Still, whether you look at recent num­bers or longer his­tory, the Pres­i­dent has pos­i­tive favor­a­bil­ity, even while his job approval has been lower. Romney’s favor­a­bil­ity polls haven’t changed in a sta­tis­ti­cally sig­nif­i­cant man­ner, and the higher favor­able num­bers I men­tioned two weeks ago appear to have been sta­tis­ti­cal noise. Obama con­tin­ues to main­tain the edge here.

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 58.7, up a cou­ple of points from last time. This is the fourth 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, and the cloudy view last time appears to have cleared.

The Econ­omy

In this edi­tion, the sec­tion on Mitt Rom­ney is being replaced by a lit­tle on the economy.

This week, in Rich­mond, Cal­i­for­nia, a crude oil sep­a­ra­tor exploded at the largest Chevron refin­ery in the state, stop­ping its abil­ity to con­vert crude oil into its pri­mary com­po­nents. The por­tion of the plant that fur­ther refines those pri­mary com­po­nents is still func­tional, and it will con­tinue to pro­duce retail prod­uct from its onsite sup­ply of those pri­mary com­po­nents. How­ever, until the sep­a­ra­tor is repaired, no crude oil will be processed at that plant.

The national refin­ing infra­struc­ture has very lit­tle excess capac­ity, a sit­u­a­tion that oil com­pa­nies like to blame on excess reg­u­la­tion. In real­ity, there is lit­tle excess capac­ity because excess capac­ity trans­lates to wasted capac­ity, and thus wasted money. There is no incen­tive for any oil com­pany to build a plant whose sole pur­pose is to remain idle until some­thing tragic hap­pens at the others.

As a result, the national sup­ply of refined petro­leum prod­ucts will nec­es­sar­ily decline over the next few months. This has already led to a spike in gaso­line prices on the whole­sale mar­kets, and will most likely result in an increase of about 30 cents per gal­lon in the near future.

It’s unclear what impact, if any, this will have on either the over­all econ­omy or Obama’s prospects for reëlec­tion. This is some­thing we will need to fol­low closely over the next month.

The Elec­toral College

This is the first August Reëlec­tion Watch. We’re now using a fur­ther nar­rowed set of bands for tossups and lean­ing states.

Here’s what the 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:

  • Ari­zona was polled by Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling, who found an 11-​​point lead for Rom­ney. This is within the range of expected val­ues from pre­vi­ous polls. In light of the nar­rower bands, plus a con­sis­tent double-​​digit mar­gin for Rom­ney, I’m mov­ing Ari­zona into the “Likely Rom­ney” col­umn. I have always been skep­ti­cal that Ari­zona was in play, but at this point I’m con­vinced that it’s not; it’s the first state to make a move into the “Likely Rom­ney” col­umn since I began track­ing the elec­toral votes.
  • Geor­gia had two new polls, one from Sur­veyUSA and one from Insid­er­Ad­van­tage. Both used likely voter mod­els; the for­mer showed Rom­ney with an eight-​​point lead, while the lat­ter has him up by nine. There’s no change here, since these are well within the his­tor­i­cal margins.
  • Indi­ana was polled by Ras­mussen. Indi­ana is a dif­fi­cult state to poll, because state law pro­hibits robo-​​polling. This means that poll­sters’ tech­niques in Indi­ana are inher­ently dif­fer­ent from their tech­niques else­where, which means that we can’t assume that any­thing we know about a par­tic­u­lar poll­ster can be used in Indi­ana. So, while Rasmussen’s 16-​​point Rom­ney lead would ordi­nar­ily push the Hoosiers into “Likely Rom­ney”, I can’t safely make that assump­tion here. The data are sim­ply too sparse, and the error bars too wide. Indiana’s a “Leans Rom­ney” state in terms of data, though prob­a­bly a “Likely Rom­ney” state in reality.
  • Mis­souri was polled by Ras­mussen and Post-​​Dispatch/​Mason-​​Dixon. Ras­mussen found a six-​​point unad­justed lead for Rom­ney (five adjusted), while Post-​​Dispatch came away with a nine-​​point Rom­ney lead, a result that matched the WeAskAmer­ica poll from last time. Mis­souri is still a “Leans Rom­ney” state.
  • North Car­olina was polled by Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling, who saw an unad­justed three-​​point Obama lead (which adjusts to a tie), and Ras­mussen, who found Rom­ney up by five unad­justed points (four adjusted). It’s just on the “Tossup” side of the bor­der with “Leans Romney”.
  • Iowa was polled by Ras­mussen, and the two-​​point unad­justed mar­gin for Rom­ney (cor­re­spond­ing to an adjusted one-​​point mar­gin) is rather close to Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling’s half-​​point adjusted mar­gin for Obama from two weeks ago. No change here; Iowa’s still an up-​​the-​​middle “Tossup”.
  • Florida had two new polls this time. CBS/​New York Times/​Quinnipiac saw a six-​​point unad­justed lead for Obama (eight adjusted), while Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling found him up by one, unad­justed (this trans­lates to two points for Rom­ney). 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 was polled by three firms in the past two weeks. CBS/​New York Times/​Quinnipiac saw a five-​​point unad­justed lead for Rom­ney (four adjusted), while Ras­mussen found an unad­justed tie (which adjusts to a lit­tle over a point for Obama) and Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling had Obama up by six unad­justed points (three adjusted). With the over­all trend, it seems that Quin­nip­iac had an out­lier this time. I still think Col­orado is on the blue side of the mid­dle, but within Tossup range.
  • Vir­ginia was polled by both Ras­mussen, who saw Obama up by two unad­justed points (three adjusted), and CBS/​New York Times/​Quinnipiac, who found Obama up by four unad­justed points (six adjusted). Vir­ginia is still on the blue edge of a Tossup, but another round of polls like this will push it over the edge into “Leans Obama”.
  • Ohio got a new poll from CBS/​New York Times/​Quinnipiac, who saw a six-​​point unad­justed lead for Obama (seven adjusted). Ohio’s polling is still noisy, but the broader trend con­tin­ues to sug­gest that we’re beyond the point where the noise is a larger ampli­tude than the mar­gin. Ohio is a “Leans Obama” state, con­trary to what Real Clear Pol­i­tics believes.
  • Michi­gan had two new polls in the past two weeks. Both EPIC-​​MRA and Ras­mussen came away with six-​​point Obama mar­gins, though Rasmussen’s adjusts to seven. The Mitchell Research poll I men­tioned last time does, indeed, appear to have been an out­lier. Michi­gan is still a “Leans Obama” state.
  • Wis­con­sin was polled by two firms in the past fort­night. Mar­quette Uni­ver­sity found a five-​​point Obama lead, while CBS/​New York Times/​Quinnipiac saw a six-​​point unad­justed (eight point adjusted) lead for the Pres­i­dent. These are both within the bounds of the long-​​term trend. Wis­con­sin remains in the “Leans Obama” column.
  • Penn­syl­va­nia was polled by CBS/​New York Times/​Quinnipiac, who saw an aston­ish­ing 11-​​point unad­justed lead for Obama. This adjusts to 13 points, but it’s far enough from the trend that I sus­pect we’re look­ing at an out­lier here. Bar­ring con­fir­ma­tion of this sort of lead, Penn­syl­va­nia remains a “Leans Obama” state. With con­fir­ma­tion, how­ever, it would move to “Likely Obama”.
  • Con­necti­cut was polled by Pub­lic Pol­icy Polling, who saw an eight-​​point unad­justed Obama lead, cor­re­spond­ing to a five-​​point adjusted lead. Con­necti­cut has always been polled as a closer race by PPP than by Quin­nip­iac, the only other poll­ster to pub­lish results for the Con­sti­tu­tion State. Could it be a “Leans Obama” state instead of a “Likely Obama” state? I don’t think so, but we should at least keep an eye out.

In the past two weeks, most states of inter­est were polled, most by mul­ti­ple com­pa­nies. Ari­zona was the lone mover this time. Obama still ends up with a likely 275 elec­toral votes. That’s two times in a row where Obama could lose all tossups and still stay in the White House.

Con­clu­sion

Rom­ney has been return­ing to the mean, which doesn’t bode well for the chal­lenger. The Elec­toral Col­lege remains in Obama’s court.

If I had to pre­dict an Elec­toral Col­lege result, I’d keep things exactly where they have been for the past month, and I have increas­ing con­fi­dence. 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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