State of the Race – August 25

I don’t have to time this weekend to post a full analysis, but I at least wanted to put this week’s electoral counts up.  Here is the tally as we head into next week’s Republican National Convention in Tampa, FL.

	Safe	Likely	Lean	Total
Obama	158	63	76	297
Romney	147	34	10	191
Tossup				50

If you want to see a visual breakdown of where states fall, see the photo above or click here for a map. Obviously, the darker the shade of blue or red, then the safer that state is for that candidate. (If you want to see how I arrived at these categories, I would encourage you to review the post I did on August 11 which can be found here.)

Once again, a lot of the movement is towards the center as Michigan, Missouri and Nevada all moved from likely to lean (Michigan and Nevada for Obama and Missouri for Romney).  The other move is Colorado and Virginia moving from toss-up to lean Obama. The end result is Obama widens his lead a bit while Romney remains steady at 191 which is where he’s been since I started looking at this.

As we move through the conventions the next two weeks, we’ll see how much movement there is in the states, and next week I’ll look at how the Republican National Convention has started to move us into the final push of the campaign.

State of the Race – August 18

It has now been one week since Governor Romney chose Paul Ryan as his running mate, so let's see where the race stands and what, if any, impact this choice has made. The chart below shows the breakdown on electoral votes as I calculate them as of this weekend:

	Safe	Likely	Lean	Total
Obama	158	85	32	275
Romney	144	47	0	191
Tossup				72

If you want to see a visual breakdown of where states fall, see the photo above or click here for a map. Obviously, the darker the shade of blue or red, then the safer that state is for that candidate. (If you want to see how I arrived at these categories, I would encourage you to review last week's post which can be found here.)

Obviously, the biggest change is the addition of Florida and Virginia from Lean Obama to tossup. This puts four states with a total of 72 electoral votes in the tossup category. Although the president is still above the magic number of 270, it is by a very slim margin which shows that this election is still very close and as I expected, the race is tightening up. The other visible change is Wisconsin moving from the Likely Obama category to the Lean Obama category. In addition, there were other states that made changes in their percentages, but did not change categories – specifically, Ohio moved closer to the tossup category while Missouri moved closer to the Lean Romney category. In fact, all of the changes from last weekend to this weekend were states that were moving closer to the center, so to speak.

What does this say about the race and the selection of Congressman Ryan? Well first of all, I think it tells us that Governor Romney got a little bit of a bounce from the selection of Congressman Ryan as his running mate. I think this is largely due to the fact that the conservatives in the Republican Party are now really getting behind Romney's campaign and Congressman Ryan goes a long way in winning those voters over. As I said last week, Governor Romney's biggest fear would be that the conservatives would not get behind his candidacy and as a result, he would lose their enthusiasm. The conservatives clearly believe that Romney has chosen one of them with the selection of Congressman Ryan, so I think this goes a long way in helping Romney put any leftover troubles he had from the primary season behind him.

However, I also think that the tightening in the race and the movement of states towards the center speaks about the tone that this campaign has taken so far. Anyone who lives in a state or market that is considered one of the swing states has already had to deal with the constant barrage of advertising in this campaign and we're not even to Labor Day yet. Here's an interesting fact I read this week: the entire advertising spending in the 2008 general election was approximately $512 million. So far this year, the advertising spending in the general election in this presidential campaign has already exceeded that amount. Most commentators who study politics and elections generally say that the campaign doesn't start in earnest until after Labor Day. In other words, this will only get worse.

The insane amount of money being spent on this election is a clear byproduct of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision in 2010. I hate to say I told you so, but this was something that I did predict. In a blog post I did immediately after the Citizens United decision, I wrote “Why is this significant? It completely changes the way elections will now be run. Candidates will not only have to worry about ads that their opponent will run, but ones that corporations may run against them. It will also open up the amount of money that will be spent on political campaigns to heights never imagined.” The amazing thing about the amount of money I listed above is the fact that most of this is being spent by outside forces, i.e. not the campaigns themselves. You'll hear the news organizations refer to them as the Super-PACs. The other interesting thing about the so-called Super-PACs is that their advertising cannot be in coordination with the campaigns. In other words, they can't be promoting the candidacy of one of the candidates, so they are only left with one option – to go negative against the other side. If you're watching the political advertising, it is clear that both campaigns have been negative in their ads thus far, but what compounds this is the fact that all of the ads run by the Super-PACs are negative. For those of you who live in one of the battleground states and dislike political advertising, you better just avoid TV for the next 11 weeks because it's going to get really ugly.

What is this doing to the polls? There are a lot of studies that have gone into the effect of negative advertising and it's no surprise that they show that negative ads generally turn voters off. So why do campaigns run the negative ads? Unfortunately, it's because they work. While it turns voters off, it also has the consequence of depressing turnout for your opponent’s supporters and making undecided voters less likely to vote at all. This allows you to win not by winning undecided voters, but rather by making less of your opponent's voters show up at the polls. As a result, it should be no surprise that the percentage of eligible voters who actually participate in the electoral process continues to go down. So when we see the polls in these various battleground states getting closer, I think a lot of it can be attributed to the unprecedented negative ad wars that are going on in these states.

Anyway, as we proceed through the campaign, another interesting thing to monitor will be where both the campaigns and the Super-PACs are spending their money on advertising. I think that will say a lot about what are the true tossup states and which ones are not. As we get further into the campaign, this will be something I'll also look at and track as I continue to blog about the status of the election.

State of the Race – August 11

I thought for the general election I would post an ongoing analysis of where I think the race stands. For a bit of background, I'll explain where I am getting most of my data to do this analysis. A lot of my polling comes from the website www.270towin.com as they collect polling data from numerous sources including: Rasmussen, Quinnipiac, Purple Strategies, NBC News/Marist, Fox News, Survey USA and Public Policy. They then use that polling data along with past electoral history and assign a percentage likelihood that a state will go for one candidate or the other. In 2008, I used this data to track the election and I found it very interesting.  For a breakdown on the analysis from that election, feel free to review my first post on this blog which can be found here.

For this election cycle, I decided to do some different categories for where states fall and the percentage likelihood that it will go one candidate or the other. Based on the app that 270towin.com put out, there are three possibilities for each candidate and a tossup category. The three categories are: Safe, Likely and Lean. If the state fell in the percentage of a 99% chance that it would go one candidate, I placed it in the Safe category. If the state fell in the percentage of a 80-98% chance that it would go for a candidate, I placed it in the Likely category. If the state fell in the percentage of a 60-79% chance that it would go for a candidate, I placed it in the Lean category. Finally, if a state was between a 50-59% chance, I placed it in the tossup category.

The current breakdown is as follows:

	Safe	Likely	Lean	Total
Obama	158	95	64	317
Romney	144	47	0	191
Tossup				30

If you want to see a visual breakdown of where states fall, click here for a map. Obviously, the darker the shade of blue or red, then the safer that state is for that candidate.

Since this is my first post doing this analysis, there's really nothing to discuss regarding the change in the states. One thing I will point out though is that it is very early and I think that as we go through the election cycle this race will tighten up. Right now, the lead that President Obama enjoys is due to the inherent advantage the Democrats have with the electoral map. For instance, if you look at states that have gone for the same party in the last five elections you will find that the Democrats have 242 electoral votes in those states where the Republicans only have 102 electoral votes in their states. One thing that President Obama was able to do in 2008 was win in states that typically went red. Despite their attempts in the last several elections, the one thing Republicans have not been able to do was win in traditionally blue states. I'm sure that Romney will try to win in some of those states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin and his selection of Paul Ryan for the ticket is most certainly aimed at these very states. In order to win, Romney will either need to win some of these blue states or he faces the same road that George W. Bush took to win – sweep all of the swing states (i.e. Florida, Ohio, Virginia and Iowa).

Finally, since Governor Romney announced Congressman Ryan as his running mate today, I would be remiss if I did not give my thoughts. First of all, in the spirit of full disclosure I should say that I do plan to vote to reelect the president. I don't want to get into all the reasons why and I will say that I have been somewhat disappointed in his presidency, but I still agree with his policies on a whole more than I do Governor Romney's. All that said, I do think that Representative Ryan is a very interesting candidate. In many ways, I think he helps both sides.

On the Republican side, he helps Mitt Romney shore up his conservative base. Ever since this election started in the primaries, Romney struggled with the conservative wing of the Republican Party. While there was never a chance that these voters would vote for Obama, there was a chance that they would not get excited about Governor Romney's campaign and not show the support that Romney needs, or worse yet, they stay home on Election Day. As chairman of the House Budget Committee, Congressman Ryan has been one of the key players in the budget battles over the last year and a half and of course, he is the author of the Ryan budget plan that the conservatives absolutely love. By choosing Ryan, Romney makes it clear that he is embracing the economic policies that the conservative wing of the Republican Party wants to see enacted. This pick wins Romney a lot of favor with the conservatives and will certainly give them a reason to get excited about his campaign. As for the pick itself, I do think that it is a fabulous choice for Romney if he wins. I say that because I think that Ryan will do a great job in helping him govern. Being in Congress will give Ryan a lot of insight in helping Romney get his agenda through the legislative branch and for that reason, Romney deserves a lot of credit with his choice.

However, I also think that it helps the Democrats. The Ryan budget plan has gotten a lot of criticism from the Democrats as they are fond of saying that his plan would “end Medicare as we know it.” I will say that I think a lot of the criticism that the Democrats have made of the plan is unfair and it is actually outright misleading. However, the plan clearly would be a radical change from the status quo and this will give the Democrats an issue that they will be able to campaign against rather than just defending what they have done. Medicare and Social Security are often referred to as the third rail in American politics because if you touch them, you die. Well, Ryan has touched that third rail and now by extension, Romney has too. This election may just prove whether that axiom is true or not. The other reason that I think this selection helps the president is because Ryan is part of Congress which has some of the lowest approval ratings that the institution has ever had. While Obama's approval ratings have not been stellar, Congress's approval ratings are downright ghastly.

Of course, one thing that should be noted is that vice presidential candidates have very little effect on the outcome of the election, but in this case I think it's clear that the choice of Paul Ryan will serve to galvanize both sides. In the end, it probably will not dictate who wins, but it will frame the debate. One thing is certain and that is the next three months will be very interesting. I will try to post an update every weekend regarding the status of the race so that we can see how things progress.