State of the Race – November 5 (What to Watch For)

As you can see from the  picture, it all starts with a blank map tomorrow night. In prepara-tion for Election Day, I thought I'd share a few final thoughts and things to be looking for as you watch the coverage on election night.

1.                More 2004 Similarities: For those of you who have been reading this election analysis all along know that I have been drawing many comparisons to the 2004 election between George W. Bush and John Kerry. Here are a couple more to add to the list: Yesterday I was watching NBC's Meet the Press and they released the final NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll and it found Obama leading Romney by a margin of 48% to 47%. And what was the final NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll in 2004? You guessed it – Bush was leading Kerry 48% to 47%.

If Obama does repeat Bush's performance and gets reelected, then there is another similarity as well. You may have heard over the weekend that the Washington Redskins have been a predictor for presidential elections over the years. The predictor is as follows: if the Redskins win their last home game before the election than the party that currently controls the White House will win the election and conversely, if the Redskins lose than the challenging party will win. Since 1940, this predictor has been right 17 out of 18 times. The one time it was wrong? Once again, you guessed it – 2004 when the Redskins lost to the Packers, but President Bush was reelected.

2.                Early State Results: At 7:00 EST, polls will close in six different states – Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, Virginia & Vermont. I fully expect the networks will call Kentucky, South Carolina and Vermont shortly thereafter as Kentucky and South Carolina are in the “Safe” Romney category and Vermont is in the “Safe” Obama category. I would be shocked if Virginia is called for either side before any real results start coming in as it has been a clear tossup state throughout this entire race. However, the more interesting states that will be closing first are Georgia and Indiana. Both of these states are in the “Likely” Romney category and I would expect they would be called relatively early in the evening. However, I will be paying especially close attention to how quickly Indiana is called. It was a state that went for Obama in 2008, but the president has not really contested it in this cycle. If it is called immediately for Romney, that is clearly a good sign for the Republicans, but if it lingers throughout the evening, that could be a sign of a long evening for the Romney campaign.

On the flipside, there are no real comparable Obama states that would give a similar indication until you get to 9:00 EST which is when the polls close in Minnesota and New Mexico. These are both states that are in the “Likely” Obama category and have had similar poll numbers to Georgia and Indiana. If there is a lack of calling these two states shortly after they are closed, that could portend poorly for Obama.

3.                FLOHVA: I mentioned that Virginia closes polls at 7:00 EST and this is the first of the major battlegrounds that could potentially get called. As I said in my prediction post yesterday, Romney will most likely need to sweep FLOHVA in order to win. If you don't believe me, just look at where Romney is spending his last full day of campaigning: he was in Florida this morning, then he goes to Virginia and then he goes to Ohio before finishing the day in New Hampshire. All three of these states close their polls relatively early in the evening as Ohio closes at 7:30 EST and Florida closes its final polls at 8:00 EST. Many of Florida's polls will actually close at 7:00 EST, but since the Florida Panhandle is in the central time zone, those polls remain open until 8:00 EST. All this raises good point, whenever I'm talking about polls closing, I am using the time at which point ALL polls are closed in a state.

4.                Poll Closing Times in the Battlegrounds: As for the 11 battleground states that I have previously identified, the polls will close in these 11 states at the following times (all times EST):

7:00 – Virginia

7:30 – North Carolina, Ohio

8:00 – Florida, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania

9:00 – Colorado, Michigan, Wisconsin

10:00 – Iowa, Nevada

As I've said all along, these are the states to watch and obviously as they start to get called we will have a better idea of who the next president will be. North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Michigan are the ones that should be the easiest to call as North Carolina has been trending towards Romney and Pennsylvania and Michigan towards Obama. If it gets late in the evening and any of these states has not been called, that is bad news for the candidate who is expected to win that state.

5.                Poll Closings for Senate Battlegrounds: On Saturday, I provided my predictionfor the Senate races as well. As a reminder, below are the poll closing times for those states that I think will determine which party controls the upper chamber in Congress. Once again, all times are EST and as with my Senate chart, I have labeled the states in blue if there currently controlled by the Democrats and in red if there currently controlled by the Republicans and the asterix behind the state name indicates that it is an incumbent that is running.

7:00 – Indiana, Virginia

8:00 – Maine, Massachusetts*, Missouri*

9:00 – Arizona, Wisconsin

10:00 – Montana*, Nevada*

I have added Maine to this list only because the significance it could have if independent candidate Angus King does win as expected. If he does, I doubt he will indicate a preference for which party he will caucus with, but it will be interesting to see if you can read anything when and if he does give a victory speech.

6.                Turnout in States Affected by Hurricane Sandy: How the states of Connecticut, New Jersey and New York respond to the devastation from Hurricane Sandy and provide for polling places might be an interesting story. In fact, I would guess that turnout will be lower in these three states, especially New Jersey and New York. While I do not expect this to affect who wins these states, it could impact the larger popular vote total. Obama is expected to win all three of these states and if he ends up winning the Electoral College, but turnout has been suppressed in these three states than it is a very real possibility that Sandy may cause a split decision and Romney pulls out a popular vote victory. If you read my prediction post yesterday, you know that I thought about predicting a split decision. While I do not think it will happen, the most likely scenario if it did occur would be Obama winning the Electoral College and Romney winning the popular vote and Hurricane Sandy might be the culprit if it does occur.

7.                Is 11:00 Really the Midnight Hour? In looking at when all the polls close, I went through a scenario of what the map might look like on election night. Unless there is some big surprise and one of the key battleground states gets called early in the evening, Romney will probably have the electoral vote lead for most of the evening. However, that lead might turn into a pumpkin at 11:00 EST. That's because there are 78 electoral votes in the states of California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington that will most likely go into Obama's column at 11:00 EST when those states’ polls close. In fact, while I doubt it will happen, if Obama gets to 192 electoral votes or higher prior to 11:00 EST, then the race is over as those 78 electoral votes will put him over the top. So if you're rooting for Romney and you see an electoral vote lead early in the evening, just remember the lesson of Cinderella as 11:00 just might be your midnight hour.

8.                Victory Speech: Whoever wins on Tuesday will have a difficult road ahead of him as the country is clearly divided and Congress will most likely be divided with Republicans controlling the House and Democrats controlling the Senate. This means that whoever is elected president will have to deal with the other party to get things done. You could have an honest debate about which of the two candidates is best equipped to do this, but there is no escaping the fact that there will need to be some bipartisanship to accomplish any agenda. Additionally, it's clear to me that barring something unforeseen on election night, neither candidate will be able to claim a mandate for his election. Therefore, if we do get a victory speech early Wednesday morning, then I am very interested to see what tone the victor takes. Will he be humble in accepting his victory recognizing that he does not have a clear mandate and must try and repair a divided nation? Or will he take a tone where he misreads the election and tries to claim a mandate?

Well those are my final thoughts and things to look for on election night. Check back tomorrow as if there is anything that develops before the polls are closing, I'll try and post. Likewise, if there are any final changes in my categories for the states, I will also report that. Once again, Happy Voting!!

State of the Race – November 4 (POTUS Prediction)

We are now two days away from Election Day and I have been tracking this race for nearly 3 months. Combined the campaigns spent nearly $1 billion trying to convince you to elect them to the presidency. After all that time and money, I am ready to predict – a VERY long night. I have been saying for some time and laid out in my post on September 29 that this election had many similarities to 2004. If you recall, that election night went into the early morning hours on Wednesday and it wasn't until John Kerry conceded the election around noon on Wednesday that we knew it was over. In my post on September 29, I provided a chart with similarities between the 2004 election and this year's election. I think after Tuesday, we will be able to add another similarity – Swing State That Decides the Race: Ohio. It was that state that put George W. Bush over the top in 2004 and I expect that it will be the key to either of these candidates winning on Tuesday.

As reminder, here's a chart of where I saw the states in my analysis yesterday. Of course, if the states go exactly according to this prediction, then the “Tossup” states do not matter as President Obama will have 281 electoral votes, 11 more than he needs to win reelection. However, I do not think the analysis is quite that easy.

	Safe	Likely	Lean
Obama	CA, CT, DE, DC, HI, IL, ME, MD, MA, NJ, NY, RI, VT, WA	MI, MN, NM, OR, PA	IA, NV, NH, OH, WI
Romney	AL, AK, AR, ID, KS, KY, LA, MS, MT, NE, ND, OK, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, WV, WY	AZ, GA, IN, MO	NC
Tossup	CO, FL, VA

A note on my analysis: since the first debate at the beginning of October, I began tracking all the polls on a spreadsheet that were done in the 11 battleground states that I previously identified (CO, FL, IA, MI, NV, NH, NC, 0H, PA, VA & WI). When I talk about average poll numbers below, it is an average of all those poll numbers done in a specific state over the last month. I'll also be discussing the seven-day average which looks at a state’s poll numbers from last Sunday to today.

For starters, let's look at the best case scenario for both candidates. I've seen people on both sides predict well over 300 for "their" candidate, but I think both are pipe dreams. Let's start with President Obama's best case scenario. I have it represented in this map:

In this scenario, Obama wins all the states that I have on his side, plus two out of the three “Tossup” states. I know that he has spent resources trying to win Florida, but of all the battleground states, Florida and North Carolina are the only states that have an average poll number that favors Romney. Most political commentators will tell you that undecided voters usually will break against the incumbent, so if Obama is already behind in those two states, I find it hard to believe that he'll be able to catch up. As such, I think Florida and North Carolina are both out of his reach. If on election night Obama ends up winning Florida, then I think it will be a very long night for the Romney campaign as there is really no way for Romney to win without Florida.

However, Florida is not the only state that has major significance. On election night, you can expect a lot of discussion about FLOHVA. Every election, there are usually big battleground states that commentators will point to as being the ones that are most critical. This year, the commentators have taken to calling them FLOHVA (Florida, Ohio & Virginia). This is a slight preview of what I was going to say in tomorrow's post regarding what to watch for, but these three states are critical if Romney is to win. If Obama wins any of these three states, he will most likely win the election. For Romney to win, he probably needs to sweep these three states.

As for Romney, his best case scenario is depicted below:

This map has Romney winning all of the states on his side of the ledger, plus all the tossups and winning all of the “Lean” Obama states except for Wisconsin. In fact, this map shows Romney winning every state that George W. Bush won at least once except for New Mexico. Of the “Lean” Obama states that would be least likely to go to Romney, I would point to Nevada due to their demographics, specifically their higher percentage of Latino voters. In looking at the average poll numbers in the battleground states, there have been four where no poll has shown Romney in the lead. Some polls have shown the candidates tied in these states, but Romney has never led in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. As such, I find it hard to believe that he will be able to pick one of those states off, but his best chance is in Nevada if the Latino turnout is down. In other words, a more realistic best case scenario for Romney would be 285 electoral votes. A final note on Nevada and the Latino vote directly relates to New Mexico. As I said above, the one state that George W. Bush was able to win once that Romney has not been competitive in is New Mexico and this is largely due to the higher percentage of Latinos in New Mexico. This is a post for another day, but the Republican Party needs to do something about the Latino vote as today it is just states like New Mexico and Nevada that are harder to win, but in the future if the Latino vote continues to grow, it could be Arizona and Texas and there's no way a Republican can win without those two states.

Now that we've looked at the best case scenarios for both candidates, where do I think things will fall? As I said above, I think it will all come down to Ohio. In looking at the 30 day averages as I said above, Obama has never trailed in any polls in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. If we give him those four states, he is at 253 electoral votes while Governor Romney remains at 191. However, Romney has had a pretty consistently in North Carolina and has only trailed in one poll that came out within the last month. This would put Governor Romney at 206 electoral votes. Like I said above, I also find it hard to believe that Obama will be able to pull out Florida, so this puts Romney at 235 electoral votes.

If you look at this scenario, Ohio would already have enough electoral votes to put Obama over the magic number of 270. In other words, even if we gave Romney all the other battleground states (CO, IA, NH & VA), it would not be enough. As far as where these other four states will fall, I think we can break them into two different categories. First is Colorado and Virginia which have been the two states where the average polling has been the closest. As I said above, conventional wisdom is that undecideds will break against the incumbent and these are two states where I could see this happening. As such, I predict that those two states will go to Romney. As for Iowa and New Hampshire, these are two states that are known politically for their early involvement in the primary process and polling in both of these states has been unreliable over the years. That said, the polls in both of these states seem to be moving towards the president over the last week or two. If we give these two states to Obama, then he would lead Romney in the Electoral College 263-257. Once again, it would come down to Ohio.

It's funny how a week changes things. Last weekend I was prepared to write a prediction indicating that Romney would win Ohio and the presidency 275-263, but this week I am inclined to believe that Obama will make history in becoming only the second president to win reelection with fewer electoral votes than he received in his first election. (For more about this historical fact, see my post on October 20). What changed my analysis? Two different things that may very well be interrelated. First of all, Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast and dominated the news coverage for most of this past week. After the final debate, the polls seem to indicate that any momentum Romney had gained from the first debate had slowed down and things were remaining fairly static. This past week was Romney's last chance to really drive home an argument on the economy and where he felt President Obama had failed. Unfortunately for him, Sandy allowed Obama to do the one thing an incumbent can do to help his reelection and that is act like the president. With Obama touring the areas of destruction and providing comfort to those who were affected by the tragedy, Romney was relegated to expressing sympathy for the victims from afar and not appearing that he was doing anything that would be deemed too political. Ultimately, I think Romney struck the right balance, but this was really a losing proposition for him. In fact, I think the only way that Romney could have been helped by this tragedy was if Obama had made a misstep, which he did not.

The second thing that made me change my mind was what started happening with the polling. One of the main reasons why I had thought about predicting Romney win was that the national polling was favoring Romney despite the fact that Obama seemed to be leading the state-by-state polling. While it was certainly within the realm of possibility that we would have another election where the popular vote winner lost the Electoral College, I found it hard to believe it would happen in a reelection scenario – something that has NEVER happened. In fact, I even toyed with the idea of predicting a split decision where Romney would win the popular vote, but Obama would get reelected based on the Electoral College. However, over the last week the national polling has moved towards the president ever so slightly and most national polls now have the race either tied or have Obama with a slight lead. Additionally, the same thing is happening in the state-by-state polling. Of the 11 battleground states, the average poll number over the last seven days is better for the president compared to the 30 day average in every state except for Pennsylvania and that is a bit misleading as there have only been three polls done in Pennsylvania over the last week. In fact, seeing the uphill climb that Romney has in Ohio might very well be the reason why he is making a last-ditch effort to win Pennsylvania even though he made no campaign stops and did little advertising in the state prior to these last few days. The question is whether it is too little, too late.

Many people believe that the polling done and released the last weekend before the election give a good indication for who will win the race if you compare it to the polling trend. In other words, you will be able to see if the race is breaking in one direction or the other and that should tell you who will win on Election Day. If this is true, then that is good news for President Obama. It is this exact scenario that had me consider putting Virginia in Obama's category as it is the state where I have seen this trend the most pronounced. The average polling in Virginia over the last week is a full point higher for Obama then the 30 day average is. As such, I would not be surprised at all if Obama did win Virginia as well. As I said above, if Obama wins any of the FLOHVA states, he wins. The scenario is clearly shown here because if Obama does win Virginia, that would give him 294 electoral votes meaning that he could even afford to lose the 18 electoral votes in Ohio. However, I will stick with the scenario where it all comes down to Ohio and predict the president will get reelected by a margin of 281-257 and the map will look like this:

Interestingly, if my predictions on the White House, Senate and House are correct, it will mean that everything will remain the same and a country that is sick of business as usual in Washington will have done the unthinkable and returned things to exactly where they were over the last two years. Well, whatever happens, and whatever your persuasion, I encourage you to make sure that you vote on Tuesday if you have not done so already. Tomorrow I'll post my election night preview and give you a few things to look for on election night that may tell us where things are headed. Happy Voting!!

State of the Race – October 6 (Debate Recap)

I want to start this post off with a large disclaimer - while the first president-ial debate was held Wednes-day night, the results of the debate and any impact on polling will not show up until next week due to the lag time of when polls are conducted and when they are reported. With that in mind, let's look at this week's polling. There have been 49 polls done in 23 different states, including 29 polls done in 10 of the 11 battleground states that I've identified previously (PA is the only battleground without new data). With the new polling, here's the current breakdown:

	Safe	Likely	Lean	Total
Obama	179	86	38	303
Romney	131	60	0	191
Tossup				44

If you want to see how I arrived at these categories, I would encourage you to review the first “State of the Race” post I did on August 11 which can be found here. The photo above gives a visual breakdown of which side each states fall on. For a list of which states fall in which categories, I provide the following chart:

	Safe	Likely	Lean
Obama	CA, CT, DE, DC, HI, IL, ME, MD, MA, NJ, NY, RI, VT, WA	MI, MN, NM, OH, OR, PA, WI	CO, IA, NV, NH, VA
Romney	AL, AK, AR, GA, ID, KS, KY, LA, MS, ND, OK, SD, TX, UT, WV, WY	AZ, IN, MO, MT, NE, SC, TN
Tossup	FL, NC

Here are the changes from last week: NONE!!

That's right, there have been no changes in where states fall over the past seven days. There are many pundits who have suggested that even before the conventions, the polling in this race was already very rigid and this pointed to an electorate which had already made up its mind. The lack of any movement in the polls from last week to this week seems to support this theory. However, this will get tested as we look at the polls at this time next week to see if Wednesday night's presidential debate dramatically changes the status of the race.

This brings us to the debate itself. It was clear to me that Mitt Romney won the night. He was aggressive and went after the President and critiqued President Obama's record, while the President was not sharp in his responses. While the President did critique Governor Romney's plans, when Romney defended them, the President did not hold him to the specifics of the plan that he has previously laid out. All this made it look like Obama was trying to avoid his opponent and it seemed like he was trying to play things too safe. Afterwards, I used the analogy of basketball when one team has a lead and tries running out the clock while the other employs pressure to try and catch up. As the polls were clearly in the President's favor going into the debate, he just didn't want to do anything that would surrender that lead which resulted in him appearing like he was running out the clock and playing it safe. In the meantime, Governor Romney knew he was behind and employed a full-court press to try and score some points. Whether these strategies work will only be known once we see polling done after the debate.

Even though President Obama did poorly in the debate, I would once again point to the 2004 election as a way to alleviate any fears of the Democrats. As I pointed out last week, in 2004 the first debate set up very similarly as President Bush enjoyed a lead in the polls going into the first debate. However, when he met Senator Kerry in the first debate, it was clear that Kerry won the debate and in fact, President Bush came across as being annoyed that he even had to be there. In other words, I think this continues to feed my theory that this election is 2004 all over again. In that case, Bush had the opportunity to put Kerry away in the first debate and failed. As a result, the election was very close, but President Bush did narrowly win his second term. As I've said since I began doing this analysis, I fully expect this race to get a lot closer, but if I had to guess, I would still lean towards President Obama winning a second term.

How Wednesday night's debate changes the trajectory of this race remains to be seen, but tune in next week to find out if it has.

State of the Race – September 29 (2004 Déjà Vu & a Debate Preview)

This week there was another round of state-by-state polling and while I did not get a full count, I did count 26 different states where polling was conducted, including all 11 battleground states that I've identified previously. So as we end the month of September, here's where we stand:

	Safe	Likely	Lean	Total
Obama	179	86	38	303
Romney	131	60	0	191
Tossup				44

If you want to see how I arrived at these categories, I would encourage you to review the first “State of the Race” post I did on August 11 which can be found here. The photo above gives a visual breakdown of which side each states fall on. I'm still unable to use the app that allowed me to create the maps with the degrees of where states fell, so for a list of which states fall in which categories, I provide the following chart:

	Safe	Likely	Lean
Obama	CA, CT, DE, DC, HI, IL, ME, MD, MA, NJ, NY, RI, VT, WA	MI, MN, NM, OH, OR, PA, WI	CO, IA, NV, NH, VA
Romney	AL, AK, AR, GA, ID, KS, KY, LA, MS, ND, OK, SD, TX, UT, WV, WY	AZ, IN, MO, MT, NE, SC, TN
Tossup	FL, NC

Here are the changes from last week: The most obvious change is Florida and North Carolina moving back into the “Tossup” category. Last week, Florida was in the “Lean” Obama category and North Carolina was in the “Lean” Romney category. In addition, Ohio and Wisconsin moved from “Lean” Obama to “Likely” Obama. On the Romney side of the ledger, the only changes were Nebraska and South Dakota essentially switching spots with Nebraska going from “Safe” Romney to “Likely” Romney and South Dakota moving from “Likely” Romney to “Safe” Romney.

All in all, this race still remains very static as there have not been many changes since I started this tracking a month and a half ago. However, the race still has moved in favor of President Obama as he now has 265 electoral votes in either the “Safe” or “Likely” categories. This leaves him only five electoral votes away from the magic number of 270. In other words, Governor Romney needs to do something to change the direction of this race or the President will be reelected.

That brings me to my thoughts for this week and how this race compares to another one in recent history. I have said repeatedly to those that have asked that I feel that this race has many similarities to 2004. I created the following chart to show some of the parallels.

	2004	2012
Incumbent president with average approval ratings and despised by the opposition party	George W. Bush	Barack Obama
Issue that the American public was hopeful the incumbent president would have success with, but has now grown impatient with	Iraq War	Economic Recovery
Challenger who is nominated because the opposition party believes he gives the best chance of winning, but is not loved by the party	John Kerry	Mitt Romney
Quote by the Challenger that dogs him through the campaign because it feeds a pre-existing belief about the candidate	I voted for the war before I vote against it	47% of Americans are victims and dependent on the government
Perceived strength of the Challenger that gets used against him	Vietnam service	Bain Capital
Incumbent vice president who is seen as a senior party leader, but is held in contempt by the opposition	Dick Cheney	Joe Biden
Youthful vice presidential candidate for the Challenger	John Edwards	Paul Ryan
Politically motivated moviemaker who makes a smear piece attacking the incumbent president	Michael Moore	Dinesh D'Souza
The politically charged movie attacking the incumbent president	Fahrenheit 9/11	2016: Obama's America

All of this brings us to the debates. Clearly, Romney needs a game changing moment and I believe he can also take some solace from 2004. Going into those debates, President Bush had opened up a lead in the polls and the conventional wisdom for the debates was that he could put the race away if he was able to win the debates or even if they were considered a draw. However, most people felt that Senator Kerry won the debates and the polls supported this belief as things tightened dramatically and President Bush was reelected by a much slimmer margin and his Electoral College win was very close when you consider that if Ohio had switched to Kerry, the Massachusetts senator would have won. In other words, Romney can make this campaign a lot more competitive if he is able to engage the president in the debates and be perceived as the winner.

As a result, I expect Governor Romney to attack the president and his policies and define President Obama by his failures. However, just pointing out the President's failures will not be sufficient. He must also offer the American people an alternative that they can see and accept. This is where making the personal connection is so critical for a challenger. If you look at recent history and when a challenger has beaten the incumbent president, the challenger was always able to make a personal connection to the voters so that they believed that he would be able to fix the problems. It was this connection that helped elect both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton when they ran against incumbents. However, if we look back at 2004, I think we can see a clear case of when the challenger, John Kerry, was not able to make that connection and as a result, failed in his attempt to unseat the sitting president even when Bush was considered vulnerable. That is why I think it is critical for Romney to be able to get beyond his 47% quote and look the American people in the eye and make that connection. Since he was unable to do that at the Republican convention, his next chance will be at Wednesday night's first debate. I'll be watching and will report in next week to let you know if I think he succeeded.