Sunday Swing State Polls Analysis: OH, FL, VA, IA, WI, NV, CO, NH, NC, National — Polls Converge, Point to Obama Victory

By Ashish Pabari On November 4, 2012 · 21 Comments

Tomorrow is the final full day of the 2012 campaign, and all the data we have continues to point to an Obama victory on Tuesday. That doesn’t guarantee that it will happen. Polls have been wrong before, but they would need to be wrong on a historic level — meaning the polling averages would need to be very off (by 3%-5%) in several states — for Romney to top 270 electoral votes. Turnout is what matters now. If Obama turns out his voters, he’ll win. If he fails to get some of his more sporadic voters out to the polls, Romney will have a shot.

Today’s numbers, particularly the Pew national poll, also point to Obama gaining following his handling of Hurricane Sandy last week.

But overall, the numbers are now converging. For months, we had wild polling. The national polls said one thing, state polls said another. Many pollsters showed wildly different results in the same state. But now, as it almost always does, everything is lining up. The polls are all largely in agreement now that Obama is up nationally (but by a very narrow margin) and up in key swing states he needs to top 270 electoral votes.

Here are the numbers, followed by the polling averages of each swing state (an average of all the latest polls from every swing state), followed by my analysis. Note that most of these polls are FINAL polls, meaning the pollster will not update again. This is it.

* OHIO: Obama 52%, Romney 47% (Public Policy)
* OHIO: Obama 49%, Romney 46% (YouGov)
* OHIO: Obama 50%, Romney 48% (Columbus Dispatch)
* FLORIDA: Romney 48%, Obama 47% (YouGov)
* VIRGINIA: Obama 51%, Romney 47% (Public Policy)
* VIRGINIA: Obama 48%, Romney 46% (YouGov)
* IOWA: Obama 47%, Romney 42% (Des Moines Register)
* IOWA: Obama 50%, Romney 48% (Public Policy)
* IOWA: Obama 48%, Romney 47% (YouGov)
* WISCONSIN: Obama 51%, Romney 48% (Public Policy)
* WISCONSIN: Obama 50%, Romney 46% (YouGov)
* NEVADA: Obama 49%, Romney 45% (YouGov)
* COLORADO: Obama 48%, Romney 47% (YouGov)
* NEW HAMPSHIRE: Obama 50%, Romney 48% (Public Policy)
* NEW HAMPSHIRE: Obama 47%, Romney 43% (YouGov)
* NEW HAMPSHIRE: Obama 47%, Romney 47% (WMUR)
* NORTH CAROLINA: Romney 49%, Obama 47% (YouGov)

* NATIONAL: Obama 50%, Romney 47% (Pew Research)
* NATIONAL: Obama 50%, Romney 47% (Public Policy)
* NATIONAL: Obama 49%, Romney 46% (RAND)
* NATIONAL: Obama 49%, Romney 47% (YouGov)
* NATIONAL: Obama 49%, Romney 48% (ABC/Washington Post)
* NATIONAL: Obama 48%, Romney 47% (NBC/WSJ)
* NATIONAL: Obama 49%, Romney 49% (CNN)
* NATIONAL: Obama 49%, Romney 49% (Rasmussen)

* OHIO AVG: Obama +4.4%
* IOWA AVG: Obama +3.3%
* WISCONSIN AVG: Obama +5.5%
* NEVADA AVG: Obama +4.8%
* COLORADO AVG: Obama +2.1%
* VIRGINIA AVG: Obama +3.4%
* FLORIDA AVG: Romney +1.2%
* NORTH CAROLINA AVG: Romney +1.5%
* NEW HAMPSHIRE AVG: Obama +3.3%

* NATIONAL AVG: Obama +0.8%

If the averages hold up, Obama would be at 303 electoral votes. He can get to 270 just by winning Ohio, Wisconsin, and Nevada, three states where he has average leads of 4.4%, 5.5%, and 4.8%. These numbers are why you see Romney making a last minute hail mary attempt in Pennsylvania, as he’ll need to pull off a miracle in a state like that to create a map where he has a conceivable path to 270. Of course, Romney is polling better in all the above swing states than he is in Pennsylvania (Obama has a polling average lead of over 4% in Pennsylvania and Romney hasn’t led in a SINGLE poll of Pennsylvania this year except one from three weeks ago). This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a Republican candidate do this. In 2008, John McCain spent his last few days trying to convince the media that he was going to flip Pennsylvania. So did Bob Dole in 1996. And so did George H.W. Bush in 1992. Whether Romney actually sees something in his internal polling of the state, or if he’s just making a desperation move, remains to be seen. We’ll know Tuesday night.

Jon Ralston, the leading expert on Nevada politics (he even called the 2010 Nevada Senate race correctly for Harry Reid even though polls had him losing), has already called Nevada for Obama. According to Ralston, Obama’s lead in early voting is already too large for Romney to erase, and he says Obama will win the state 50% to 46%. Ralston does not make his pick based on polls. He calls races based largely on the early voting numbers, and so far, over 60% of the total vote is already in in Nevada.

The Pew poll, which shows Obama gaining 3% in the last week to take a 3% lead, shows the vast majority of voters approving of the job Obama did with the hurricane last week. The poll found that 69% of voters approved of Obama’s handling of Sandy. Even 46% of Romney supporters approved of the job Obama did. This could be a major factor come Tuesday, as these types of late-game events tend to have an impact on which way last-minute undecideds break. Many Republican commentators, including Karl Rove, are already setting up Hurricane Sandy to be the scapegoat for a Romney loss on Tuesday, though I outlined earlier today that the third debate will be what haunts Romney if he does go on to lose, as after that is when we saw a shift in momentum back to Obama which allowed him to increase and solidify leads in most swing states.

The polling data would have to be systemically wrong at this point for Romney to pull this out. Not only would one state’s polling have to be off, multiple states would have to be off. And by off, I mean off by 4-5% or so in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Nevada. Historically, this is pretty much unheard of. We’ve seen polls get things wrong before, like a single state here or there, but never multiple states in the same year, particularly states where one candidate has a 3% or higher lead.

A few weeks ago, we could point to strange polling discrepancies, but everything is lining up now. National polls and state polls are in agreement — they think Obama is going to win on Tuesday, VERY narrowly in the popular vote but fairly comfortably in the electoral college. Again, that doesn’t guarantee that it will happen, but polls would have to be more wrong than they have ever been for Romney to win.

All that being said, the election now comes down to turnout. It’s that simple. If the electorate looks like how most pollsters expect it to look, Obama will win on Tuesday. If certain types of Obama voters don’t turn out to vote, which is what the Romney campaign is banking on, they’ll have a shot to pull off a few upsets.

21 Responses to Sunday Swing State Polls Analysis: OH, FL, VA, IA, WI, NV, CO, NH, NC, National — Polls Converge, Point to Obama Victory

Steve says:

November 4, 2012 at 9:27 PM

Ashish, thanks for the constant updates and analysis these months. This has become daily reading for me.

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- Lawrence says:
  
  November 5, 2012 at 10:27 AM
  
  Thanks Ashish. I followed you 4 years ago and when this election cycle started again, I came back home. I hope you do this for a living cuz you’re GRRREART! ^_^
  
  Reply
Dirk Diggler says:

November 4, 2012 at 10:22 PM

As a certain goat face would say: YES YES YES!

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Paul says:

November 4, 2012 at 10:37 PM

Dick Morris just said on FOX that Romney will win in a landslide. The guy used to be one of the great political strategists. What the hell happened to him?

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Nods says:

November 4, 2012 at 10:38 PM

I hope Obama wins Florida and North Carolina too, just to stomp all over the GOP’s national grave. If they can’t win against an incumbent when there is 7.9% unemployment, when the hell are they gonna win a national election?

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Alan says:

November 4, 2012 at 11:14 PM

The Redskins lost today so Romney still has a chance.

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Kevin says:

November 4, 2012 at 11:38 PM

I would like to thank you as well — you and Nate Silver were daily reading for me back in 2008 and you became nightly reading for me a couple months ago, as well.

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Chris says:

November 5, 2012 at 2:12 AM

Hey Ashish are you going to do your “what to look for on Election day” thing like you did in 2008. Such as “too early to call” vs “too close to call” in Ohio. I found it very helpful in 08. Just wondering. Thanks for the constant updates its been very helpful.

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willia451 says:

November 5, 2012 at 5:50 AM

I would submit that with the Obama ground game in play, turnout is the least of the worries for the Democrats.

It’s much more likely that the problems that we are seeing currently in South Florida (lawsuits are already flying) might throw the results of the entire election days or weeks past Nov 6th.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/democrats-sue-to-extend-floridas-early-voting/?hp

If we see similar problems in states like Virginia, Ohio, Wisconsin, Colorado, etc. We probably won’t know right away who won and who lost. Because the ballots and results are all tied up in the courts.

Hopefully that won’t happen. But……its possible.

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willia451 says:

November 5, 2012 at 6:08 AM

The bottom line is the Republicans are not going to just go gentle into that good night. They are going to do everything possible within the next 36 hours (and beyond?) to prevent an Obama victory.

Even if it means some of them might land in jail later on down the road.

Why? Because the leadership of the Republican Party staked literally *everything* on making sure President Obama became a “One Term” President. If they can’t get that done, I can only imagine what their party will look like in a year or so.

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Todd says:

November 5, 2012 at 7:38 AM

If things fall out as the polls indicate, even the GOP won’t contest the results. It’s one thing to argue the results in one state but Romney would have to create a compelling case in multiple states and that seems desperate even for him.
If there is a fight about voter fraud, expect it to happen for congressional seats. However, as it looks now, neither party will shift in power in either the house or senate. In short, the political landscape on Wednesday will look much like Monday’s

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- willia451 says:
  
  November 5, 2012 at 8:50 AM
  
  It won’t be about fraud. It will be about systematic voter suppression and disenfranchisement. Which is exactly what is going on down in South Florida right now.
  
  If your side can prevent even 1% or 2% of the folks on the other side from voting, in a close election like this one, that’s enough.
  
  Which is why the lawsuits down there have already started flying.
  
  Last year the Republican-controlled legislature in Florida reduced early voting days for this election from 14 to 8. At the time, everyone knew it was a blatant attempt to try to suppress voting in South Florida; which is heavily Democratic.
  
  Looks like they are doubling down on it down there right now.
  
  Reply
  - Todd says:
    
    November 5, 2012 at 11:14 AM
    
    I agree that it is about voter suppression (fraud was not the correct phrase) but I’m not convinced the GOP has the ability to suppress enough votes to change the outcome of the election in multiple states at the same time.
    
    At this point, I think voter suppression may make the national numbers look closer than they really are but it may be nearly impossible to shift the electoral vote in a meaningful way.
    
    Reply
    - willia451 says:
      
      November 5, 2012 at 11:43 AM
      
      You may be right. Perhaps I’m looking at what is going on in South Florida and projecting that to other states.
      
      I have concerns about Ohio, however. Mainly because the Sec of State there, Jon Husted, has made many attempts at limiting the availability of Democrats to vote. Especially in the area of early voting. Only to have been repeatedly beaten back by the courts in most cases. And he’s at it again with provisional ballots:
      
      http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/11/11841/last-minute-move-ohio-secretary-state-could-impact-election
      
      The man is simply not going to stop.
      
      But you’re right. I have no idea if similar methods are being used by Republicans in Virginia, New Hampshire, Iowa, Colorado, etc.
      
      We’ll see.
      
      Reply
      - willia451 says:
        
        November 5, 2012 at 12:05 PM
        
        Democrats have been forced to file another lawsuit against the state of Ohio in federal court to stop Jon Husted’s provisional ballot order.
        
        http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/11/04/lawsuit-challenges-husted-rule.html
        
        This is why I say, we *might* not know the outcome of this election right away. Until a resolution to all of these lawsuits being filed have played themselves out.
      - Todd says:
        
        November 5, 2012 at 3:30 PM
        
        God is just as tire of this election cycle and not a Mormon, Obama will pick up the other states necessary to keep Ohio and Florida out of the equation. If Romney can hit 270 without them then Romney has to concede.
Ken says:

November 5, 2012 at 11:55 AM

Here is one poll that will be correct if Romney wins, 54% favor repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/health_care_law

I believe this would have a lot more to do with a Romney victory than alleged fraud or voter suppression. Of course, a Romney win is no guarantee a repeal will happen, but obviously it is a much greater possibility than if Obama wins a second term.

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- Sean says:
  
  November 5, 2012 at 1:10 PM
  
  Ken, what are you trying to say here? It is nonsensical.
  
  Reply
  - Ken says:
    
    November 5, 2012 at 4:06 PM
    
    Many of the comments are saying that if Romney wins, then the polls must have been way off in their projections. Others are pointing out examples of voter suppression. This poll is saying 54% want to see a repeal of Obamacare. We can assume most of those people would not be voting for Obama. My point is that if Romney wins, maybe it is because people voted the same way they answered this poll.
    
    Reply
    - Anonymous says:
      
      November 5, 2012 at 5:58 PM
      
      Obama is leading in most of the polls so far….yep, those Obamacare repealers sure are out in force eh?
      
      Reply
    - Ray says:
      
      November 5, 2012 at 6:10 PM
      
      So you’re saying that Americans are single issue voters, and that their blind hatred of Obamacare will overrule a dozen other issues that they would vote for, like, say, the Auto-bailout in Ohio.
      
      No, Ken, Sean was right. That is non-sense.
      
      But you do have to look at voter suppression. Trust me, it makes America look like a banana republic when state governments can just wholesale say “this group can vote, this group can’t”. I suggest you read up on what happened in Florida, Miami-Dade in particular, regarding early voting.
      
      Reply