Oct 25, 2012 12:51 AM GMT
Politico observes that for all of the Republican bluster about an imminent Romney victory, the numbers just don’t add up:
"As an antidote to the (perhaps) irrational Republican exuberance that seems to have seized D.C., we pause for the following public-service announcement. To be President, you have to win states, not debates. And Mitt Romney has a problem. Despite one great debate and what The Wall Street Journal’s Neil King Jr. on Sunday called a polling “surge,” Romney has not put away a single one of the must-have states. President Obama remains the favorite because he only needs to win a couple of the toss-ups. Mitt needs to win most of them. A cold shower for the GOP: Most polling shows Romney trailing in Ohio, Wisconsin, Nevada, New Hampshire and Iowa – by MORE than Obama trails in North Carolina. Glenn Thrush and Jonathan Martin reminded of us of the 2008 primary analogy: Whatever else Hillary Clinton had, Barack Obama had the math. And math, not momentum, gets you the big house, the bulletproof car, the cool plane. We now resume our regularly scheduled Playbook."
And Nate Silver’s latest tally over at FiveThirtyEight backs this up.
Nate shows Romney with 48.9% of the popular vote, to Obama’s 50.0%, but once you factor in the electoral vote, which is how you actually win a presidential election, Romney has a 31.9% chance of
winning and Obama a 68.1% chance.
By looking at the graphs on Nate’s site, you can see that Romney’s “surge” stopped around October 13 or 14, a few days after the VP debate, and a few days before the second presidential debate. From that date on, for the past ten days, Obama and Romney have remained stagnant in the popular vote, each retaining their share of the vote, while Obama’s chances of winning have steadily risen from 61% to 68%.
http://americablog.com/2012/10/romney-swing-states-polls-electoral-vote.html
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/author/nate-silver/
"As an antidote to the (perhaps) irrational Republican exuberance that seems to have seized D.C., we pause for the following public-service announcement. To be President, you have to win states, not debates. And Mitt Romney has a problem. Despite one great debate and what The Wall Street Journal’s Neil King Jr. on Sunday called a polling “surge,” Romney has not put away a single one of the must-have states. President Obama remains the favorite because he only needs to win a couple of the toss-ups. Mitt needs to win most of them. A cold shower for the GOP: Most polling shows Romney trailing in Ohio, Wisconsin, Nevada, New Hampshire and Iowa – by MORE than Obama trails in North Carolina. Glenn Thrush and Jonathan Martin reminded of us of the 2008 primary analogy: Whatever else Hillary Clinton had, Barack Obama had the math. And math, not momentum, gets you the big house, the bulletproof car, the cool plane. We now resume our regularly scheduled Playbook."
And Nate Silver’s latest tally over at FiveThirtyEight backs this up.
Nate shows Romney with 48.9% of the popular vote, to Obama’s 50.0%, but once you factor in the electoral vote, which is how you actually win a presidential election, Romney has a 31.9% chance of
winning and Obama a 68.1% chance.
By looking at the graphs on Nate’s site, you can see that Romney’s “surge” stopped around October 13 or 14, a few days after the VP debate, and a few days before the second presidential debate. From that date on, for the past ten days, Obama and Romney have remained stagnant in the popular vote, each retaining their share of the vote, while Obama’s chances of winning have steadily risen from 61% to 68%.
http://americablog.com/2012/10/romney-swing-states-polls-electoral-vote.html
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/author/nate-silver/