Florida and Colorado shift to Romney, Obama holds Ohio (Update on UAH poll watch) http://htim.es/Tilbuk
Florida and Colorado shift to Romney, Obama holds Ohio (Update on UAH poll watch)
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- President Barack Obama continues to hold a winning lead, but it's shrinking. Blue states have been turning red ever since the first debate, with Mitt Romney first picking up North Carolina, then this week claiming Florida and Colorado.
Electoral Scoreboard run by UAH and Princeton professors. Prediction as of Oct. 25.
New Hampshire and Virginia are virtual tossups, drifting toward Romney as well. But the pivotal state of Ohio remains solidly blue, which would give Obama the necessary electoral votes to win re-election.
Electoral Scoreboard run by UAH and Princeton professors. Prediction as of Oct. 25.
That's the prediction as of today, according to theElectoral Scoreboard run by Wes Colley, a statistics professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who employs a simple mathematical model to interpret the often contradictory data from presidential polls.
Colley, who also runs one of the official computer rankings for college football's Bowl Championship Series, and his colleague astrophysicist Dr. Richard Gott III at Princeton have had success the last two presidential elections by looking at all statewide polls as reported by Real Clear Politics. They simply award each state to whoever won the most polls over the last month.
The professors contend this median model has two key advantages. The model reduces the effect of biased polls, and the month-long snapshot offers a more precise prediction than looking at whatever happens to be the most recent poll.
Before the first debate, when a story about Colley first appeared on al.com, his median model put Obama at 348, Romney at 190. Because the model weighs a month's worth of poll data, those figures were slow to change. North Carolina went first, moving to Romney on Oct. 18. Florida moved to Romney on the 22nd and Colorado on the 23rd. Now Florida appears solidly red, as Romney won 11 of the 17 polls there in the last month.
As of today, the Electoral Scoreboard has Obama at 291 and Romney at 243. New Hampshire, with four electoral votes, was moved to the official tossup category today.
Virginia is a dead heat, with Obama winning seven polls to Romney's six. The only other current blue states where Romney has won a poll are Iowa and Ohio, but Obama holds a large lead in both. And Romney needs Ohio.
Iowa, Virginia and New Hampshire hold 23 votes combined. If they all swung to Romney and everything else held as currently predicted, Obama would receive 272 electoral votes. It takes 270 to win.
In Colley's analysis, no other blue states appears on the verge of turning red. Michigan and Pennsylvania don't look like swing states. Obama won 10 out of 10 polls in Pennsylvania in the last month.
So, according to Colley's predictions, it could come down to Ohio's 18 electoral votes. Obama has maintained a steady lead there, winning 16 polls in the last month, while Romney won three and three more polls there ended in a tie.
The Electoral Scoreboard is updated daily.
