There is no question that the tracking polls have tightened compared to where they were from October 21st through October 27th (though not from where they were from October 15th through October 20th). However, I just did the 2:00 p.m. update to the Presidential Forecast, and state polling has pushed Obama out to his most secure lead of the entire campaign. And I added a lot of polls:
Five new Pennsylvania polls, four new Ohio polls, two new Florida polls, plus one new poll each from Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Virginia and Wisconsin added. Obama drops slightly in Florida, holds steady in Ohio, and improves everywhere else.
Obama's state by state situation is improving, even as the Pollster.com national tracker has dropped from Obama +8.8% on Saturday (his all-time peak) to Obama +5.8% today. However, according to my forecast, Obama now reaches 273 electoral votes in states where he leads by 8.3% or more, and hits 311 electoral in states where he leads by 6.5% or more. As I will discuss later in the day, I'm not alone in showing this vast Obama statewide lead, either. No doubt, on the surface it appears difficult to reconcile the tracking polls over the last couple of days with the state polling released over the same time period.
A partial explanation comes from the 2004 election, which Kerry lost nationally by 2.5%. Given 2004 results in the three most heavily polled swing states, Florida (Bush +5.0%), Ohio (Bush +2.1%) and Pennsylvania (Kerry +2.5%), and given an 8.3% national swing, those states are almost exactly where they should be right now. In my forecast, I have Obama +3.3% in Florida, which is 0.0% away from the expected result. In Ohio, I have Obama at +6.5%, only 0.3% away from the expected result. In Pennsylvania, I have Obama at +11.2%, only 0.4% away from the expected result. So, a partial answer is that there is no discrepancy between state polls and national polls, at least in the largest swing states. Earlier state and national polling diverged from one another in these states, but current state and national polling does not. This explanation also works for Wisconsin, where Obama is within 0.2% of his expected result given the national swing from 2004, and Missouri, where he is within 0.8%.
Still, that leaves a bunch of state polling in conflict with national polls. This week's polls from Colorado, Iowa, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina are all 2-4% more favorable to Obama than a simple 8.3% swing from 2004 can explain. In these cases, it can probably be chalked to a combination of several factors, including polling error, changing demographics, and improved Democratic campaign organization in these states. While 2-4% is a bit of a shift, it is not so large that a combination of such factors fail to provide a complete explanation.
This leaves Indiana, Montana, North Dakota and Virginia, where Obama is running between 7% and 12% of where he should be. However, Obama is equally under-performing relative to 2004 in a different handful of states, including Arkansas, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Rather than a broad difference, it seems to simply be a regional shift.
So, there is your explanation for the state poll and national poll discrepancy: there isn't much of one at all. |
