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Election 2012 – 10/31
This is my site Written by Jeff on October 31, 2012 – 11:09 pm

Since my first post on the state of the presidential race, I have updated the weightings of states to calculate the popular vote from the state polls.  Originally, I weighted each state’s contribution to total voter turnout based on the Highest Office voter turnout per state in 2008.  Now, I’m weighting states based on the estimated eligible voting population for the 2012 presidential nomination contests and the Highest Office voter turnout per state in 2008.  Voter turnout in 2012 may be a little less than in 2008, but the voter turnout in 2008 is still our best guide to the proportional contribution of each state to the total popular vote.

The re-weighting had little affect on the predicted national vote difference, which stands at 3.1%. This is still considerably higher than the national polls as of this date. Sam Wang at the Princeton Election Consortium, is also seeing the same discrepancy between his state-based poll meta-analysis and the national polls. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the national polls move closer to the state-based estimate by election day.

A number of polls have come out since my first post and Colorado is now statistically significantly polling for Obama.  Only Florida remains undecided (see Table 1).

State Polls 10-31-12 (Table 1)

Thus, based on the polling results as of today, Obama would win 303 electoral votes and Romney 206 with 29 yet to be decided.  The difference between Obama and Romney for Florida is not statistically significant for alpha = 0.01, and it appears doubtful that there will be enough polls of Florida before election day to decide the Florida one way or the other.  In Nebraska, there have been two additional polls reporting Romney leading the 2nd district.  No numbers were given, but it appears that all 5 Nebraska electoral votes are solidly for Romney.

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