The State of the Race

After all of the talk of Romney "momentum" over the last few days (including a Romney ad claiming he had momentum, for some reason) I was just wondering where this election has ended up after all of the dust has settled from the debates.

Using the 538 numbers

Electoral vote averages (295.4 electoral votes): Roughly in the same place it was at on August 23rd, so a few days before the republican convention started and about where it was for much of July and August. That is still off his highs of 321 electoral votes on October 4th (the day after the first debate) by 25.6 electoral votes, which is more or less like losing Florida. Obama's low was 283.3 on October 12th, which was a drop of 37.7 electoral votes. That is the same as the combined electoral votes of Pennsylvania and Ohio. I think we can now admit that was a pretty bad drop. So far he has made up 12.1 of those electoral votes or about 33% of what he lost after the first debate.

Odds of winning (74.4%): About the same place it was on September 19th, which was 2 days after the 47% video was released. Currently that is about 5-10 points higher than where Obama was all summer. His peak was 87.7% on October 4th (again 1 day after the first debate). After that he fell down to just 61.1%, bottoming out on October 12th. That was 1 day after the vice presidential debates. Obama lost 26.6 points here and was in his worst position since early June, although not the worst he was at for the election. Obama has made up 13.3 points of his loss from the first debate, which is exactly 50% in the past 14 days.

Popular Vote Averages (Obama +1.8): That is about the same as where Obama was in late June, this is worst metric he have right now but also the least important. Obama peaked at +4.3 on October 4th and fell to just 0.9 points, which bottomed out on October 12th. That was a loss of 3.4 points or 80% of his lead. He has since made up 0.9 points or about 26% of what he lost.


I think a few things we can conclude then. First, that first debate was pretty damaging. Obama peaked 1 day after and the quick plummet in the polls started as soon as the polls that were taken after the first debate started rolling in. Second, the bleeding stopped 2 days after the vice presidential debate, so thank god for Joe Biden's performance. If he fucked it up somehow, Obama could very well lost the lead. Third, the idea that Romney still has "momentum" is ridiculous. His momentum ended 2 weeks ago and he has been falling ever since. He has lost a significant amount of what he gained between October 5th and October 12th and his decline seems to be picking up in pace. Finally, even at his strongest position in the past several months (his strongest position was actually in early June) Romney didn't really come close to actually taking the lead. He was still shy about 15 electoral votes (Ohio is 18), 11 points in the odds (he maxed out at 38.9%), and was still down by 1 point in the head to head numbers.