ELECTIONATE JUNE 29, 2012
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When NBC/WSJ released a poll showing Obama up by 3 points nationally but by 8 in the swing states, it predictably led many to conclude that Obama has a larger lead in the swing states than he does nationally. But as acknowledged here and here, the evidence for a structural Obama advantage in the Electoral College is unpersuasive, at least at this early stage.
Just one day later, NBC released three polls conducted by Marist University showing a tight race in three critical battlegrounds: North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Michigan. This represents the third triplet of NBC/Marist swing state polls over the last month, covering nine of the twelve swing states included in the NBC/WSJ swing state subsample. After weighting the results by 2008 turnout, Obama leads in the nine polls by 3 percent, down from 6 percent in 2008, and similar to the 4 and 3 percent margins by which Obama led the May and June NBC/WSJ national polls.
The NBC/Marist polls are largely consistent with other state polls, although FiveThirtyEight has observed a modest pro-Democratic house effect in NBC/Marist's past polls. These nine NBC/Marist polls sampled nearly 10,000 respondents—forty times as many as the NBC/WSJ subsample.
The three NBC/Marist polls were buried by the health care announcement, but they provide a more compelling picture of the battlegrounds than the better publicized NBC/WSJ swing state sub-sample. There was nothing wrong with the decision to release the NBC/WSJ swing state sub-sample, but NBC should have known better than to trumpet such a provocative finding supported by such little evidence, especially since NBC possessed a far more compelling set of data contradicting the finding. A more responsible approach either would have downplayed the swing state sub-sample or given equal attention—at least—to the collective findings of the nine NBC/Marist polls.
2 comments
Call it "tight" if you want, but if Obama shows any lead in North Carolina, that means Romney is in deep shit. The Republican candidate should be slaughtering Obama in the Tarheel State. At this stage in 2008, McCain was consistently polling 3-6 points ahead of Obama in NC, and except for one aberrant Zogby poll in early August that put Obama 8pts ahead (!?!), Obama didn't poll with a lead in the state until September. I guess you could infer a few potentially contradictory things from this. First, on a state-by-state level, polls in June and July predict the election outcome poorly. Second, Obama's swing from a 4-5 point deficit in Carolina in July to victory in November might have had something to to with voters' initial unfamiliarity with him as a candidate, which would mean that his current numbers are not directly comparable to those from a similar time in the last election and also that he cannot count on a similar swing in his favor as the election approaches. Still, I suspect that Romney is already about as familiar to North Carolina voters as Obama was on election day in 2008, so I don't really see voters moving toward him as they learn more about him. Also I cant see Obama making a panicked move in September the way McCain did when he suspended his campaign, supposedly to single-handedly solve the financial crisis. All of which goes to say that current polling in NC is likely to be more predictive than polls done at a comparable stage in 2008, which of course suggests that Romney should be worried.
- AaronW
July 1, 2012 at 8:23pm
The almost 10 point fall-off in New Hampshire is a little concerning, but then NH had been hit particularly hard by the recession, and New England is pretty much home turf for Mitt and where he has recently been doing a lot of retail campaigning during the primaries. Similar analysis for Michigan. If I were on the Obama campaign team, I'd be more than satisfied with a 4pt June lead in MI. Maybe voters there have a better understanding of the value of the GM bailout than their native son Romney does.
- AaronW
July 1, 2012 at 8:30pm