I’m sure some of my readers are 538 deniers, but I’m not hesitant to say that I’m a believer. I was surprised to see Karl Rove’s latest article in the Wall Street (on Friday):
It comes down to numbers. And in the final days of this presidential race, from polling data to early voting, they favor Mitt Romney.
He maintains a small but persistent polling edge. As of yesterday afternoon, there had been 31 national surveys in the previous seven days. Mr. Romney led in 19, President Obama in seven, and five were tied. Mr. Romney averaged 48.4%; Mr. Obama, 47.2%. The GOP challenger was at or above 50% in 10 polls, Mr. Obama in none.
I am a denier about the national polls. The closer we get to election day, the more the battleground state polls matter, because of the electoral college. What the national polls tell us is that Romney is likely to win the popular vote. But the popular vote doesn’t matter unless the election ends up in the U.S. House of Representatives. If that happens, Mr. Romney will be president.
I am much more persuaded by what Nate Silver wrote on Friday when he published the battleground state polls for that day:
Friday’s polling should make it easy to discern why Mr. Obama has the Electoral College advantage. There were 22 polls of swing states published Friday. Of these, Mr. Obama led in 19 polls, and two showed a tie. Mitt Romney led in just one of the surveys, a Mason-Dixon poll of Florida. In a close election, the swing states are more likely to determine the outcome than the popular vote. With the exception of the trio of vote-rich southern states (Florida-North Carolina-Virginia). Obama doesn’t need these states to win. That has been Obama’s advantage all along.
He maintains a small but persistent polling edge. As of yesterday afternoon, there had been 31 national surveys in the previous seven days. Mr. Romney led in 19, President Obama in seven, and five were tied. Mr. Romney averaged 48.4%; Mr. Obama, 47.2%. The GOP challenger was at or above 50% in 10 polls, Mr. Obama in none.
There is a reason why Rove prefers to write about who is ahead in early voting and turnout and crowd size. It’s anecdotal evidence. Silver relies on statistical evidence. The real question is who is winning the battleground states. Silver made that clear in his discussion of the 22 polls.
The big danger for Obama, as I have written before, is not that he is going to lose the battleground states. It’s that 2012 will turn out to resemble 1980, when the country turned against an unpopular president over the last weekend. That could still occur, outside the world of polls.
