Dashboard Update: A Little Breathing Room for Obama (July 30, 2012)

This week was dominated by coverage of the Romney Olympic Gaffe, his needless dissing of the Brits on their Olympic preparedness (“disconcerting”), from the vantage point of his well-earned Salt Lake City expertise.  What a colossal error!  For once the Democrats had no need to turn on their own machine to highlight the gaffe….Prime Minister Cameron and the notorious British press handled that quite nicely.  And on the home front there was much hand-wringing from dazed Republicans.  My favorite was from leading conservative Obama critic Charles Krauthammer, who said: “What Romney answered in that question was unbelievable, it's beyond human understanding, it's incomprehensible, I'm out of adjectives.”

Once again, though, what tops the news does not necessarily influence the data.  But the Dashboard does show that Obama has rebounded from last week’s tightening with a little bit of breathing room in both the national and swing state polls.

The Obameter.  The Obameter dipped a bit, to a still comfortable +7.4, on a slight decline in the stock market average for the week.  Next week will bring another month of unemployment data, the last before the conventions, as well as a new check on consumer confidence.

Obameter
	Baseline
	1-Jan	23-Jul	30-Jul
Unemployment Rate	8.7	8.2	8.2
Consumer Confidence	65.0	62.0	62.0
Price of Gas (average for week)	3.32	3.49	3.49
Dow-Jones (average for week)	12,076	12,842	12,796
Romney Favorability (average)	38.0	43.1	43.1
"Events"	0	5	5
Unemployment Rate	0.0	5	5
Consumer Confidence	0.0	-3	-3
Price of Gas (average for week)	0.0	-2	-2
Dow-Jones (average for week)	0.0	8	7
Romney Favorability (average)	0.0	-5	-5
"Events"	0.0	5	5
OBAMETER	0.0	7.9	7.4
Obama versus Romney	1.1	0.2	1.3

The Charisma Factor.   There were no new “favorability” polls so Obama continues to trail Romney by -2.0 in the charisma factor.  I’ll be very surprised if Romney maintains that lead when new polls appear, but we’ll see.

	Favorable	Unfavorable	Net
Obama	47.0	47.0	0.0
Romney	43.0	41.0	2.0
Net			-2.0

Latest Polling.  A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll had Obama up by 6, while the Gallup Daily is now at a dead heat, and Romney leads by only 2 points in the Rasmussen Daily.  Thus Obama on average is up +1.3 in these national polls.  I’m convinced national polls only matter to the extent they are news events in swing state polls…if a candidate starts to stretch it out a bit nationally, that can influence how swing voters in swing states might feel about the candidate.

	Nat'l Polls
Obama	46.7%
Romney	45.3%

Swing States.   Many new polls…in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and Missouri, and the net is a positive for Obama, by a weighted average +1.4.  He continues to lead in 8 swing states.  He trails only in Missouri and Arizona, and by so much (-9 and -13, respectively), I am considering tossing them into the solid Romney camp.  I will take a hard look at other leaners as well over the next few weeks, to see if any more may qualify as true swing states (such as New Hampshire).

	Electoral	Polling	Since	July 1
	Votes	Obama	Romney	Obama +/-
Michigan	16	48.3	42.0	6.3
Pennsylvania	20	48.5	43.5	5.0
Wisconsin	10	49.0	44.0	5.0
Nevada	6	49.7	44.7	5.0
Ohio	18	47.5	42.5	5.0
Iowa	6	48.0	43.0	5.0
Virginia	13	46.8	44.0	2.8
Colorado	9	45.0	44.0	1.0
Florida	29	46.0	45.5	0.5
North Carolina	15	48.0	47.7	0.3
Missouri	10	41.0	50.0	-9.0
Arizona	11	41.0	54.0	-13.0
	163			1.4

Electoral College Projection.   Obama leads in six swing states by a healthy 5+ points, and those 72 electoral votes alone are enough to put him over the top, when added to his 205 “solid” state electoral votes.  Plus he’s ahead, though narrowly, in Colorado, Florida and North Carolina, another 53 votes, which give him a compelling projected electoral vote lead.

	Solid	Swing	Total
Obama	205	142	347
Romney	170	21	191

Popular Vote Projection.  Obama’s projected popular vote lead has opened up a bit as well, at 50.6% to 47.8%, on the strength of those swing state polls.

	Vote	%
Obama	65,785,245	50.6%
Romney	62,179,389	47.8%
Other	1,988,683	1.5%

As always, comments welcome!