Skip to content
Subscribe

Electoral College Prediction - Obama vs Romney

Published:

Going to the website 270towin.com and awarding each toss-up state to the leader of that state's poll average from Real Clear Politics, I came up with this Electoral College prediction:

Obama: 303

Romney: 235

That's Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania (which isn't a swing state), Ohio, and Virginia for Obama and North Carolina and Florida for Romney.Virginia is the closest at +0.3 for Obama, but even then it would only make it 290-248 for Obama.

Entering this exercise I didn't think either could reach 300. Both candidates are uninspiring on their own merits and the enthusiasm for the partisans of each side seems to be more motivated by antipathy toward the other side. 303 seems a little high to me, and fallibility may strike me yet again, but at just about 5:45 p.m. here in the Central Time Zone I'll stick with 303-235.

There's a chance the polls will be wrong, but I wouldn't count on almost all the polls being wrong. There have been a few outliers in just about every state calling it a statistical tie or a slim Romney lead, most pretty consistently show Obama pulling ahead just enough in most of the states that will decide the election. That's why I suspect Romney has made a last-minute effort for Pennsylvania. It is my hunch that he knows Ohio is lost and needs to make it up somewhere. Unfortunately for Romney, I don't see him winner either.

Polling firms may or may not have a bias against Romney (or against Obama in the case of Rasmussen), but they don't have a good reason to be so. People don't trust polls just for the sake of it. If they were frequently wrong or too biased to be reliable nobody would pay any attention to them. We trust them because they are a reasonably accurate gauge of opinion and trends. As Robert Wright explains in this post at The Atlantic, we're talking about thousands of respondents in these polls, so they have a chance to get the random sampling that makes a poll reliable. 2012 has been the most heavily polled election in history and while one or two might be wrong, which is why Romney winning Virginia wouldn't surprise me, the chances that most would be wrong across several states is unlikely.

Get ready for a second term.

Adhere to the IVN etiquette

By posting a comment, you agree to adhere to our etiquette rules: No partisan attacks, no personal attacks, substantiate your sources, no self-promotion.

Contact IVN

Questions about this article or our coverage? Send us a message. A free IVN member account is required.

Message sent

Thanks, we’ll review it and get back to you if needed.

Message not sent

Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again.

Sign in to send a message

Messages are tied to your IVN member account. Signing in is free and takes a few seconds.

Contact IVN

Questions about this article or our coverage? Send us a message. A free IVN member account is required.

Message sent

Thanks, we’ll review it and get back to you if needed.

Message not sent

Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again.

Sign in to send a message

Messages are tied to your IVN member account. Signing in is free and takes a few seconds.

Republish this article

Republishing guidelines

Republish IVN articles for free. Independent Voter News articles may be republished online or in print under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, on these terms:

  1. Credit the author and IVN. Keep the byline ("By Author Name, Independent Voter News") and the attribution note at the end, which links to the original.
  2. Keep the meaning. You may update time and place references and apply your house style. You may trim for length, as long as the cuts don't change the meaning or misrepresent the author. Keep the headline. Mark any additions as your own (for example "Additional reporting by ...").
  3. Translations are welcome. Translate faithfully, add "Translated from English by [your outlet]", and tell us at editor@ivn.us.
  4. Keep the links, including the link to the original article.
  5. Keep the tracking image. The HTML includes a 1-pixel image that counts readers on your page. It collects no personal information.
  6. Photos and illustrations. Images credited to IVN may be used with this article only. Images credited to others (AP, Getty, Unsplash, Wikimedia and so on) stay under their owners' terms. Secure the rights or switch "Include images" off.
  7. Don't sell it. You can't sell our articles or sell ads specifically against them. Your normal site advertising is fine.
  8. No implied endorsement. Don't suggest that IVN or the author endorses you, your candidates or your causes, or that donations to you support IVN.
  9. Keep labels. Opinion or analysis pieces keep that label.
  10. Point search engines to the original. Where your CMS allows, set the canonical URL to the original IVN article.
  11. No bulk or automated republishing, and don't submit our articles to aggregators (Apple News, Google News, MSN) as your own.
  12. Corrections and removals. Update your copy when we correct it, and remove it promptly if we ask. We'll contact you at the email you give us.
  13. Questions or print republication: editor@ivn.us.

IVN staff: fill in who you're inviting above, then create the invite.

Preparing the article

Electoral College Prediction - Obama vs Romney

Choose a format
  • HTML
  • Email HTML
  • Markdown
  • Formatted (.docx)
  • Plain text
  • WordPress blocks
  • PDF
Choose a platform

Photos credited to others need their owners' permission.

To for

Republishing somewhere else? Questions? editor@ivn.us