When I first considered Barack Obama's re-election chances in this magazine, last November, he was about a 50-50 contender against the Republican field. As I noted then, this was an unusual spot for a sitting president. A year before their own re-election races, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and both Bushes were all favored. One year out, it seemed as if things could break either way for the president in 2012.
Six weeks before the election, the picture is much clearer. While Obama's postconvention bounce gave him a lead of four to five points over Mitt Romney, most of the polls before the conventions had the vote split by two or three percentage points. If Obama's bounce fades and the two-to-three-point trend holds till Nov. 6, it's conceivable that either candidate could pull a George W. Bush and win the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote. This puts the emphasis on what I call "tipping point" states. Obama and Romney can hope for good jobs numbers or terrible ones, and for calm in the Middle East or an eruption that hurts the administration. But one thing they can definitely control is how to allocate their resources for the best chance at 270 electoral votes.
Using my FiveThirtyEight model, I've determined — through about 25,000 simulations that I run each day — which states could put either candidate over the top. Crucially, the model takes into account not only how states poll relative to national trends but also to one another. Demographically similar states can rise and fall together. If Romney makes gains in Wisconsin, for example, he will probably also do so in neighboring Minnesota.
Perhaps more important, the program evaluates the order in which the states might line up. Obama could win North Carolina, where the polls show a competitive race, but he's unlikely to do so without already having won Ohio, Florida and Virginia, where the demographics are slightly more favorable to him. Some combination of those states would probably get him to 270 electoral votes anyway. By that point, North Carolina would be redundant.
Which states, then, are the most strategically important? The answer exists along a spectrum rather than in absolutes. Ten states could play an important role in the electoral calculus. I have listed them below, in four groups, along with the chance that each state will be the one that determines the next president.
The Big Two: Ohio (32 percent chance of determining the Electoral College winner) and Florida (20 percent).
This year, Obama's polling has been stronger than many observers (myself included) expected in each state, both of which typically lean slightly Republican. In Ohio, which Obama won by 5 points in 2008, the president has held the lead in 16 polls conducted since June (Romney led in only 4). In Florida, which Obama won by 3 points in the last election, the numbers have been more even but still slightly favor the president (14 leads for Obama, 9 for Romney).
The reasons behind Obama's strong polling performance differ in each state. The auto industry's recovery has helped drop Ohio's unemployment rate from 8.6 percent when he took office to 7.2 percent now, making it one state where voters really are better off than they were four years ago. While studies show that national economic conditions figure more heavily into voters' decisions, a state's economic climate can matter in cases like this.
Florida's economic recovery has not been as robust, but Obama my be buoyed by long-term demographic factors there. Florida has one of the nation's largest Hispanic populations, a bloc that in most states swings Democratic. The G.O.P. has long been buffered by Cuban-Americans, a historically right-leaning group, who made up a majority of the state's Hispanic electorate. Now not only are non-Cuban Hispanics growing in the electorate, but the Cuban population is increasingly divided along generational lines, with younger voters leaning heavily left. If Democrats get 60 percent or more of the Hispanic vote in Florida, this year could mark a significant turning point.
The New Breed: Virginia (9 percent), Colorado (9 percent) and Nevada (5 percent).
In these states, which Obama carried in 2008 but Kerry and Gore lost, swift demographic changes have become manifest. Obama won Nevada — which now resembles a West Coast state to some degree — by an unexpectedly large margin, 12 percentage points, in 2008. And despite a wretched economy there, he has led in every state poll conducted this year.
By ROBERT PEAR 18 Sep, 2012
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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/magazine/nate-silver-solves-the-swing-state-puzzle.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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