In electoral vote simulation, signs point to Obama

(CBS News) The new CBS News/YouGov Electoral Vote Tracker - a computer simulation model of the Presidential race - shows that if President Obama were to win the national popular vote by three points (which is his current edge today in national polls) that would translate into 332 electoral votes for Mr. Obama and 206 for Mitt Romney on election night.

The model shows how the votes would most likely be distributed across all fifty states, if Mr. Obama's three-point lead held up on November 6th and that reveals which states would ultimately tilt to Mr. Obama, and which go to Romney.

The president would pick up enough swing voters from across the battleground states to take almost all of them. He'd win Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire, Iowa, Colorado, Virginia; he'd win a close race in Florida, and win a squeaker in Wisconsin, while North Carolina would go to Romney.

Importantly, it isn't a forecast - it is today's score. We've got six-plus weeks to go, and this can change. We'll re-run the simulation again in the coming weeks.

This simulation is based entirely on data collected by CBS News and YouGov, a Silicon Valley research company working with CBS News on this project. The national lead of +3 is based on the findings of the latest CBS News/New York Times national poll. We then use over 36,000 additional interviews fielded by YouGov, matched to voter demographics across the states, and run the simulation. It's designed as a 50-state snapshot meant to show where things stand if we translate a national lead into the only score that really matters - the Electoral College vote.

How the CBS News/ YouGov Estimate works:

We know that every state contributes to the national vote. The trick is to pin down which states are changing as the national vote moves, and by how much.

Some of the national lead we see invariably comes from deep-blue Democratic or deep-red Republican states like California and Texas, but we already know where those states' electoral votes are headed. What we're really after is the portion of the national lead that's coming from tight battlegrounds like Ohio or Iowa. Those places start out close to 50/50 - that's why they're battlegrounds - and even small shifts in the vote within those states will tilt them.

We start by making state-level estimates that are, importantly, all in sync with the national vote. They're taken from interviews fielded at the same time as the national poll and they account for both battleground and non-battleground states.

We combined CBS News's national estimate with YouGov's online sample across 27 states, including all the battlegrounds, for over 36,000 added interviews. The remaining noncompetitive states are estimated using past and current vote percents by region. The online sample was weighted to match the demographics and vote intentions in CBS News's national survey.

Together, this gives a full picture of the race, along with detail at the state level that is sufficient to build an accurate model of the Electoral College votes each candidate would receive, if the election were held today.

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[knewsreply]

When Romney speaks the President's Polls go up. Keep speaking Mitt.

[venusvegasvada]

Obama! 2012!

Yeah Baby!

[infantryman1968]

In electoral vote simulation, signs point to Obama


LOL!


All of the polls are over sampling people who claim to be Democrats by 3% to 22%.

[JV1970]

infantryman1968 is right! I hope no one does any "over sampling" of the votes on election day as one Democratic group alledgedly did in 2008! They even registered the dead in their local cemeteries and claimed that they voted! That's voter fraud!

[twgtss45]

So Romney won't represent anyone on government assistance? You mean like big agriculture and the ethanol subsidy?

[TexasLaw]

It doesn't make sense to vote for Romney if you depend on some type of government assistance to sustain your family. It also doesn't make sense if you are not financially secured. Romney doesn't understand that millions of Americans struggle to pay the many bills they get every month. Working happily at Digitally Undivided - digitalundivide

[LoneWolfSullivan]

When the election campaign was starting, all of the Republicans looked like sleazy used car salesmen. Mitt Romney looked best, but as a Moron, he does not stand a chance. Christians basically don't consider Morons to be Christians. How many wives does Romney plan to take to the White House?

NO. Obama has never had any serious competition in this election campaign. There's a lot of news coverage of it, but Obama has always been a shoo-in because he has no real competition.

[bbglow]

2001
Q: Gov. Romney & Rep. Ryan, if you discovered the unequal placement of hay in your barn loft was on the verge of causing structural damage would you redistribute the load.
A: Of course, yes, yes, we would certainly redistribute the hay to produce a better load distribution. Certainly, redistribution is in order.

2012
Headlines: Romney/Ryan believe in redistribution ...

[randysanders]

It does look like Obama will be reelected. I have two concerns; will the Republicans continue their failure to actually help Americans recover from the Great Recession by continuing to obstruct progress toward it as long as a democrat holds the office of president and since most of the worlds countries consider themselves a Republic, will those Republics continue to cause conflicts of one kind or another to cause as much grief to a Democratic president as possible. Additionally, the global economy is supposed to be controlled by the uber rich with all their businesses throughout the world, and we all know the uber rich have been backing Romney and the Republicans.

I'm pretty sure that even with all the new voter ID laws, presumably to prevent voter fraud, and a global economy controlled by the uber rich, Obama should still win convincingly enough.

[mikesfilms]

Naming Romney GOP committing electoral suicide. He spent millions knocking off Santorum, Gingrich, Paul and others. He can't buy the WH. His tax returns and offshore accounts will show he's not fit for any honest job.

[aintfakin]

I can see what is going on in Mitt Romnee's mind
He has convinced himself he has the answer to the entire world's problems.
He will tell muslim extremists they are really christians and the jews they really are muslims.
He will tell the poor they really are rich. one of the things he will do to move this along will be to talk the cayman banks into offering toasters for new accounts.
Then he will tell us the Chinese are really Americans and that Walmart and Staples need and are hiring vice president.s
Sometimes I wonder if all this addiction to crappola comes from his own religion