Electoral College Analysis with Worst Case Scenario

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Monday October 15, 2012 · 6:09 PM PDT

2012/10/15 · 18:09

I was playing around with the 2012 Electoral College numbers state by state and wanted to see how hard Mitt Romney's "path to Electoral College victory" really is.

So I took every swing state that had polls with President Obama less than 4% as of today (including all state polling as of 10/15/12 noon) and gave all those to Mitt Romney to see if he could still win.

I averaged the state polling for the last seven days to come up with the swing states average polling percentage.

I know everyone loves those big maps of the United States showing the electoral college vote state by state but I did something different with an old-fashioned spreadsheet.

No, I'm not a polling expert or a professional pollster but I've been analyzing spreadsheets back to the days of VisiCalc and Lotus123. This worksheet was completed in Excel 2010 and captured with SnagIt which I love to capture crucial images that I share.

The result was close but with Obama's "Western State Firewall" plus Ohio, my prediction is as of today that President Obama would still hold on for a tight win with 281 electoral votes to Romney's electoral total of 257.

Below the squiggle for my worksheet analysis. Remember this is a worst case scenario as of today.

I have highlighted the swing states (battleground states) in Yellow with a coding system to the left as Blue (Leaning Obama), Red (Leaning Romney), Purple (Tossup).

As you can see from the worksheet above, the current polling is very tight in Virginia, Nevada and Colorado that I considered Purple "Tossup" states.

Even though Florida is still tight and I believe is still very winnable for Obama, many polls have pushed this state closer to Romney so I put it into Romney's column.

Colorado is not yet part of Obama's "Western State Firewall" and may remain a "TossUp" until election day so I gave it to Romney for right now.

I may throw Missouri into the Swing State category at a later date if the polls change. Right now Missouri looks like possible hunting ground for more electoral votes.

Arizona is already a swing state with a new poll in the past week showing that Arizona might be in play for Obama.

Remember I took every swing state that had polls with President Obama less than 4% as of today and gave those to Romney for this "Worst Case Scenario."

Any suggestions are welcome. I hope to update this spreadsheet and post at DailyKos a few more times before the election. You may disagree where I have placed some state in each category but I hope this analysis is helpful.

The intent of this analysis is not to show the most likely outcome if the election was held today. But to show a Worst Case Scenario where President Obama still wins if many of the swing states go for Romney.

6:46 PM PT: Updated with the suggestions from your useful comments. Indiana move to Romney. Michigan in Obama column. All of Nebraska goes to Romney. Result is almost the same Obama 281 to Romney 257. President Obama still wins.

6:54 PM PT: This was a quick and dirty analysis to reassure me that President Obama remains in the lead. I am not trying to duplicate what others are doing. Just giving one scenario to see how many swing states can go to Romney but still have President Obama winning the electoral college.

Methodology: Swing states with a seven day average of less than 4% for Obama were placed into Romney's column. The state polling numbers are a moving target and I used the three to five latest polls that I could locate early this morning from a variety of sources online. Some people may have better numbers and are glad to make further suggestions.

This content was created by a Daily Kos Community member.

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