The national polls may still have this race neck and neck, but down at the state level, President Barack Obama maintains a comfortable lead.
Remember, these numbers are the polling aggregates for each state, as compiled and calculated by Talking Points Memo. We have found the last several cycles that the most accurate pre-election poll is the average of all polls in any given race. We include Rasmussen's numbers which give Republicans an unwarranted boost, so these numbers could be more pessimistic for Team Blue than they indicate.
No new polling in the last week from
Iowa or
New Hampshire. Those tiny shifts in
Florida,
Missouri,
New Mexico,
Nevada and
North Carolina stem from old polling rolling off or being de-emphasized from the averages.
Arizona includes new numbers from PPP, which had Romney winning the state 50-43. Colorado went back to a to decent Obama lead thanks to a poll from the liberal Project New America which showed Obama beating Mitt Romney 48-44, counteracting a Republican poll earlier this month showing a tied race. Another poll earlier this month, from PPP, had Obama crushing Romney 53-40.
Michigan is back to being a big Obama lead following the release of new polling by PPP, which has Obama winning the state 53-39. Ohio continues to look suspiciously good for Obama, and NBC reinforced that lead with a 48-42 Obama lead last week. Ohio should be neck-and-neck.
NBC also had Obama leading easily in Pennsylvania 47-41, but that was tighter than the existing aggregate polling, thus giving Romney a +1.4 point shift in the aggregate. Yay for him, I guess, but he's still getting his butt kicked. Same thing in Virginia, where NBC's 48-44 Obama lead tightened the aggregate, but still left Romney a long way from 50 percent (particularly with a Washington Post poll three weeks ago showing Obama winning the state 51-44).
Finally, several recent polls in Wisconsin put Obama back safely on top, after an apparent recall-related intensity gap gave Romney a boost over the past several weeks. In other words, the polls were measuring the recall electorate, which appears to be clearly more conservative than the expected November turnout. If that intensity gap is reversing, hence Obama's expanding lead, that may also be good news for the recall.
Finally, look at those margins—the tightest state with an Obama lead is still a 5.2 percent advantage for the president, while three of Romney's states are tighter. Arizona, at 6.2 points, is still well within reach. And if you look at the trendlines, it's all looking pretty good for Team Blue.
How good? This map gives Obama 329 electoral votes to Romney's 209. And it's a pretty solid 329, too.
It's a much different picture than what the national tracking polls would have us believe.