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Electability Snapshot
Last week I posted results of a Monte Carlo simulation I'd done of the general election using data from Votemaster Andrew Tanenbaum's electoral-vote.com.
A week has gone by, and there are new state polls of the general election matchups, so I've rerun the numbers again, running another 10,000 trials of each of a McCain/Obama and McCain/Clinton matchup. The results:
Obama wins 80.2%, averages 292.8 EV
McCain wins 17.0%, averages 245.2 EV
Electoral tie 2.8%
Clinton wins 97.3%, averages 289.5 EV
McCain wins 2.3%, averages 248.5 EV
Electoral tie 0.4%
It's interesting that despite the continuing worry that the continued primary fight is damaging, both Obama and Clinton run much stronger this week than they did last week. new polls in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania both showed large gains for
both Democratic candidates, which explains the differences.
I also note that while Clinton wins a higher percentage of the simulations than Obama does, Obama actually averages more electoral votes. This is because Obama is just one point behind McCain in three big states: Ohio, Florida, and Texas. If any of those swing his way, he not only likely wins the election, he wins it bigger than Clinton likely would.
These are simulations using the most recent poll(s) in each state, and
assuming a 4% margin of error for the polls, which is standard. It isn't a direct
prediction of the race, but it
does reflect what current polling data say. Six months is obviously a
long time, and much will change between now and November. One way to estimate the possiblity for change would be to widen the margin of error, but that raises the question of how big a margin of error to use - to a point a wider margin of error makes Obama appear more competitive relative to Clinton based on current polls.
This week's data show that both candidates are certainly electable, although based on current polling data, Hillary would be a little more likely to win in November. But a lot has changed in the past week, so I plan to rerun this analysis again as new general election polls are released.
Comments (1)
I think it's impressive to still see Obama doing well in the current polls considering how hard he is getting slammed from all sides.
Anyone who thinks the republicans are licking there chops to get to Obama needs to take into account that since the last debate the MSM have completely turned on him and have played GD America non stop, Mcain, the National republican party, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton have all been on the war path against him and still he at least holds his own.
He didn't lose PA by 15 points, it was 9.4. He isn't getting trashed in the polls the way one would expect.
Think about it, the Republicans have watched two candidates, who most people would consider more solid, go down in flames under circumstances far easier then this. I think they are starting to worry. I think that is why Fox news seems so desperate lately.
It's kind of like, "You must hate him! Wait... Why don't you hate him.... Umm please hate him... Jesus Christ, what do we have to do to make you hate him???"
May 3, 2008 9:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
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