Mitt Romney’s prospects in the US elections have taken another blow, with president Obama pulling away in polling. In the 12 national surveys of voting intention published yesterday, the incumbent led by an average of 1.6 percent, gaining ground in all but one:
While Romney still has the chance to win the popular vote, the odds of him securing backing in the electoral college look to be fading, with the statistical model used by leading pollster Nate Silver putting him at just 8.0%:
As Jay-Z told a rally in Columbus, Ohio yesterday: “I got 99 problems but a Mitt ain’t one.”
Obama has an almost nine in ten chance of winning the US election. Nate Silver, whose Five Thirty Eight polling blog is published by the New York Times, predicted Obama an 86.3% chance of winning today – up 11.7% since the end of October.
Though the figures from Silver’s model of the electoral college differ from other pollsters, he has form: he correctly predicted 49 out of 50 states in the previous 2008 election and all of the 35 senate races. In a recent blogpost, Silver explained his reason for calling Obama the favourite despite the popular vote seeing a difference of only 2.1%:
“The argument that Mr. Obama isn’t the favorite is the one that requires more finesse. If you take the polls at face value, then the popular vote might be a tossup, but the Electoral College favors Mr. Obama.”
For example, RealClearPolitics have compiled an average of polls from 22nd October to the 4th November and are calling it much closer, with Obama at 47.9 and Romney at 47.4, leaving only a 0.5 gap between them.
Polls close in eastern states from 11pm UK time tomorrow.
Mitt Romney’s politicising of national disasters during the US presidential campaign has previously come in for significant criticism, but now it’s looking like he’s doing it again in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.
Whilst Barack Obama has been winning cross-party plaudits for his statesmanlike response, his Republican challenger has been left trying to catch up. Romney urged his supporters to bring disaster relief supplies to a “non-political” event, but it seems that despite crying off the campaign trail, his efforts have been focused on, erm, key swing states.
Whilst New York is cleaning up severe devastation in the wake of the storm, it hasn’t seen any of Romney-aid — possibly because of its support for the Democrats? Yet help has been focused on battleground states like Virginia and New Hampshire.
Meanwhile, Bill Clinton has been using Sandy as a springboard to mock Romney’s climate change scepticism:
Poor Mitt seems to have been blown away.
