...futility of nation-wide opinion polls in US elections

image: Real Clear Politics

"Obama dominates Romney". "Romney is leading by a slim margin in nationwide polls". We hear these and similar headlines from the mass media. But these are completely irrelevant pieces of information. The reason for which is simple. The US elections are not determined by nationwide voting but rather by electoral college, which is by its very nature is state-based. In terms of predicting the outcome of the election it is necessary to determine state based polls and weigh their results by the college's weights. And those results have to be binary, meaning either one or the other candidate has to be crowned a winner (with a few marginal exceptions). This is a reason why it is critical to follow the mood of the few swing states, which have enough electoral weight, and where the preference is not clear. In this election it is all about Ohio and Florida, for example. And the polls there are the only ones that are worth watching.

The only site that seems to be getting this is Real Clear Politics. Despite their conservative bias, they combine most statewide polls on the national maps showing various degrees of dominance of one candidate over the other. And according to their data, despite narrow nation-wide polls, Romney never overcame Obama throughout this campaign.

There are two ways to look at their data: either by assigning a degree with which each state leans one way to the other (1) or plain assigning the state to the current leader (2). As we said earlier, Romney is yet to lead. Currently, they are calling 281-257 for Obama, even though Romney is currently leading in Florida.