October 31, 2012 Ohio Update

Two new polls come into the RCP average from Survey USA and Quinnipiac.  The Survey USA poll showing Obama leading by 3 is unchanged from last week.  The D/R/I remains 38/32/26 with Independents favoring Romney by 11 now (up from 9 last week).  Quinnipiac shows Obama leading by 5 using a D/R/I of 37/29/30 and Independents favoring Romney by 6.  This poll in particular suffers from the Lying Democrat problem of the other Ohio polls.  It has too many people claiming they have already voted, and that they favor Obama by 2:1.  I discussed how absurd this is yesterday.

Survey USA:
O+3 - Current result
R+7.49% - 2004 turnout model
O+2.12% - 2008 turnout model
R+4.23% - 2010 turnout model
R+3.48% - 2012 registration model
R+1.31% - D+3 turnout model

Quinnipiac:
O+5 - Current result
R+6.76% - 2004 turnout model
O+2.50% - 2008 turnout model
R+3.25% - 2010 turnout model
R+2.50% - 2012 registration model
R+0.07% - D+3 turnout model

The Time, Suffolk, and Cincinnati Enquirer polls were dropped from the average.  Note that two of those polls showed Romney tied with Obama.  I still can't figure out RCP, since the C.E. poll in particular was more recent than the CNN poll that remained in the average.  Looking at the new averages across 8 polls:

Polls included:
O+3 - Survey USA
R+2 - Rasmussen
O+4 - PPP
O+5 -Quinnipiac
O+2 - Purple Strategies
O+4 - CNN/ORG
O+2 - ARG
O+1 - Gravis

O+2.38% - Current RCP Average
R+7.45% - Average using the 2004 turnout model
O+2.16% - Average using the 2008 turnout model
R+4.19% - Average using the 2010 turnout model
R+3.46% - Average using the 2012 registration model
R+1.25% - Average using the D+3 turnout model

Again, slight movement toward Obama across all the models, which is unsurprising given the change of 5 polls in the RCP average.  If Democrats are able to get a D+3 turnout in Ohio, they will lose, but it will be close.  Anything under D+3 and Romney will declared the winner in Ohio early.

I've said this before, but let me reiterate.  Either the Ohio polls or the National polls are wrong.  If Obama wins Ohio then he will also win Nationally and we will be all talking about how Gallup and Rasmussen blew their polling this year.  However, if the National polls are correct, then the Ohio polls are wrong and we will be discussing why.

I am confident that the later will be the case.  The reason why will be identified as the over sampling of Democrats claiming to have early voted for Obama, who were lying about it.  The way to correct this is the pollsters can not include an unweighted sample of early voters, they must weight their sample to the actual number of early votes received.  Otherwise, campaigns will continue to game the system, like the Obama campaign is doing this year.