@CW: I'm getting poll data from RCP, HorsesAss and Wikipedia. (If you click through to my raw spreadsheet from my wiki I include source URLS for every poll I use.) Non of these sources seem to have everything, but between all three I think I'm getting a pretty complete list.

@CW: I'm getting poll data from RCP, HorsesAss and Wikipedia. (If you click through to my raw spreadsheet from my wiki I None of them seem to have everything, but between all three I think I'm getting a pretty complete list.

I'm not sure if in the end RCP is biases in any particular direction, I just noticed that in one particular case they were calling a state in one candidate's camp where I still classified it as too close to call.

Colorado has been considered a swing state in previous cycles. Polling is still very sparse this time around. My five poll average at this point is actually 4 polls plus the 2008 election results to jump start the 5. (I do this because at this stage many states don't even have five polls yet, although most of the swing states do.) In 2008 Obama won Colorado by 9%. (That was vs McCain of course.) There were three Romney vs Obama polls in 2011, in those Obama averaged a 5% lead in the state. There has only been ONE Obama vs Romney poll in 2012, a PPP poll that ended Saturday. It has Obama up by 13%.

This makes my five poll average Obama up by 7.4%. I define swing states as states where the leading candidate is ahead by less than 5%, so this takes Obama out of that category.

The fact that polling is still so sparse though means that this kind of thing is still somewhat tentative. Once we have a lot of polling things will be a lot more certain. But based on the very limited polling available right now, the best conclusion we can draw is that at the moment Obama has a pretty decent lead in Colorado.

Of course, as I said above... it is a long time until November. Things can easily change between now and then. :-)

Sorry for the delay in posting, the multiple links twigged my comment spam protection.

Yes, I look forward to the Electoral Math series, and I have also been struck at how strong Obama's position has become in the past few months. It's certainly going to be an interesting race, that's for sure! I agree, RCP is a tad bit optimistic, I used electoral-vote.com the last time around, but they don't seem to be updating their main map page yet, merely posting the election returns from 2008, not current polling data. Where are you getting your state data from?

dsws -

Santorum, within two weeks (that's my guess). Newtie? When he is promised a prime time speaking slot at the convention. We held a contest a while back predicting when Newt would drop out of the race, but unfortunately, we can't declare a winner until he actually drops out!

LizM -

EXCELLENT point on the Titanic. Heh. I've personally been to the last port of call of the Titanic, in Cove (Cobh) Ireland (or "Queenstown" as it was called back then). Search this site for the name "Lusitania" to see my thoughts....

abulsme -

I've been wondering about CO, because there is a high proportion of Mormons there (being next to Utah). This might be a surprise state for Romney, although I'm just making a guess, and have exactly zero data to back that up with, I should mention.

dsws -

Also, 2008 was the first campaign in recent memory when there was no sitting president or VP in the race. The wide-open nature made it a bad measuring stick to use against this year, I think.

-CW

http://www.abulsme.com/2012/04/11/electoral-college-colorado-goes-blue-romneys-best-case-now-a-tie/

But as I note in the post above, between April 11th and Election day in 2008, Obama improved his position on this kind of analysis by 110 electoral votes. If Romney manages the same kind of move, he will be way ahead by election day.

A lot can happen in seven months.

My most recent electoral map update:

http://www.abulsme.com/2012/04/10/electoral-college-michigan-goes-dark-blue/

And an update by someone doing the analysis in a different way that I like a lot as well:

http://horsesass.org/?p=42738

Both of these show Obama with a huge lead at this point in the race. (As does the RCP chart you linked to, although I think they are a bit overgenerous in putting some states in the Obama column that are still pretty close.)

By comparison, at this time of the year in 2008, the electoral college looked like a tossup, with McCain actually having a bit of an advantage. It looked very close.

On April 10th 2008 if everybody had won the states they were ahead in using the five poll averages I use, it would have been McCain 283 Obama 255. ( http://www.abulsme.com/comments.php?id=1615_0_1_0_C ).

By comparison, April 10th 2012 if everybody won the states they are ahead in, Obama wins 328 to 210.

Now, there is a long time between now and November and a lot can happen... but Romney has a LOT of ground to make up at this point.