A Look at Polls - Bad News for Romney

As the election continues to draw closer...we find ourselves looking at polls more every day.  The problem with polls is that there is always a margin of error.  There is always also the potential for pollsters to sway the results.  So there is no way to be sure about any particular poll.  The only ways to combat this problem are to look at the averages of the polls from various sources, or try to find the most historically accurate polls.  I have decided to do both of these.

According to the results of the 2008 Presidential election, the most accurate polls were Pew and Rasmussen.  Because they are easier to find, I decided to look at the Rasmussen polls.  Here is the current data that should have Romney worried:

According to the most current data - Rasmussen has 237 electoral votes for Obama and 196 for Romney.  This leaves 105 toss-up votes.  Of those votes, Rasmussen shows Obama leading for 76 of the votes while Romney only leads for 29 of them.  If this remains true, then Obama should walk away with the election.  In fact, Obama only has to win 33 of those votes to win the election.  This means he could lose the states that only have him ahead by 1 point (Ohio and Virginia), and he will still win the election. 

I'm sure conservatives will say that this poll is biased in some way (probably because their neighbors and friends hate Obama so that means the entire country must).  So I'm also going to average some of the major polls to get a better picture of the situation.  Here are the overall numbers:

Rasmussen (estimated based on state polls) - 47.4 Obama - 46.6 Romney
Real Clear Politics (used by Fox News and MSNBC) - 48.6 Obama - 44.7 Romney
Gallup - 47 Obama - 47 Romney
Purple Poll - 49 Obama - 44 Romney

The answer is somewhere in the middle of all of these numbers, so let's take an average.

The averages of these polls show Obama leading 48 to Romney's 45.6.  So it seems that, no matter how you break it down...Romney is hurting. Let's just hope this continues.  I may even continue to average the polls and publish the results...I may just turn out to be right.