I haven’t written anything about the US elections yet this cycle. This is for two reasons, first because there are vast amounts of US polling to get on top of in order to say anything sensible, secondly because there are already some very good US polling sites that I couldn’t hope to better. If you want to read wise and sensible analysis of US polling don’t hang around here, go and read Mark Blumenthal and Simon Jackman.

However, since we are now within a week of the election I thought I may as well put some threads up if only for discussion.

First, all things I complain about in coverage of UK polling are the same in US polling. Most notably warnings about cherry picking, comparing like to like and being aware of methodological differences and house effects from different pollsters. For example, I keep seeing people cherry picking out Rasmussen polls and Gallup polls to claim that Romney is doing better. Rasmussen are one of the most prolific polling outfits in the US, but also tend to produce some of the most Republican results. Gallup use a very tight screen for likely voters that also tends to produce favourable figures for the republicans. Look at most other polls and Obama is doing better.

Secondly, remember that the person who gets the most votes doesn’t necessarily win, it is who wins states with enough electoral votes to win a majority (270) of the electoral college. The average picture across all the national polls in the US has Romney and Obama very much neck and neck. However, polls from the key swing states, which themselves have become very regular as the election approaches, have Obama clearly ahead in terms of electoral votes.

There are various US websites (I’ve already mentioned Pollster.com, though fivethirtyeight tends to be the best known these days) that make projections based on state polling, and these all show Barack Obama with large leads in terms of electoral votes.

This has, in turn, produced some (generally pretty poorly informed) criticism of the projection sites, normally based around what sort of weights they give to different polls, what polls they include and so on. I don’t think these criticisms carry any weight, however even if one is sceptical about the weightings, filters, trends, house effect adjustments or whatever that the various projection sites make, the bottom line is that even if one takes just a crude average of state polls, Obama is still ahead.

As I write, Obama is almost undoubtedly ahead in states worth 243 votes. He needs to pick up another 27 electoral votes to win – looking at the recent polling in states that are in play:

• In Wisconsin (10 votes) Rasmussen has the candidates equal in their last poll, but all three polls done in the last week have Obama significantly ahead
• There have been four Iowa (6 votes) polls in the last week, three have had Obama ahead, the other had Romney one point ahead (but had a very small sample size)
• In Ohio (18 votes), which is very likely to be the deciding state, there have been 11 polls in the last week, ten showed Obama ahead, one had Romney ahead
• In New Hampshire (4 votes) there have been three polls in the last week, all showing Obama ahead.
• In Colorado (9 votes) the four polls in the last week have been evenly split, 2 showing Obama ahead, 2 Romney ahead (though the Obama polls had bigger leads)
• In Virginia (13 votes) there have been 9 polls in the last week, 2 showed Romney ahead, 1 a tie, 6 Obama ahead.
• Florida (28 votes) is really neck-and-neck, the last week had three Romney leads, four Obama leads, two ties

Whatever you think of complicated projections, just on the raw averaged polling numbers Obama would get in excess of 290 electoral votes and win the Presidency. If the polls are correct, then Obama is on the way to winning, with very little time indeed to turn it around.

I had a brief look at the race for the Republican nomination in the US Presidential election in November – back then it had been something of a series of Conservatives emerging as the “not-Romney” before fading away again to be replaced by a new “not-Romney”. At the time we’d seen Bachmann surge and fade to be replaced by Perry, who surged and faded to be replaced by Cain, who was at the time fading and being replaced by Gingrich. Since then Gingrich has faded under an assault of attacks on his political baggage, and recent polls have seen advances for the liberatarian Ron Paul and, then, in the last few days Rick Santorum.

Tonight we have the first proper votes cast in the Iowa Caucus. The final few polls of the state are:

PPP (31st Dec – 1st Jan): Paul 20%, Romney 19%, Santorum 18%, Gingrich 14%, Perry 10%, Bachmann 8%, Huntsman 4%
Insider Advantage (1st Jan): Romney 23%, Paul 22%, Santorum 18%, Gingrich 16%, Perry 10%, Bachmann 6%, Huntsman 2%
American Research Group (29th Dec-1st Jan): Romney 22%, Paul 17%, Santorum 16%, Gingrich 15%. Perry 9%, Bachmann 8%, Huntsman 4%
Selzer & Co (27th Dec – 30th Jan): Romney 24%, Paul 22%, Santorum 15%, Gingrich 12%, Perry 11%, Bachmann 7%, Huntsman 2%

Overall we have Romney and Ron Paul competing closely with Santorum in third place, but making strong advances from his position a few weeks ago. The Selzer & Co poll for the Des Moines Register has the oldest fieldwork of those above, but is the most respected and has a reputation for having the best record of predicting the Iowa caucus. When releasing their findings they also noted that in the last two days of their fieldwork they were showing Rick Santorum overtaking Ron Paul to take second place.

Averages from 538 and RealClearPolitics both have Romney leading Paul with Santorum in third… but with only a few percentage points between them. The expectation seems to be that with Santorum enjoying a late surge any of the three could win. Gingrich is expected to come fourth, ahead of Perry and Bachmann. Jon Huntsman is not actively contesting the caucus and concentrating on New Hampshire, he’ll almost certainly come last. Caucuses are hard to predict because they are low turnout events that require people to attend meetings in local halls in the middle of winter and listen to prepared speeches before casting a ballot – here Selzer runs through some different scenarios depending on who actually turns up to caucas tonight.

The results today matter more for their effect on campaign momentum and weeding out no-hopers than it does for actual delegates (Iowa has only a small number of delegates and technically no delegates are elected today anyway, only delegates to county conventions who in turn elect delegates to an Iowa State Convention).

Romney wasn’t expected to win in Iowa, so a victory will be a nice plus and could put him on track for tying up the nomination quickly, but isn’t essential. It will be embarrassing for him if he comes third or worse (and would be a boost for Huntsman, the other moderate candidate remaining in the race) but Romney is off to New Hampshire expecting an easy win there anyway. More important is how it weeds out the race to be the Conservative alternative to Romney – whether it will lead to some of the weaker Conservative candidates dropping out and whether it will give any of them the momentum to be clearly identified as the “not-Romney”.

I don’t normally comment on American polls, there’s too many and plenty of people out there doing it well already. This one was just so off-the-wall I couldn’t pass it by though. It’s a poll by Public Policy Polling of likely voters in New Jersey.

President Obama’s popularity over in New Jersey has fallen into negative territory, the interesting bit is some of the more, erm, unusual questions. 21% of respondents said they did not believe the President was born in the USA, which is sadly not unusual to New Jersey – a nationwide YouGov poll in the US found 26% of respondents saying Obama was probably foreign born.

It gets more bonkers though, it went on to ask “Do you think Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ?”. 8% of respondents said yes. 13% said don’t know (which in it’s own way is even more worrying, one can just dismiss the 8% as being insane, rabidly partisan or buggering about… but people who aren’t sure if the President might actually be the anti-Christ?)

It defies further comment really.