June Trends

About six weeks ago, I gave my first early handicapping of the race between Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama. Charting a few things, I thought I would update on how the landscape has changed in that time.

I've added some degree of freedom since that first post. Rather than just have it be Obama, Romney, and Toss Up, I've added "slight" and "lean" to the mix (which is more in line with how things are done at RCP.



I've made three changes to the map since I first added the degrees of freedom at the beginning of May. I originally had both Ohio and Colorado as "slight Obama" and Wisconsin as "lean Obama". There have been several polls in May and early June that have shown a very tight race in Ohio and Colorado so I thought it better to move them into "Toss Up" status. Wisconsin has been a bit harder to track but with as well as Walker did, I thought it best to downgrade Wisconsin by one notch (but still keep it in the Obama column).

I've seen some sites and polls suggesting that things are tightening in Nevada and Michigan as well, but not enough to suggest moving things around.

If you give slights and leaners to each side, Mr. Obama leads Mr. Romney in the electoral college 253-206. Mr. Obama would only need another 17 electoral votes to win and the easiest path to that would be to take either Florida or Ohio. Conversely, Mr. Romney could take Florida, Ohio, and Virginia and he would still be 4 electoral votes short (i.e. needing one of New Hampshire, Iowa, or Colorado). At the moment, that would seem to present a steeper hill for Mr. Romney.

You can play around with the numbers yourself by giving various states to either side using this site.