State vote margins in '04 compared to '12 polls...
There is a lot of talk about the popular vote and how Romney will win it by running up his margins in red states. While he will definitely improve on what McCain did in traditionally Republican states, and will most likely do better in Democratic-leaning states than McCain, the margins are still not in his favor solely because Obama continues to do well enough in traditionally Democratic states.
I keep going back to 2004 because that was the last time a Democrat lost the popular vote and in doing so, lost it narrowly. Bush only won by 2.4% in '04, which is very narrow, and only amounts to about 3 million votes. If some polls are to be believed, and Romney is really leading nationally by a wider margin than Bush won in '04, it would show up in the state polling. It hasn't.
In fact, Romney is doing much worse than Bush did eight years ago in state polls ... from some red states to blue states. Yes, he's out-performing McCain, but that's irrelevant because Obama won the popular vote by a comfortable margin four years ago. Because of that, he has a sizable cushion when it comes to still winning the popular vote.
So, I took the time to break down the polls and every state margin in '04. It was tedious, but I think it points to what guys like Nate Silver and Samuel Wang point to - Obama is likely to win a narrow popular vote margin, along with a comfortable electoral vote margin.
As you can see, Romney is actually doing six points worse (it should read 6.1, not 6.9) than Bush did in '04 in states he carried. Obama, however, is doing 5.4 points better than Kerry for a difference of 11.5 (I know I put 12.3, but that was an error).
That's a pretty big swing and while this doesn't include some states where polling has scarce, I suspect the margins won't change THAT much. Overall, Bush's average lead in '04 was 7.7 points bigger than Kerry in '04 (even though he only won the popular vote by 2.4 points - which is 5.3 points worse), while Obama's average is actually .9 (nearly a point) better than Romney's.
With Romney doing worse than Bush eight years ago across the board, it continues to suggest he is not going to win the popular vote. At this rate, with Romney doing 6 points worse in red states (and that includes deficits in Ohio, New Mexico, Nevada and Iowa), I suspect he's probably going to end up with anywhere from 45-48% of the vote.
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