Early 2012 Analysis

PublicPolicyPolling has done fourteen state 2012 general election matchup polls so far: Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa, Virginia, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Missouri, and Montana. In each of these states they have tested Barack Obama against Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Newt Gingrich, and occasionally a "favorite son" home-state Republican. Palin does clearly the worst of these Republicans, looking like she trails Obama nationally by anywhere from the 7.5-ish points he lost by in 2008 to something more like twice that margin. Romney and Huckabee do the best, with Romney seeming to put some deep blue states almost on the margins of becoming competitive and Huckabee just plain looking strong all-around. Gingrich is somewhere in between. But I also just took the step of averaging together these four Republicans' performances in each state and seeing how those states appear to have moved relative to each other.

First of all, the total weighted-average swing that these polls demonstrate as compared to the 2008 election is... zero. Specifically, a swing of 0.00276 points toward the Republicans, according to my methodology. Obviously, that depends a good deal on taking the stronger candidates, Huckabee and Romney, and averaging them in with the absurdly weak candidate, Palin. But in any event, it does mean that we can look at individual states' apparent swings and take them at face value as the shifts in those states against the underlying electoral landscape. So, here goes.

The following states appear to have moved toward Obama since 2008: North Carolina (+5.2%), New Jersey (+4.3%), and Florida (+3.7%). The following states have moved by less than two points in either direction: Virginia (+1.7%), Minnesota (+1.3%), Iowa (+0.3%), Ohio (-0.6%). And the following states appear to have moved against Obama since 2008: Pennsylvania (-2.3%), Missouri (-2.7%), Michigan (-3.4%), Nevada (-3.8%), Montana (-3.9%), Massachusetts (-4.3%), Wisconsin (-5.7%). No state appears, in the aggregate, to have switched columns. Now, of course, in terms of individual candidate polling, Obama wins Missouri against Palin in this crop of polls and loses North Carolina against Huckabee, but the average performance of this crop of contenders doesn't seem to imply that any states would switch columns. That makes sense, I guess, given that the overall shift is naught.

Anyway, because I like making maps of these sorts of things, here's a map of the apparent shifts among the states, 2008 results to PPP polling aggregates: