Obama beat the polls pretty substantially in 2012.

Looking back, we think of 2012 as a kind of boring election. Only two states voted differently from the way they voted in 2008, both turning Republican. But otherwise the result looked like a pretty solid and easy win for President Obama; one that was confirmed by the networks at 11:15 p.m. Eastern time.  It took Romney roughly two more hours to concede defeat, but just like that election was over.  Nor did the race end up being particularly close.  Obama won by 3.9%, nearly 5 million votes and his smallest margin of victory among the states he needed for the Electoral College was 5.37% (Colorado).

        What is too readily forgotten in all of this is that Obama’s healthy triumph was not what the polls showed heading into Election Day.  The final RCP Average showed Obama up by just .7% nationally.  So Obama beat his predicted margin by 3.2% Obama also beat the average in each of the ten closest polling states.  In Ohio he outperformed by only one-tenth of a point, which is basically even.  But he surpassed his national 3.2 spread in five states: Nevada( 3.9%) Colorado (3.9%) Virginia (3.6%) Iowa (3.4%) and New Hampshire (3.6%).  Obama’s improvement over polls failed to capture attention because all but one of these state averages had the correct winner.  (In Florida Obama had started Election Day trailing but made up 2.4% to win by .9%).  Yet another reason why the jolt from Obama’s over performance was less striking is that pre-election observers saw Ohio as in his column so that his path to 270 seemed secure.  As the nation waited for Ohio it saw a place where Romney did better than the national average not worse.  Yet had the numbers been slightly different Romney could have had a lead going in yet watched as Obama’s over performance caused the President to surge past the polls and win the actual vote.

   All this suggests that it can be exceptionally helpful to look at past election results, not just polls, to assess likely outcomes.    Looking at the 10 closest states where Obama prevailed in 2008 and 2012, the states were the same and the sequence from top to bottom by Obama’s vote percentage remained nearly the same.  The four closest states in 2008 were the four closest states in 2012 and went in the exact same order (CO, VA, OH, FL).  Admittedly, there were slight changes in the order of the last six states, but this is mostly noise since the entire range is in Obama’s percentage in these states in 2012 is from 52.83% in Wisconsin to 51.97% in Pennsylvania.  

Of course, nothing guarantees a continuous pattern and as noted in previous posts, the coalitions in places such as North Carolina (the second closest state in 2008 and 2012) are slightly changing.  But the data certainly points toward trusting that states will be roughly in line with the past unless evidence clearly points in the other direction.  And history shows that a lead even in the 3 points range is not entirely safe from over/under performance. There is a decent argument that the Democratic field organization gives them the better chance to over preform, but that is still mostly speculative. Yet it should not be forgotten that Obama did over perform the polls, and so Election Day could always provide surprises.