Colorado goes to Romney

But probably not the way you thinking...

Last week an aggressive Mitt Romney, on a stage at the University of Denver, became the source of an outpouring of good news for the challenger, and upsetting news for the incumbent. As it turns out, this is not the first time this election that some bad news has come out of the Centennial State for the President.

Back in August, A presidential election prediction model developed by two University of Colorado professors points to a big win for GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney in November.This model, the only of its kind to use more than one state-level economic indicator, has correctly predicted the winner of every presidential election since 1980.

Bicker/Berry Model

It not only predicts Romney winning the electoral college, but by a 320-218 margin and winning 52.9 percent of the popular vote when only the two major parties’ candidates are considered. This s accomplished by having Romney win every state currently considered by pollsters to be a swing state, including Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire and North Carolina. Leaving Nevada and Iowa as the only swing states still going to Obama.

“What is striking about our state-level economic indicator forecast is the expectation that Obama will lose almost all of the states currently considered as swing states, including North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida,” said Kenneth Bickers of CU-Boulder.

Bickers and Berry, the professors that built this model, cautioned that their model used economic data from June, 2012. They intend to update their calculations when new data become available in September.

Well, October is here and the September data is available. Now, an updated version of their study has come to the same conclusion — but it intensifies the numbers behind a predicted Romney win.

Since the debate last week, polls have shown a statistically dead-heat race (Obama is currently at 48.2 percent, with Romney capturing 47.3 percent of likely voters in the most recent Real Clear Politics average), an updated election model shows an even larger gap between the Electoral College votes that Romney and Obama are projected to win. According to Bickers and Berry, Mitt Romney is now projected to take 330 of the 558 votes, according to their model, while Obama is expected to capture only 208 of them.

Is it time to announce a winner this election? Absolutely not! Obviously the polling is still unfavorable, though much closer. And with three debates remaining and a lower, though questionable, unemployment rate, the case is being made that this election could go any which direction. And to make a nod to the elephant in the room, this election will not follow so many of the rules created by previous rules, and I think the reason is pretty obvious. I'll take a lot of flack for saying this, but I must. Romney may not be able to defeat Obama because of the fact that Romney is a Mormon. </sarcasm>