This is extremely rough mental math. I don’t know the internal numbers on these polls, but if we assume 30 percent of the electorate in Pennsylvania are independent, then look what happens. We know that 72 percent of independent voters in this poll are already committed, 36 for Obama and 36 for Romney. That leaves roughly 28 percent who would be classified as undecided and independent. I’ll round down just to make things easy, so we will that 25 percent of independent voters are still undecided. If independent voters are 30 percent of the overall PA electorate, that means about 7.5 percent of the electorate is independent and undecided. If those people break two to one for Romney, that adds a little over 5 points to Romney’s total, and roughly 2.5 points to Obama’s. With Obama currently up by 2 points, that would mean a Romney win. The larger the percentage of independents, the more Romney would presumably gain.
PA Voter Registration and Party Enrollment as of June 28, 2010 | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Party | Number of Voters | Percentage | |||
Democratic | 4,309,604 | 51.00% | |||
Republican | 3,122,036 | 36.95% | |||
Unaffiliated | 492,077 | 5.82% | |||
Minor Parties | 525,962 | 6.22% | |||
Total | 8,449,679 | 100% |