sorry, no.

We'll see I already bought a 1948 Taylor for the victory celebration

Very nice (Or so I have heard anyway).

Common but false misconception. "Gee, Obama's gonna win CA/NY/IL by big margins, so surely he's wasting tons of votes!" In 2008, he did in fact win them by big margins, but nonetheless his 270th EV (in Colorado) was won by a greater margin than his national victory, which suggests that his votes were more efficient.

I recall the advantage being flipped like a week ago, and also that Nate said that we won't be able to determine who has the structural EC advantage for months.

Obama had 9.5M more votes than McCain overall, but only 200K more votes in CO. You seem to be looking at % gap, which seems irrelevant to Copernicus' point that big portion of pop vote margin will be in big blue states. (e.g., in 2008, almost 70% of Obama's pop vote margin is accounted for by vote margins in CA, NY, IL.) Also, to me, I don't think you can conclude much by saying CO was more blue than national average in 2008, as it was first time CO went blue in 4 elections, as opposed to CA/NY/IL who have been all blue since '80s. So it seems your example shows that a 200K swing in CO could cost Obama EV but have little effect on pop vote (yes, I get that this requires a larger % swing than national average, but who cares, I don't see how that is really relevant to the point as those swings are not atypical by the fact that CO switched from red state to blue state). This all seems to support Copernicus' point.

Can you explain your point in bold in more detail? I don't get it...

LMAO. Wasting votes? Efficient votes? WTF are you smoking?

Copernicus' point that winning big blue states by large margins supposedly makes it more likely than Romney wins EC but loses the popular vote than the converse. But despite the fact Obama did that in 2008, he would won the election had a uniform national swing caused the popular vote to have been tied instead (indeed, even up to almost a 2 point loss).

I don't see how your CO example illustrates any of this.

In a tied or slight McCain popular vote victory, Colorado votes Obama to give him 270 EVs.

Nichlemn is right.

Which doesnt in any way change what I said and couldnt, because it so obviously true.

But where is the data or rationale to indicate that CO would have still voted Obama if pop vote was tied? That's pure speculation.

You are only using the fact that CO had wider % margin than national average in 2008. But CO had a wider % margin than national average in 2004 also... except that wider % margin was in favor of the Republican. So I don't think one can say much about which way CO would go if race was tighter nationally, as in last 2 races at least, they over-represent the national trend, even if trend is opposite directions.

In my opinion, the whole discussion is moot anyway. If swing states end up swinging one way or the other, it indicates somebody is in trouble. And projecting which candidate is more likely to win if they lose pop vote is mostly bluster without data. 538 has data. And they show Romney slightly more likely in such a scenario at this time. But its June so who cares. I just found your rebuttal to Copernicus quite curious.

Is it the general consensus here that this election will be closer than in 2008?

EV definitely, PV probably.