Can ANY poll tell us ANYTHING about '12 at this point?

[Leaper]

I ask because of this article, which seems to show some pretty firm opinions and pretty stark messages (at least in the first section).

While I don't quite buy the spin that the message board commenter who pointed to it did (that it shows that "he's toast [because] less than 1 out of 3 will vote for [him]"), does this at all show that many people have made up their minds already in the negative sense, and that's bad for his reelection prospects (especially since many think that there's not much chance of significant economic improvement in the next year)?

[Marley23]

I think the polls can give us a view on the priorities of voters and how they feel about specific issues. I don't think poll numbers on particular candidates (especially on how they would do against Obama) are very meaningful at this stage.

[BobLibDem]

Not really. Recall at this point in 2007, we were all convinced that Hillary and G911iani would win their nominations.

[Uncle Jocko]

What Marley said. You can get a feel for the mood, or for specific issues that are concerning voters as of today. That doesn't necessarily mean they'll feel the same next year, but a President should know if he can't make improvements in these areas of concern in the next 12-16 months, he'll be in serious trouble.

But it doesn't say a lot about how the 2012 election will actually turn out. The article mentions Reagan ... his approval rating in 1983 was worse than Obama's is now, and Reagan won 49 states in 1984. So it's too early to tell who is "toast."

[Exapno Mapcase]

Polls can tell you negatives. It's easy enough to look at the polls for the horde of Republicans and see who doesn't have a chance to even win the nomination.

But polls about Obama* are essentially meaningless. They can't say who will win, they can't even predict who will vote or why. It's just space filling. As is true for probably 99% of all commentary on the election right now, whether poll-driven or not.

*The Firefox spell-checker didn't recognize Obama!!!??? WTF?

[Leaper]

But that raises the question, why can't we take an "I won't vote for him" response at face value right now, especially when they have specific reasons for doing so? Do people really change their minds about such things in significant numbers?

(Yay, naivete...)

[RadicalPi]

Originally Posted by Leaper

But that raises the question, why can't we take an "I won't vote for him" response at face value right now, especially when they have specific reasons for doing so? Do people really change their minds about such things in significant numbers?

I think it's precisely because candidates get caught with the issues, especially incumbents. So, if for example, there is someone who says that they're not going to vote for Obama, it's probably for some reason, such as the economy. Then, over time, if the economy improves, the reason behind not liking Obama changes, and then this hypothetical person can change their mind. Then there's the fact that the field isn't really set yet, so votes against Obama don't really account for views on the eventual opponent. Once we know the nominees, you may have some people who will hold their nose and vote for Obama because they think the alternative is worse. This is seen, I think, at the moment, where a generic Republican candidate has a higher chance of winning than any actual Republicans (if I'm not mistaken). This means dissatisfaction with Obama more than anything else because Obama is the only thing that is certain about the next election. And dissatisfaction with Obama is just one of the criteria voters use to decide who to vote for.

[Simplicio]

Originally Posted by BobLibDem

Not really. Recall at this point in 2007, we were all convinced that Hillary and G911iani would win their nominations.

Polls favored McCain by some 10-15 points in June of '07.

[Recovering Republican]

A poll is only about name recognition at this point.

The thing you need to look at are factional groups, and how much relative influence they have in the early contests.

The GOP has always been an alliance between the security, economic and social conservatives. Clearly, the security conservatives have held sway in the last two nominating processes. Now, not so much. Even Republcians want out of these wars.

[RTFirefly]

Sure, you can tell a lot from polls, even now. You just can't look at the numbers one-dimensionally: you can't expect the polls in September or October, let alone January as the Iowa caucuses approach, to look like they do today.

But you can consider things like what segment of the primary/caucus electorate a candidate might appeal to, what are his/her name recognition and favorable/unfavorable numbers, how s/he's doing in state polls of early primary/caucus states, how much work s/he's put into those states, and come up with your own judgment of whether the current poll numbers are just the beginning for a candidate, or whether they're as good as it gets.

For instance, if you consider the Des Moines Register's first Iowa poll of the season, my take is that Michele Bachmann's 22% showing is more of a starting point, and that she's got a great deal of potential upside. She was second choice of another 18% of the voters, which gives her room for expansion of support that no other candidate matched; her favorable/unfavorables are the strongest of the pack; and she got way more "very favorable" ratings than any other candidate. Her 22% has decidedly more potential than Romney's 23%.

Meanwhile, Tim Pawlenty's at 6% in Iowa, despite good name recognition and having been the first candidate to go to paid ads. His potential upside's shrinking, IMHO, simply because you'd expect some sort of return on his investment by now.

[Merijeek]

Originally Posted by Recovering Republican

The GOP has always been an alliance between the security, economic and social conservatives. Clearly, the security conservatives have held sway in the last two nominating processes. Now, not so much. Even Republcians want out of these wars.

Of course they do, they're being run by a Democrat. If they could be run by a Republican, however...

-Joe

[Recovering Republican]

Originally Posted by Merijeek

Of course they do, they're being run by a Democrat. If they could be run by a Republican, however...

-Joe

Well, no. I think that there simply is no enthusiasm for building schools in afghanistan when our own are falling apart.

I think the other part of the problem is, what is our end game in Afghanistan look like at this point?

Democracy went out the window when Karzai stole the last election.

Bin Laden is dead, Pakistan is clearly working against us.

The smart thing would be to pull out, and then enter an alliance with India.

[Exapno Mapcase]

Originally Posted by Recovering Republican

The smart thing would be to pull out, and then enter an alliance with India.

Thereby guaranteeing an atomic war. Thanks.

[Recovering Republican]

Originally Posted by Exapno Mapcase

Thereby guaranteeing an atomic war. Thanks.

India and Pakistan have had atomic weapons for a decade.

My problem with Pakistan is that they should know better. They aren't run by fanatics like Iran or a crazy person like Saddam or Khadafy. They are a marginal democracy that has a stake in the civilized world.

But they keep playing games like funding the Taliban and apparently they were hiding Bin Laden for at least the last six years. The guy was living right down the block from their equivlent to West Point, for crying out loud.

Now, looking at the future, India is going to be a major regional if not world power. It's economy is growing by leaps and bounds, it embraces a lot of the values we embrace. I get annoyed as the next guy when I call customer service and Pradip....er "Bobby" is at the other end and has no clue how to help me, but the fact is, they are the up and coming power in the next century.

[Chronos]

Wait, weren't you complaining in another thread about Obama "surrendering" in Afghanistan? And here you're complaining that he isn't pulling out quickly enough?

[Recovering Republican]

Originally Posted by Chronos

Wait, weren't you complaining in another thread about Obama "surrendering" in Afghanistan? And here you're complaining that he isn't pulling out quickly enough?

My points are perfectly consistant. What we need is a clear goal and an execution of it... I'm not seeing one of those. if we aren't in it to win it, let's not prolong the agony.

I think the strategy has come down to, "I hope we don't have helicopters evacuating embassy employees out of Kabul before November, 2012."

[RickJay]

At this point in Bush 1.0's term, the idea of him losing the 1992 election was quite literally a joke, used as fodder on talk shows. Hardly anyone outside of his own campaign machine would have thought Bill Clinton was going to be the next President.

[Recovering Republican]

Originally Posted by RickJay

At this point in Bush 1.0's term, the idea of him losing the 1992 election was quite literally a joke, used as fodder on talk shows. Hardly anyone outside of his own campaign machine would have thought Bill Clinton was going to be the next President.

I agree. But look what it took to bring him down...

A major third party challenger.
A major recession
A major challenge within his own party.

Obama isn't nearly in that good of a position. A crappy economy might be able to bring him down.

[USCDiver]

Originally Posted by RickJay

At this point in Bush 1.0's term, the idea of him losing the 1992 election was quite literally a joke, used as fodder on talk shows. Hardly anyone outside of his own campaign machine would have thought Bill Clinton was going to be the next President.

There was an SNL skit in Fall 1991 called Campaign '92: The Race To Avoid Being The Guy Who Loses To Bush(link to transcript) but Clinton wasn't even one of them. It was pretty funny.

[Recovering Republican]

Here's what can probably tell us stuff this far out.

What is the unemployment rate when the following incumbants stood for re-election? Except for Obama, I use the figure from Oct of that year, the last figure votes would have seen before going to the polls.


President Year Unemployment Result
Truman 1948 3.7 Won
Eisenhower 1956 3.9 Won
LBJ 1964 5.1 Won
Nixon 1972 5.6 Won
Ford 1976 7.7 LOST
Carter 1980 7.5 LOST
Reagan 1984 7.4 Won
Bush-41 1992 7.3 LOST
Clinton 1996 5.2 Won
Bush-43 2004 5.5 Won
Obama- 2012 9.1* ????

So really, the floor of where you can get re-elected would seem to be 7.4. But even that doesn't seem to be a hard and fast rule, because Bush 41 had 7.3 and still got his butt handed to him. A more realisitic floor is probably 6%, which is where all the other guys who got re-elected were at.

Right now, it's at 9.1%, and we'll have to wait until Friday to see if it went up or down. But let's assume it goes down an average of .1% every month between now and October 2012. That would still put it at 7.5% and over the line o' defeat.

[Chronos]

Of course, the unemployment rate isn't the only thing that determines the outcome of an election. You can do a more detailed analysis that looks not just at win or loss, but at the amount of the margin, and then run a bunch more statistics through it to see how much each contributes. Nate Silver, of FiveThirtyEight, does a bunch of number-crunching along these lines. I don't recall the exact results offhand, but the gist is that, although the unemployment rate is relatively significant compared to any other single variable, it still accounts for well under half of the variation in election results.

[Buck Godot]

Whether pools in general are meaningless at this point is unclear, but that particular poll is meaningless. Without an alternative candidate the polled population can assume their optimal choice for his opponent. Tea partiers can assume he's running against Palin or Bachmann more moderate republicans can assume its Romney for the more mainline conservatives, or perhaps the polled have in mind some imagined reincarnation of Ronald Regan. Given that the Republican primary polls seem to be a long string of "show me what else you got", with each new shining face performing well until people actually get to know them, I suspect the polls look much better for Obama if he would actually have an opponent.

[appleciders]

Originally Posted by Recovering Republican

So really, the floor of where you can get re-elected would seem to be 7.4. But even that doesn't seem to be a hard and fast rule, because Bush 41 had 7.3 and still got his butt handed to him. A more realisitic floor is probably 6%, which is where all the other guys who got re-elected were at.

Right now, it's at 9.1%, and we'll have to wait until Friday to see if it went up or down. But let's assume it goes down an average of .1% every month between now and October 2012. That would still put it at 7.5% and over the line o' defeat.

Sure, but when Reagan got reelected in 1984, he carried 49 states. Clearly, he had a significant margin for error and could have eked out a narrow victory with a somewhat higher unemployment rate. To base these claims within .1% accuracy with a data set of only 10 is pretty silly, too.

[Recovering Republican]

Originally Posted by appleciders

Sure, but when Reagan got reelected in 1984, he carried 49 states. Clearly, he had a significant margin for error and could have eked out a narrow victory with a somewhat higher unemployment rate. To base these claims within .1% accuracy with a data set of only 10 is pretty silly, too.

I think there were a bunch of specific things about the Reagan victory that probably can't be replicated.

First, unemployment dropped from a high of 10.8 to 7.3 in short order. Part of this was that unlike this current fiasco, high unemployment was intentionally caused to get rid of double digit inflation we had under Carter. Once the Fed let loose the money again, employment shot up like a rocket. Nothing similar is going to happen to The One. In fact, quite the contrary, whatever deal comes out of the debt ceiling talks is going to involve cuts.

There's plenty of money out there, but the corporations and banks are sitting on it because they don't know what the tax policy is going to be.

Second, it's more a global economy now, and globally, the economy sucks.

Third, as I said, we saw a quick drop under Reagan after a quick spike. Under Obama, unemployment has been over 8% his entire term, and averages around 9%. And it went up again today.

[Chronos]

There's plenty of money out there, but the corporations and banks are sitting on it because they don't know what the tax policy is going to be.

There you go, then. All Obama has to do is to tell the corporations and the banks what the tax policy is going to be. If it's that easy, then Obama's sure to be re-elected.

[Recovering Republican]

Originally Posted by Chronos

There you go, then. All Obama has to do is to tell the corporations and the banks what the tax policy is going to be. If it's that easy, then Obama's sure to be re-elected.

Yeah, good point.

Work harder, there are millions on welfare depending on you.