President Barack Obama hasn’t even been in office a full month. So you will understand why I call this a very premature question: What are Pres. Obama’s chances of being reelected in 2012? If you think it rests on certain factors, please name the factors and then offer a conclusion.
My impression: If the economy is still bad, he’ll be reelected. I know that is what happened to Gov. Jennifer Granholm where I live (Michigan). The economy was still in bad shape, yet she still got reelected. I wish I could offer a conclusion as to whether or not the economy still will be bad. But that is all I know for now.
It depends, but I’d have to say his chances of being re-elected are pretty good as long as everything doesn’t completely fly apart. The incumbent always has an advantage, after all, and if things aren’t completely TU I’d say that Obama will coast to another 4 years.
Now, some of the Dems (and Pubs) currently in Congress…that might be another matter.
Ditto. He is very personally likable, and I don’t think he is going to have any (big) scandal issues. Unless we’re looking at 10% unemployment, massive inflation and/or a nuke going off somewhere we don’t want it to, it’s hard to see him losing.
Of course, the chance of any of those happening are larger than I’d like.
There’s also the presently unknowable question of who the Republicans will put up against him, and how well a campaign they’ll put up. Last election wasn’t just a matter of Obama winning, but of McCain losing - he was a so-so candidate, with a terrible campaign.
Two things will need to happen for Obama to win in 2012 as big as he did in 2008- an economic recovery and the Republicans running a poor candidate* against him. If the Republicans pull up someone good, they just might take the Oval Office back as the pendulum swings back in their favor. If the economy stays lousy, Obama will be hard pressed to defend his choices; “change” could work as well for the Republicans as it did for him.
If the economy stays lousy and the Republicans put up someone good, Obama won’t stand a chance. I’m putting Obama’s odds of reelection squarely at 50-50 right now. I’m interested to see how soon Intrade and the other prediction markets put this question up.
*Sarah Palin would be the poster child for this, but I’m sure there are dozens of others waiting in the wings. Huckabee or Romney might be able to give Obama a run for his money, and Bobby Jindal might as well- too early to say.
It’s going to be Obama vs. Jindal in 2012, with the result based on the state of the economy. If we’re still stuck in a recession, Jindal will win. If the economy is OK, Obama takes it.
If I recall correctly, the incumbent has historically had something like a 15% greater chance of winning than the challenger. I.e. it’s not 50-50 odds, but rather 57.5-42.5 or something.
So I’d put money down that he’d win minus any reason to believe otherwise. At this point in time, there’s no such mitigating reason that I would see.
Two months into his administration, Jimmy Carter had an approval rating higher than Obama’s.
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[li]He was a charismatic, youthful outsider who promised open and ethical governance. [/li][li]The outgoing republicans were deeply unpopular. [/li][li]The economy was weak when he came in. The interventions he supported were ineffective, and contributed to record deficits and inflation.[/li][li]There was an oil shortage.[/li][li]A crisis with Iran made him seem impotent.[/li][li]the guy who would eventually defeat him in was once commonly dismissed as a reactionary extremist kook. [/li][/ul]
This election showed that people didn’t vote for Obama as much as they voted AGAINST GW Bush. This is like the '68 election. People voted against Humphrey because LBJ was so hated and unelectable.
Obama barely beat Hillary and most likely worked out some sort of a deal with her towards the end as he lost to her in the northern industrial primaries.
Obama made a heck of a lot of promises and if he can’t fill them and the economy sucks he’ll be out. People almost always vote the person out of office when the economy is bad. That was the first Bush’s undoing in '94.
By 2012 Obama needs to restore the economy, get all the troops out of Iraq, close and bring an end to G’tmo and a whole lot of other things he promised.
He can’t sit back and say I inherited this mess, which he did, because he got elected on being the one to be able to change it. Well if nothing’s changed by 2012, he’ll be out.
The Republicans need to hit him hard on every promise he made and especially on his spending of state funds when he was a US Senator for his own gains. The problem with the Republicans have is two fold. One people cry racism if you are critical of Obama and two the Republicans refused to acknowledge what a massive screw up GW Bush was.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the 2012 election will have nothing to do with the economy, by then it will be firmly out of public mind, good or bad. Barring some major screw up Obama wins easily.
Obama raised over $700 million dollars. More than any candidate in history. “Not Bush” may get votes, but it doesn’t get donations.
I would also point out that Bush got re-elected in 2004 when soldiers were still being killed in Iraq a year after “Mission Accomplished” and the Dow had barely gotten even from the tech bubble and 9/11.
Cite? Obama did not ‘barely beat Hillary’, he took the lead early on and she refused to admit that she had been beaten. Nobody expected him to win states like Indiana and Pennsylvania because they were her prime demographic.
Unless the economy shows no pulse in 2012, Obama wins in a walk. The GOP nominee is going to be Sarah Palin, you can take it to the bank. The right wingnuts adore her and will accept no substitute.
People overestimate Hillary’s performance in the campaign. It was like a basketball game where one side gets a huge lead and runs out the shot clock without shooting every possession while the other side cans 3 pointers to close out the game. Hillary made it appear close by running a dirty campaign after she was virtually mathematically eliminated.
It depends on two things: The economy and what the Republicans do in the primary.
There were many factors which favored Obama in this past election, but so far as I can tell, the biggest was the economy. That’s important to people, and the economy is going to either be good or bad come 2012. If it’s good, then Obama (fairly or unfairly-- I’ve never been convinced as to just how much the President can effect the economy) will be viewed as having saved the country, and he’ll breeze in. If it’s still bad, though, then it’s a question of how well his campaign can sell the point of “Turning the economy around is a difficult task, and will still take more time. Be patient, and give us a chance to finish the job.” (of course, Obama will phrase that a lot better than I can).
And then there’s the Republican primary. They know they were beaten by a comfortable margin this time, and they’re obviously going to try to adapt to that to do better next time. But there’s two ways they might try that. They might try to energize their base further, and move further to the right, by nominating someone like Sarah Palin, or they might move towards the center, to try to pick up a larger share of the independents. Given that it’s the base who votes in the primaries, they just might pick Palin, in which case, they’re sunk no matter what the economy does, because the Republican base is just too small compared to the country as a whole. And while I think that the economy was the biggest factor in favor of Obama, McCain’s pick of Palin was probably second.
So, to sum up: If the economy improves, or if the Republican challenger is Palin or someone equivalent to her, then Obama wins. If the economy is still mediocre at best and the Republicans pick a more moderate candidate (and I don’t know enough to speculate as to who that might be), then they might have a shot (depending on details like just how bad the economy is, and just how good their candidate is).
I think that Jack Kennedy could have been reelected in 1964, & he was kind of an ornament. Being the first Catholic Prez in a country growing more Catholic worked for him.
Obama is the first Hawaiian Prez, the first black Prez, & arguably the first non-Southern Prez since Ford (GHWB was a tiny bit Texan, RWR was SoCal). He engenders a “one of us” feeling in a different set of demographics & identities than the last several Presidents–demographics who have felt left out for a long time.
The GOP might put up another white Southerner in '12, but we’ve had enough of that for now. Another choice is Bobby Jindal, also Southern & from a less populous minority. Or they can try, I dunno, to run Rudy again, or another Northerner. That might work, but it requires a Southern party not only to have a Northerner that’s credible, but to nominate him.
Further, Barry seems to think when he speaks. That’s become distressingly rare in Washington.
I am sure we will still be in a depressed economy in 2012. If the repubs can lay it on Obamas feet they can win. If it goes back to those who caused the mess ,they wont.