# Can ANY poll tell us ANYTHING about '12 at this point? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [June 24, 2011, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-any-poll-tell-us-anything-about-12-at-this-point/586688 "2011-06-24T09:42:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2011, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-any-poll-tell-us-anything-about-12-at-this-point/586688/21 "2011-07-03T20:10:27Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2011, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-any-poll-tell-us-anything-about-12-at-this-point/586688/22 "2011-07-08T16:20:21Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2011, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-any-poll-tell-us-anything-about-12-at-this-point/586688/23 "2011-07-08T16:26:28Z")
> [@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. ---
**Author:** ![Recovering\_Republican](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@Recovering\_Republican](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recovering_Republican)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2011, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-any-poll-tell-us-anything-about-12-at-this-point/586688/24 "2011-07-08T22:55:41Z")
> [@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. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2011, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-any-poll-tell-us-anything-about-12-at-this-point/586688/25 "2011-07-08T23:25:41Z")
> [@](#): > > 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. ---
**Author:** ![Recovering\_Republican](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@Recovering\_Republican](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Recovering_Republican)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2011, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-any-poll-tell-us-anything-about-12-at-this-point/586688/26 "2011-07-08T23:49:52Z")
> [@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. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-any-poll-tell-us-anything-about-12-at-this-point/586688.md?page=1)