There is, of course, a lot of discussion about the latest jobs report. Naturally, no one denies that it makes things harder for the incumbent President. Equally as naturally, liberals say that there will be other factors just as important (and give reasons why there’s cause for hope) while conservatives crow that this means that Obama is toast and Romney’s gonna win in a cakewalk.
Now, if Obama loses, it seems that the main reason(s) is, and will be, fairly clear. If, however, he wins, how do you think it could/will come about, assuming that the economy doesn’t change significantly in the next four months (since that occurrence either way would be a huge game changer and relatively unpredictable)? How likely do you think your scenario is? If you think that the election is already over, be prepared to defend your answer!
Most likely scenario (but far from a sure thing) is that Romney banks on his “name, rank, and serial number” approach to campaigning, and voters never cotton to him as a result. What will he do economically that’s different from Obama? No one knows. Where are his tax returns? No one knows. Did he outsource jobs at Bain? No one knows. What’s the difference between Romneycare and Obamacare? No one knows.
He’s depending on no one caring that he’s not giving answers, or clear answers, or responsible answers. And maybe no one does. I do. I don’t see where he has a single attractive quality as a candidate, other than not being Obama, and for me that’s pretty damned unattractive.
Just picking this one as a starting point and assuming you mean “off-shoring” since outsourcing can be wholly domestic, people do know, if they care to know.
But I would agree that an Obama win is likely to be caused by an incompetent campaign by Romney and the Republicans. Obama is a very vulnerable president, and should be relatively easy to beat. But the Republicans are an extremely weak party at the presidential level, even if they seem to do better at the more local level.
The odds say Obama is going to win, and I think that’s probably what is going to happen. The economy still isn’t very good, but it’s improved and I think voters prefer Obama’s economic ideas to Romney’s. I also think Romney is having the same campaigning problem McCain had in 2008: he has a moderate record and he’s having to tack so far to the right to satisfy those voters that he loses voters in the middle. The hard line of the Republican party likes the Ryan plan and the Tea Party line on immigration and the scope of government, but the rest of the country doesn’t. The fact that Romney is a fantastically wealthy guy who ran a venture capital firm and doesn’t connect all that well with voters who might have a negative impression of his line of work does not help him, but I don’t think it’s his central problem.
It’s the reason my sister cited for not voting for him, before knowing his stance on any issues. Obama is the only Democrat she’s ever voted for when there was a Republican in the race, and she’s not very happy with him this time around.
Note: In my jurisdiction, at least, there are a lot of times when there is no Republican running for local office, and the choice is Democrat or Independent. I have no idea why in such a conservative community.
I have to believe the majority of Americans can grok the idea of " -5 + 5 = 0 " which, in context of the OP means, “Things may not be great, but we also have an idea of how shitty they failed to get.”
Also: The obstructionist politics of the Republican party will not be forgotten. Whether you like Obama or not, what nobody has seen from his opposition is anything approaching a viable alternative.
Oddly, the tactics from his opposition have undermined the man for me somewhat. I believe a stronger leader would have found a way to checkmate the sons of bitches into submission. But I don’t think voting for Romney and whatever clown he picks as a runningmate is the correct way to express my disapproval of BO being a brilliant wimp.
Haven’t we done this thread at least a dozen times before? Has anything changed from those answers? No.
The short version is that Obama won 68% of the electoral vote. If Romney won every state in upper Midwest that McCain lost in 2008 (Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio) he still wouldn’t have enough electoral votes.
That makes a Romney win extremely difficult. He has to hold everything the Republicans won in 2008 and also pick up 6 to 9 states that they lost, most of which are still polling slightly higher for Obama. There are potential scenarios that make the numbers work, and the money being raised by Romney is significant. In modern history incumbent presidents have only lost to charismatic candidates, though, and Romney is not one.
That’s why I’ve been predicting for over a year that it will be a close election but that Obama will win barring a political meteor striking. Since conditions are exactly the same today as they were then I’m sticking with that prediction.
I dispute that things are “exactly the same today” as they were, say, three months ago. Every month that passes with no appreciable improvement in the economy is another month where the President’s chances could potentially be significantly harmed. Look at what’s being written and said about the new jobs report.
Imagine a hundred million SuperPAC dollars hammering a message of economic malaise under Obama… (Yes, yes, they’d do this anyway, but the longer this goes on, and the closer to the election it is, the more it has the potential to resonate, IMO.)
The economy was much worse a year ago and I’ve been saying for a long time that each side was going to put in a billion dollars. IOW, I discounted your present issues the way current stock prices take into account what’s going to happen in the future.
You seem to believe that Obama will lose. Feel free. Since I keep saying that the election will be close, that would hardly be a surprise or a huge mistake on my part.
Your mistake is thinking that unless things change Obama will lose. That’s wrong. The odds of re-election were always in favor of Obama from the day he got elected. Romney has to come from behind to win. He started behind and he is still behind, in national polls, in swing state polls, and in projected electoral votes. Nothing has changed.
There just haven’t been that many presidential elections in that time period, so you should take the sample size into account when making proclamations like this.
It’s reasonable to assume based on the 2008 results (with no exact polling links to back me up at hand, though I bet 538 has it listed in Nate’s simulations) that Obama could lose the ND-2 vote, Indiana, and North Carolina. Nate’s got Obama losing all three right now in his simulation. The most obvious ones after (in no particular order) that are New Hampshire, Iowa, Virginia, and Florida. However, even if Obama loses all of those, he still wins at 280 as long as he holds Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. I still think it’s likely that Obama wins with at least the Kerry+4 (CO, IA, NM, NV) route and 272 votes. I just don’t see PA or the rest of the Midwest previously held by Kerry going Republican without major voter disenfranchisement efforts (and yes, I know those are being attempted.)
Let’s see. Iowa is split, he’s winning Ohio 3 to 2, winning New Hampshire in 4 with 1 tie, winning Florida 4 to 1, winning Virginia 3 to 1 with 1 tie. Nate’s current map of probabilities would be 332 Obama. Give Romney IA, OH, and VA and it’s still Obama at 293. So, in other words, Romney has to win ND, IN, NC, IA, OH, VA, and FL (PA is gravy at that point.) A call for Florida or Ohio early and we can probably call it a night.
By the way, Kerry’s actual strategy (pick up Ohio or Florida) only works for Obama if he can pick up Florida thanks to demographic shifts.
Electoral-vote.com shows Romney likely to pick up IN, IA, and NC - which still leaves Obama with 326 electoral votes. Obama can lose FL and OH and still win if he holds Virginia.
But of course my point is that Obama doesn’t have to win all the states he won in 2008. He can lose many of those and still have enough to win. He won 28 states in 2008, McCain won 22. (Obama also won DC and one vote from Nebraska.) If they split 25/25 this year Obama wins. If they split 21/29 he still wins. (This is the upper Midwest scenario I gave earlier.)
That’s extraordinary as a comfortable margin. It’s why electoral votes are so much more important than a percentage of the absolute votes cast. (Argue about whether this should be true in another thread. It is true.) Realclearpolitics.com shows that Obama is ahead in polls of 10 of the 12 battleground states. (Click on #2 in the box in the upper right corner.)
If everything goes right for Romney he could switch a sufficient number of those 10 for him to win, nine of which Obama won in 2008. The whole election essentially comes down to that bet. In five months can Romney switch six battleground states from a minus to a plus? The odds are not in favor of that. It’s not certain. You can make a case that it will happen. But the odds are against it. Specifically, Intrade has Obama at 56% and Romney at 41%. That seems accurate.
I know you’ve bet that Obama will lose. You’re betting against the odds. I’m betting with them. A bet I made more than a year ago when I said that there was 100% certainty that Romney would be the nominee, BTW. I like my odds.
These six states aren’t conducting independent elections in a vacuum. A slight bump by Romney bumps him in all six states. It’s still razor tight and polls this far out mean nothing. Bush was comfortably ahead at this time in 2000.
I agree that Obama is ripe for plucking and that if the GOP had a half-decent candidate, it would be a landslide victory similar to Clinton in 1992. But we have no such candidate.
I can do even better - no black president has ever won reelection.
If Obama wins it will be because of the inherent advantage the incumbent has, and because a slow recovery is better than what we had 4 years ago. And because Romney is, to put it lightly, not the easiest guy to like.
He starts with a pretty solid lead, and certain demographic trends (Hispanics in particular) give him some built-in margin he might not otherwise have.
Romney probably needs a pretty serious stumble in the economy - this type of jobs report just isn’t quite bad enough to cause that, IMO.
Barring some unforeseen political or economic disaster, the only thing that could cost Obama the election are all of these voter disenfranchisement efforts that are taking place across many of the red states. That’s a serious problem, and I don’t think anybody has any idea what the tangible consequences of this voter suppression will turn out to be.
The economy is bad, and everybody knows that it’s bad. The good thing for Obama, though, is that he isn’t getting most of the blame for it.
Yes, BOTH incumbents (Carter 1980, Bush 1992) who ran for re-election under those conditions lost (well, all three if you count Ford). I don’t think you can really lay the blame for any of those on unemployment (although it certainly didn’t help). Of course, if you select 7.2 instead of 7.4, you can count Reagan’s re-election in 1984. I see no more sense in ignoring Reagan’s victory than I do in ignoring the fact that both full-term defeats were handed to lackluster politicians by incandescent figures in recent American politics, and Ford was defeated mostly by Nixon. Romney’s no Reagan, and while Obama’s no Clinton, he’s no Carter either, and he’s sure got the goods on Romney.
You can’t overstate the advantages of incumbency. Obama gets press that Romney has to ask for.
There is an inherent D bias in the electoral college right now. Romney can win but the states he has as ‘a given’ are thinner than the other way.
Romney has demonstrated that his political instincts don’t connect with ‘everyday Joe’. He’s clearly a rich guy/big business type and doesn’t attempt to cover it up.
Things ARE better now than four years ago. I don’t think that’s a big issue this time but it’s there.
Those things combined give Romney an uphill battle and the numbers show it. Romney has approximately 3 months to turn the narrative around and get the country ONLY focusing on Obama’s negatives. AND he has to do that with the standard 3 debates coming up. Romney hasn’t proven to be a great debater over the course of two primary seasons. It’ll be interesting to see how he’s coached in going up against a pretty good debater in Obama. Should make October fun.
And, for the record, with the jobs report factored into the model, Nate Silver now place is at: