I keep hearing about the Republican candidates but I haven’t a clue of Romney or any of them has a real chance of becoming POTUS this year. Is there any real chance Obama will be beaten (and Elendil’s Heir will owe me some money 
)?
Well, if the jobless rate spikes . . . or . . .
No, actually, no there isn’t.
Well can you lend me a couple bucks? 
Intrade currently gives Obama a 52% chance of re-election. That’s consistent with my own POV. If Brainglutton offers me a 3:1 odds (denominated in Quatloos - I give 1 if Obama wins, I get 3 if he loses) I’d take that bet.
I think it’s pretty much a fait accompli, even at this early stage. The Republican candidates, with the exception of Huntsman, are all so damaged.
This is not to say that there’s no way Obama can lose. Anything can happen of course, but I think the likelihood for independents to shift back to Obama increases the longer the circus that is the 2012 presidential nomination process takes to decide.
I’ve contended from day one that Romney will be the eventual Republican Nominee. I still believe this. The only question that remains in my mind is how much the various Republican super PACs will hobble him before he faces Obama.
I’d say the odds of Obama not being the next president are 100%. Obama’s the current president. Whoever follows him, by definition, will be the next president.
Now, if the question is “What are the odds of Obama not being re-elected in 2012?”, I’d say “Medium to Low”, and that includes the ever-present possibility of him dying in office before the election.
With how angry people are, minus all his advantages being an incumbent I’d give him a 1/3 chance of losing or so.
Romney has many of the advantages Obama has in irrelevant charismatic attributes, gives people a flag to wave about a first Momnom president, ect. A depressed voter turnout of super evangelicals prolly hurts republicans though.
You’d have to give me 1:1 odds for me to be excited to bet on Obama, 1:4 for Mittens
I think Intrade’s odds are a bit low, but it’s not quite a sure thing.
But IMO, Obama is as talented a “political athlete” (orator, campaigner, strategist, etc) as Clinton or Reagan, and the Republicans have no one even close. It will be very tough to beat him.
Dangerous, liberal hubris.
By every indication, Obama should lose. The only reason I wouldn’t predict a sure loss at this point is that Romney (assuming he’s the GOP candidate) doesn’t have the passion to rally the base. But who knows what things will look like in the fall.
Don’t take this personally, but I think you’re nose is too buried in the events of the day, and you’re not looking at the long term. Candidates get beat up in the primaries all the time, and they come back. Your average American doesn’t follow the ups and downs of the news cycle like us news junkies here.
For what it’s worth, the latest poll has Romney leading Obama by two points, with Obama leading Ron Paul by one – in other words, all within the margin of error.
Huntsman, like Rick Perry, is down by seven.
Romney could do it and Huntsman could do it. It’s going to be a tough, tough road for either of them, and Huntsman realistically has not much chance of getting the nomination. But I would not say it’s a fait accompli, no.
You simply don’t know for sure. At this stage in 1992 George H.W. Bush was still a very heavy favourite for re-election, and the Democrat’s chances were common jokes on late night talk shows.
The 1980 election was an absolute dead heat until four days before the vote.
There are just too many examples of surprising results to assume anything. Obama is not like Reagan in 1984, where essentially everything was going Reagan’s way.
This should eviscerate any glee or optimism taken from primary-related mudslinging. It’ll (likely) all be over long before the general and long forgotten. There will be ghosts, and the DNC may run with an issue or two raised, but it won’t have nearly the same impact on a candidate’s polls as it did during the current season. The best the DNC can hope for is a label or perspective that can be maintained long enough to help *shape *the narrative (e.g. Romney the job cremateor), but not dominate it.
Further cutting against optimism, I’m not that big a believer in the Great Undecided. Given the stark differences between the candidates (differences beyond the sophomoric “all parties are really the same”), particularly as promoted by infotainment outlets, I don’t believe the so-called independents form a statistically significant percentage of the voting population.
As such, I think the election will greatly turn on the get-out-the-vote machineries of the two parties. Obama has several advantages, but (IMHO) he has lost the sense of optimism and enthusiasm that propelled him to office (both in issues to run on and in the mindset of the public). This is one of the larger fibers in his Achilles heel.
Given the economy’s turnaround, and even unemployment dipping down to 8.5%, the Republican candidate is going to have at best an uphill battle against an incumbent whose personal approval ratings (discrete from the job approval ratings) are still really high, and whose foreign policy gains pretty much put that strategy off the table for the GOP’s eventual front-runner. I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m saying that, best case, it’s going to be difficult, barring a major – and I mean MAJOR – screw-up by President Obama.
Also, the effect of the so-called Great Undecided cannot be overestimated. John McCain’s heavy loss in 2008 can be laid at the feet of moderates and independents heaping poo on McCain’s train-wreck of a running mate.
There is absolutely a chance Obama won’t be president in Jan 2013. Probably something like a 40% chance. That includes chances of major scandal, international incident, death, and electoral defeat - you can spread the odds however you’d like.
That said, I would probably need 2-to-1 odds before I’d bet on the GOP candidate - most of the indicators seem to signal increased economic growth this quarter and a much better picture come summer/fall. And Romney is not a particularly skilled politician - he just looks that way compared to this field.
And the Dems at the time were repeating the mantra, “Six months is forever in politics . . . Six months is forever in politics . . .” And they were right.
I don’t think I’ll have a good feel for who will be the next Prez until after the R_D debates, although I hope Obama gets reelected and plan to vote for him. I don’t like all the religion I see in the R candidates.
The GOP has a huge advantage. Their base 1) falls in line after the primaries and 2) goes out and votes. The democrats base whines about how the candidate isn’t liberal enough and votes for Nader or stays home.
In the best of all possible worlds, you shouldn’t use the word “should” to describe circumstantial probabilities (c.f. “by every indication”). In the best of all possible worlds, “should” should be used to describe things that will happen in the best of all possible worlds.
And in the best of all possible worlds, the Republicans should never again succeed in putting one of their candidates in the White House.
So Obama should win.
[my emphasis]
I tell my students to beware absolutist statements on true/false tests. Don’t force me to break out Mr. Dubious here.
There’s an enthusiasm gap between Repubs (& independent allies) and their field of candidates (cite), there’s Obama’s fair to middling approval ratings (cite) which nonetheless are vastly superior to voter’s approval of the GOP Congress (cite). I can keep going on, if you like.