Pace John Mace, there are many historical precedents that indicate that Obama should win and very few that say indicate that he should lose.
The one losing indicator that gets thrown around all the time is the “fact” that no president since Roosevelt has been re-elected with an unemployment level of over 7.2% IIRC. This is a fact pretty much like the fact that shorter hemlines predict a rising stock market. It’s a correlation, not a causation. Roosevelt was re-elected with double digit unemployment, because he was seen as being better suited to turn the economy around than his opponent. That’s all the “fact” means. What is almost certainly more important is the trend of unemployment up to the actual election day, as with Reagan in 1984. Right now, unemployment has dropped from 9.8% to 8.5% and economists believe that trend will continue. Other economic indicators, including consumer confidence, have been increasing or rising. Certainly Romney will be able to make a case against the economy and certainly a large fraction of Americans are unhappy about it. The question remains: will voters see Romney or Obama better suited to continue the positive changes? Right now, although polls show weak support for Obama they don’t show better support for Romney.
But it doesn’t really matter what national polls say, does it? The election will be decided like the last several: by the behavior of a few swing states. That makes prediction much harder, because swing states are labeled that for a reason, and because they will be inundated by all the heavy apparatus of modern campaigns - the ads, the speeches, the ground organization, the websites, the Facebook pages, the robo-calls, and on and on - which won’t be seen by the vast majority of the population. The 83 million people in California, New York, and Texas will be taken for granted.
What does this reality indicate? Again, it’s favorable for Obama. He won big in 2008, gaining a full 95 electoral votes more than the 270 needed for election. To predict a loss, you have to predict that the Republicans will hold on to every state they won plus win back almost all the swing states they lost. As an example, they’d have to win every midwestern state they lost: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan plus the one district in Nebraska to get up to 270. (Not counting changes by redistricting.) That seems extremely difficult. Other combinations would work, and Florida would be a big prize. However, that’s the magnitude of the task. Is is reasonable to think Obama will lose every single midwestern state? Not really.
Why is this true if they are being especially hurt by the recession? Because of another, and perhaps the major, historical indicator. Americans hate - hate - to vote out a sitting president unless there are extraordinary circumstances.
Look at elections in what might be considered the modern era of politics, from 1900 on. That’s 28 presidential elections. No sitting president ran in 1908, 1920, 1928, 1952, 1960, 1968, 1988, and 2008. That leaves 20. Sitting presidents were ousted only 5 times.
1912 - Taft lost because the most popular man in the country, Teddy Roosevelt, ran against him and split his party in two.
1932 - Hoover lost because the country was in deep Depression and trending downward by the day.
1976 - Ford lost because he was not an elected president; he was seen as interim and retained too many ties to the hated Nixon/Watergate era.
1980 - Carter lost because of a downward trending economy, and a charismatic opponent.
1992 - Bush 1 lost because of a downward trending economy, and a charismatic opponent.
Only those last two bear any resemblance to this year for comparison purposes. But the comparison works against an Obama loss. He’s in an upward trending economy and will face one of the least charismatic opponents of modern times, probably no better than Bob Dole or Michael Dukakis.
There’s still plenty of time before the election. A third party run will make polling predictions bounce all the place, but it’s almost certain to come from the right and take votes away from Republicans. The majority of Republicans voters who are now holding their noses may catch Romney Fever. The European economy - or heck, the Chinese economy, which can’t keep this up - may tank and set off a worldwide depression, for which the sitting president will get blamed. Iran may launch a nuclear missile at Israel, starting a serious war. Ifs can work both ways, though, and I can make up a bunch of scenarios favorable to Obama. That’s why I throw out ifs.
As of right now, in the world we live in, given a reasonably straightforward extrapolation to November, all the important indicators are slightly favorable to Obama. I honestly don’t understand how to make a non-partisan argument that supports John Mace. Slightly favorable isn’t overwhelming, true. Predicting Romney a year ago to be the candidate was utterly obvious. Predicting Obama to win over Romney is far less certain. But I predicted that a year ago as well, because the same set of indicators leaned in the same way. The only change since then is that the economy has trended even farther upward. That can’t help Romney, even if the economy is nowhere near as good as any sitting president could want as a minimum.
Although the anti-Obama fraction of the country is large and strident, the pro-Obama fraction seems equally large and will be fired up (read: a billion+ dollars of ads) by November. Those in the middle will decide and they are not the Republican base that has dominated the news for the last year. They are apathetic and uncertain and hate both sides and will make up their minds at the last minute. But they would have to swing wildly Republican for Obama to lose. I can’t see any indication of that. Obama for the win.
