The current odds on Ladbrokes in the UK are
Obama 8/11 which computes to 57%, but the odds for the listed candidates add up to 110% (the 10% is the vig obviously). So the implied probability is something like 52%. This hasn’t changed much for the past couple of months.
Romney is at 13/8 which implies 35%. Newt, Paul and Santorum are all at 4%.
Has anyone calculated the odds on Obama vs. [Republican]?
Political historians will note that this happened most recently in the 2008 presidential election when Democratic turnout was low and conservatives fell in line after the primaries and rallied around their not-very-conservative candidate, delivering McCain the White house.
Assuming a Romney nomination, the chances are roughly 50/50. The economy is barely trickling upward and many people barely feel it. Not to mention the deficit is still a problem.
I think this is true of the Tea Partiers, anyway. From pretty close to the beginning the TP’s primary uniting force has been a hatred of Obama, so even if Romney isn’t quite what they had in mind they’ll turn out to vote against the President.
I’m not so sure about evangelical types. If you’ll recall, the reason McCain picked Sarah Palin in 2008 was that he needed to shore up his cred with the religious right and picking Joe Lieberman (like he wanted to) would have made them stay home in droves. And unlike McCain, Romney is a Mormon who probably owns suits older than his pro-life stance. Even if he picks Churchy McJesuswept as his running mate he isn’t ever going to build real enthusiasm in the evangelical crowd, which means some lost votes but more importantly a damper on the ground-level church-basement organization that means so much leading up to the election. It may only add up to a few percentage points of difference, but that’s all it takes.
Even though I still think the smart money is on Obama, the key for a GOP win is turnout more than the candidate or policies. Of course it’s the candidate and the policies that that bring the turnout, but no GOPer can win simply on message.
Sure, but they’re unhappy with how moderate he is now. He’s doing everything he can to highlight is conservative bona fides. What happens when he wins the nom then has to start highlighting his moderate stances to appeal to independents?
From my perspective, Romney’s problem is that in order to beat Obama, he’s going to have to be the exact candidate he’s trying to convince the right he’s not. It’ll be more than the fact Romney might not be their ideological ideal. They’ll feel lied to.
Agreed, except nobody cares electorally about the deficit. If they did, they would choose Obama, since he’s tackled the long run deficit via health care reform and Romney proposes additional tax cuts, when in reality taxes need to go upwards, even if we slash spending.
There’s a twist though. It’s been almost 4 years since the beginning of the financial crisis. There’s a lot of pent-up demand for durables such as cars and even housing. So when growth restarts, the economy could grow quite fast for a couple of quarters. That could ensure Obama’s re-election depending upon timing. But Europe could also re-enter recession due to ill-thought out austerity measures. That could pull the US down with it. So the odds remain 50/50 – but we could also see a landslide in either direction. Interesting times.
One X-factor is Citizen’s United. This will be the first Presidential election since the 1970s with unlimited anonymous funding of political advertisements and no caps on corporate contributions. Another is the propaganda outlet Fox News, although we’ve experienced that for a few more cycles. I call them a propaganda outfit because they consistently get their facts wrong without punishment by their audience.
It’s said that Republicans turn out consistently. It’s the Democrats whose turnout fluctuates and moves all the time.
And the photoshopped picture of him reading a book upside down. That came up in a staff meeting when it was explained to us how we should all vote against Bush.
Americans Elect would disagree with you. They’ll have a spot on all 50 state ballots.
There are at least half a dozen minor parties in America that run somebody for POTUS every cycle. They don’t count because they don’t matter. Only something like a Wallace or Perot or Nader insurgency counts, because it can conceivably affect the outcome (not because it can conceivably get the candidate elected). What makes Americans Elect more like a real third-party campaign than like a Socialist Workers’ Party candidate on the ballot?
Perhaps Obama could increase his chance of re-election if he hired an anger translator for his speeches.
It depends on a lot of factors (the candidate chosen, the amount of funding they get and how effective they are at leveraging press), but I’m going to state that Americans Elect gets 3% of the popular vote, come November. That’s enough to swing a close election.
Americans Elect isn’t even a party, much less a third party. They don’t have any platform beyond “we’re not any of those other guys”. There’s always a movement like that, and they hardly ever even make it onto ballots in the first place.
3%!
I’ll bet they don’t get 0.3%.
Never heard of 'em. That’s not a good sign. They would do extremely well to get a quarter of one percent.
I know others have already commented but this is so over the top ridiculous that I am going to chime in as well. I am going to state that they won’t get 0.1% and won’t even come close to swinging anything.
I just did a couple of minutes of research. Wiki says that they’re only on 15 State ballots so far.
I don’t know if I’d go that far, but you’re probably pretty close. By way of comparison, the Libertarian Party typically gets about .2 - .3% and they’ve been around for decades, get some decent press, and have a loyal following.