If the Presidential Election Was This Year...

[barfbag]

This is an easy one. When the president's approval rating has been above 49%, they get re-elected. If it's below that, they lose. Romney would be president as he would've been after the first debate but before Sandy and Chris Christie's stomach could be the secretary of state and secretary of treasury.

[barfbag]

This is an easy one. When the president's approval rating has been above 49%, they get re-elected. If it's below that, they lose.

Yes. Perfect. That is exactly how elections work.

Seriously, how can you spend so much time posting here and not pick up an iota of info on how elections work.

Use exit-polls to find me a re-elected president with an approval rating below 49%. How can you spend so much time posting here and not pick up an iota of info on how elections work?

[barfbag]

op is why obama voters dont have more obvious buyers remorse. all they have to do is look at the clowns that call themselves republicans now and any feelings of regret instantly diminish

They don't feel guilty that they get such a sweetheart deal on healthcare while others who have to work for a living have to pay more?

[barfbag]

This is an easy one. When the president's approval rating has been above 49%, they get re-elected. If it's below that, they lose. Romney would be president as he would've been after the first debate but before Sandy and Chris Christie's stomach could be the secretary of state and secretary of treasury.

Allow this to disabuse you of that myth:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/02/myth-of-incumbent-50-rule.html

By the way -- Silver expected the Democrat to hold the Governorship of Ohio and picked that one wrong in 2010 based on his theory. But overall  he found that the average incumbent who barely got re-elected had an approval rating of 44%.

But here is his analysis:

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Here are his data points from 2006 to 2009:



.....my analysis:

So what is going on? Very simply, incumbents seeking re-election campaign for re-election.  Unless they are abject failures as elected officials, they usually face weaker opponents. If they disappoint voters they show why voting for them was a mistake, they run from their records, and they lose -- or they 'choose not to run for re-election'.

It's not 'breaking scandals'. The journalists know something, and as a rule they stay away from politicians with problems. Politicians with breaking scandals usually have low approval ratings before the scandal breaks.

Opponents can take cheap shots at an elected official with impunity even if they offer no solutions. Once those opponents run against an incumbent, they must offer coherent alternatives if they are to win. Incumbents usually must campaign so that they can transform 48% approval into 50% or more of the share of the vote.

So what about the glaring exception -- a politician who had early approval over 50% and then lost? That was George Allen, an incumbent US Senator from Virginia, who represented a state drifting from solidly R to a true swing state, who faced an unusually-strong challenger, who campaigned ineptly, who faced a rapid decline in the view of his Party, and may have lost because his staffers beat a heckler.

This chart shows nothing about the 2010 election -- but Senators Feingold and Lincoln were floundering.  

I'm only talking about incumbent presidents. Professional polling started in the 1930's so this means Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama. I'd be interested to see Truman and Ford's approval ratings though.

[barfbag]

If the 2004 Presidential Election was this year, Bush would lose.

Does not matter now, what's happened is over and done with.

Either way, Obama would probably still win, facing a real, flawed opponent who would perform worse than the Generic R would, not to mention that while Obama has the Obamacare rollout and a few tiny "scandals", the Republican Party has the government shutdown on its shoulders, still relatively fresh in the public's minds.

Of course it's possible that many of these events would not have happened, maybe the GOP not initiating the shutdown in order to prevent their candidate from sinking with them.

Not to mention the turnout would probably be even more D favorable than last year, with the demographic changes still occurring.

Don't set your expectations too high CCS. 2014 is still a year away, 2016 three. In 1991 Bush was considered undefeatable, and look what happened.

Mitt Romney could easily scold his party for the shutdown. It's pretty easy when you don't have anything to do with your party's Washington insiders.