Sam Spade's 2008 Presidential Election/Primary Prediction Thread

[Mr. Morden]

Mike Huckabee (if he chooses to run)

Huckabee is already running.  Or at least, he has an exploratory committee:

http://www.explorehuckabee.com/

even though he hasn't formally declared his candidacy.  But several other candidates you mention (Clinton, Richardson, McCain, Tancredo, etc.) are in the same boat.  (Not yet declared candidates, but they have exploratory committees.)

[Mr. Morden]

Here's a climate-related question: When was the last time a party has retained the White House when their incumbent (either not running or term limited) has had a less than 50% approval rating. Will George W. Bush's approval rating have to be above 50% on election day for the GOP to win?

I think the situation in which the incumbent himself is running has to be looked at a bit differently from the situation in which a successor from his party is running.  And as Sam indicated, there have only been a few examples of the latter occuring since polling started.  However, the last Gallup poll before the '88 election had Reagan's approval rating at just 51%.  Since Bush won that election by about 8%, I think it's safe to say that he still could have won even if Reagan's approval rating had been a few points lower.  So the sitting president's approval rating probably doesn't have to be greater than 50% for his party to win.  But of course, Bush is currently more than just a few points below 50%.  He's *well* below 50%.

[Mr. Morden]

So, I guess I have a hard time seeing Guliani take the nom if he loses BOTH Iowa and New Hampshire. Perhaps someone knows when this happened last, but I don't.

In post-1968 history (the era in which we have the modern nomination system, where it's all driven by the primaries), I think the only time that's happened was 1992, when Clinton was nominated despite losing both IA and NH.  However,
IA and NH were split that year (Harkin and Tsongas, respectively), rather than going for one person.  And all the candidates ignored IA that time, because of Harkin's insurmountable home field advantage, so it wasn't exactly the same.

[Mr. Morden]

It's not that unusual.  Since the birth of the modern primary/caucus system post-1968, we've only had 4 presidential elections in which there wasn't a GOP incumbent:

1980: Bush wins IA, Reagan wins NH, Reagan wins nomination
1988: Dole wins IA, Bush wins NH, Bush wins nomination
1996: Dole wins IA, Buchanan wins NH, Dole wins nomination
2000: Bush wins IA, McCain wins NH, Bush wins nomination

So really, in the modern era, IA is 2-2 against NH in picking the GOP nominee.

[Mr. Morden]

Electability is definitely important, but I'm not sure that I have complete faith in the primary electorate to have a clear-headed view of who is most electable.  Once a candidate starts winning primaries, he gets a media glow, and everyone is talking about what a great candidate he is, even though winning a primary and winning a GE are two very different things.  In 2000, for example, a majority of Republicans were telling pollsters that they thought Bush was more electable than McCain (which disagreed with the head-to-head polls at the time, and with the opinions of most pundits), a belief that was fueled by the fact that Bush was winning more primaries.  I'm just not convinced that the average primary voter has a sufficiently sophisticated understanding of politics that they're necessarily going to get this right.  If Romney wins IA and NH, then that in itself could convince many voters that Romney is a "winner".  It won't occur to them that this really doesn't prove anything about how well Romney would do in November.

[Mr. Morden]

Sam-

Your update in the OP reads "December 2007", though it's still November.

We've already discussed to death the question of how high Romney's chances should be rated relative to Giuliani's.  But aside from that, the only issue I can find with your analysis is that you're being far too generous to Richardson.  A 5% chance of winning the nomination?  I'd say 1-2% at best.  There's no reason why everyone's chance of victory has to be divisible by 5.