TN-Vanderbilt: Obama beats all Republicans in useless university poll

[Tender Branson]

Obama Approval Rating in Tennessee:

44% Approve
50% Disapprove

...

37.0% Obama
34.7% Romney

36.7% Obama
28.1% Pawlenty

38.1% Obama
26.8% Bachmann

38.3% Obama
26.0% Gingrich

42.5% Obama
29.0% Palin

...

June Poll

With 700 respondents to the Vanderbilt Poll, the margin of error for the poll is +/- 3.7 %.

The poll was conducted by calling a random sample of landline telephone numbers over a period of six days – from June 3 through June 8.

...

http://www.tennessean.com/assets/pdf/DN175806619.PDF

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20110619/NEWS/306190050/Obama-holds-lead-over-GOP-hopefuls-Tennessee

[Tender Branson]

Obama vs. Romney

Obama vs. Gingrich

Obama vs. Palin

Obama vs. Pawlenty

[King]

What strange results.  I don't think Obama has a shot at beating any of these people in TN except maybe Palin.

[Fuzzybigfoot]

lolololololololololololololololololol

[HST1948]

What strange results.  I don't think Obama has a shot at beating any of these people in TN except maybe Palin.

I agree. TN is trending more republican and was one of 5 states where Obama did worse than Kerry. It seems that in states like TN and SC Obama has a high floor, but a low ceiling. 

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Obama vs. Romney

Obama vs. Gingrich

Obama vs. Palin

Obama vs. Pawlenty

Don't use that poll, please. It's crap.

[Fmr. Pres. Duke]

Junk poll. I wouldn't put it in the maps.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

DANGER DANGER

pbrower might be about to post in this thread.

Just thought you ought to know.

[pbrower2a]

DANGER DANGER

pbrower might be about to post in this thread.

Just thought you ought to know.

(Insert music: the Imperial theme from the Star Wars series). 

What strange results.  I don't think Obama has a shot at beating any of these people in TN except maybe Palin.

I agree. TN is trending more republican and was one of 5 states where Obama did worse than Kerry. It seems that in states like TN and SC Obama has a high floor, but a low ceiling. 

May have been trending R. Tennessee is certainly more R than the US as a whole. A pair of polls from February showed an approval rating of 43% for the President and losing to everyone but Palin or tied with her.

I am satisfied that Mike Huckabee, very popular in a state with demographics similar to those of Tennessee, would defeat President Obama in Tennessee. Southern moderate populists (Clinton, Carter) have won Tennessee in the past -- but those now seem like the only Democrats who can win Tennessee except if the Republicans really mess up. President Barack Obama is neither a Southerner nor a populist.

But this is important: can "conservatives" foul up in Tennessee?  I question whether proposals to privatize Medicare and Medicaid through vouchers are any more popular in Tennessee than they are in...Ohio or New York.

In general an incumbent Senator or Governor can ordinarily expect to add about 6% to his approval rating at the start of campaign season to get an estimate of the vote share.  Such would be good enough to have the 11 electoral votes of Tennessee decide whether the President wins 435 or 446 electoral votes -- on Friday of Election Week. In effect, Tennessee is one of the states that the Republicans absolutely must win but that the Democrats have a chance of winning. To be sure, I suspect that the President has a lower ceiling because no President can get more than 62% of the popular vote, as no President is likely to campaign where he is likely to win 60% of the popular vote. But the low end? There could be an open Senate seat and some House seats might be in play.  

If you think that the number of undecided is high -- then consider that Tennessee has not really been contested for the Presidency since 2000. People have apparently thought that their State doesn't matter in a Presidential contest, so perhaps they are unaccustomed to thinking about Presidential choices this early.   But where choices are made, the gaps look close to the national average for all matchups.  

We may see further corroboration -- or refutation -- in later polls. Tennessee has become interesting in a Presidential election for the first time in a decade. It should be telling enough that the President wins against everyone except "Generic Republican" and "Huckabee if available" in North Carolina and Georgia.    

  

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

So could Obama get back at least some of the white southern vote he lost in 2008, especially in Appalachian and Ozark states?

[pbrower2a]

So could Obama get back at least some of the white southern vote he lost in 2008, especially in Appalachian and Ozark states?

We will know it if we see it -- probably a year from now when polling is more extensive.

Barack Obama was a horrible fit for the culture of Backwoods America, an area that used to be strongly Democratic. Now the question is whether he has served it well enough or will serve it well enough that his poor cultural fit doesn't matter.

But note well -- if this President manages to lose every one of the "Clinton twice" states that he got clobbered in in 2008 but by much smaller margins, then he will have reduced much of the political polarization that developed before 2008.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Does it help if the GOP candidate *coughmittcough* is a bad cultural fit for the region?

[pbrower2a]

Does it help if the GOP candidate *coughmittcough* is a bad cultural fit for the region?

Of course not. But Romney is doing better than any other Republican against President Obama in that poll. If the 2012 Presidential election is Romney vs. Obama, then it will be a contest between the d@mnyankee that Southern white people know and the d@mnyankee that they don't know so well.

The gaps between President Obama and every imaginable GOP nominee are close to those nationwide and in some states very different from Tennessee. With some contests it would be a steady hand and someone not-so-steady. Palin is a fool, Bachmann is an extremist, Gingrich is a liar, and Pawlenty is a trimmer.

By 2012 it won't matter that he enjoys classical music, that he plays golf and chess,  that he loves sailing, or that he has a bunch of books by 19th-century Russian authors (if any of such is true).  It will be instead whether he seems to care about the people who didn't vote for him the last time. many people just couldn't figure out what he was in 2008 -- and they will in 2012. He runs on his record and wins or runs from it and loses. 

[DS0816]

If Barack Obama were to win re-election next year with Tennessee flipping into his column, along with that pickup would be Kentucky, West Virginia, South Carolina, Arkansas, Texas and, most assuredly among the south, Georgia.

Missouri would, of course, return back to its bellwether record, and he'd have essentially won re-election in a roundabout 40-state landslide.

The only states the Republicans would assuredly get are Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming and, really the toughest among the border-souths/souths, Oklahoma. Alabama and Mississippi would be R holds. The Rs might hold Louisiana (down to mid-single digits).

In the plains, Kansas and Nebraska would be up for grabs (with the 1st congressonal district having flipped and sending the 2008 margin in the 2nd further north for Obama). North Dakota and South Dakota would probably flip, depending on whether partisan-Rs could prevent that from happening (with the losing R challenger holding them by under 2.50%).

[pbrower2a]

If Barack Obama were to win re-election next year with Tennessee flipping into his column, along with that pickup would be Kentucky, West Virginia, South Carolina, Arkansas, Texas and, most assuredly among the south, Georgia.

You are looking at a GOP disaster -- one in which the GOP loses control of the House, loses seats in the Senate, and loses a bunch of governorships. You are looking at an Eisenhower-scale Presidential victory with huge coattails. 

I'm going to list the nine states (and Congressional districts) by order of their likelihood of voting for the Republican nominee:

1. 3rd Congressional District of Nebraska
2. Wyoming
3. Idaho
4. Utah
5. Oklahoma
6. Mississippi
7. Alaska
8. Kansas
9. Nebraska at-large

Gutting the safety net for the quick gain of profiteering monopolists is not a conservative proposal -- it is a radical change. Americans rightly distrust radicalism. You can trust that Democrats will hold any support for the Ryan proposal against any Republican. 
   

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If Rick Perry is the nominee, then Texas remains R.

I'm not so sure about Mississippi and Alabama being R holds. I have seen polling for Mississippi -- before the Ryan proposal -- with approval of the President in the low forties. In that range one can generally add about 6% to the approval rating for the incumbent before the campaign season begins. That is the usual advantage of an incumbent in a gubernatorial or senatorial race.   President Obama has an approval rating of only 44% in Tennessee, but leads everyone. 

The South is highly deferential to the Armed Forces, which showed in the strong Southern support for John McCain. The GOP won't have a war hero/martyr as a nominee, and in such a case a President who has gotten more right than wrong in foreign and military policy wins.   

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.

"I am a conservative but I am not crazy" might be a slogan among many usual Republican and R-leaning independents. Watch closely for a "Republicans for Obama" movement to appear in a community near you.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Tennessee isn't a top ten battleground state like VA and FL are. Without a southerner on the ticket, sweeping the south is a must win for the GOP and that will be tough to do with poll numbers like this.

[DS0816]

You are looking at a GOP disaster — one in which the GOP loses control of the House, loses seats in the Senate, and loses a bunch of governorships. You are looking at an Eisenhower-scale Presidential victory with huge coattails.

Not that many governorships are up for grabs, given they numerically are on the schedule in non-leap years. I’m plenty open to the possibility of a huge landslide (given the Republican field, the developing changes in the voting electorate, historical voting patterns, etc.).  It would take a bomb of a R candidate to help: Obama going from 52.92% to at least 57% of the U.S. Popular Vote. That would be Obama winning re-election, nationally, by double his 2008 margin of 7.26%.

Ike — whose 1956 increase was 4.55% — didn’t win back Congress for the Rs. When he flipped the White House with his first election, in 1952, the House and Senate also went from D to R. 1948 Harry Truman — winning a full term — flipped both (after losing them in 1946) while holding for a fifth consecutive term the White House for the Ds. And the 33rd president of the United States won election with a national margins decline compared to 1944 Franklin Roosevelt (some color-flipping of select states, though; normal when the same party wins more than two straight).

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Will the Democrats use this? Richard Nixon said something along this line about his enemies: “I gave them the sword. And they ran me through.”   

If the Ds really want to win big…the Paul Ryan plan is a beautiful way to make that happen. After all, nationally John McCain improved with the senior vote on George W. Bush’s [2004] margin by 3 points: 8%, from W.’s 5%. Much of that was made possible with the south. In his home state of Texas, W.’s worst voting-age group performance was with seniors. He won them by just 4 points. McCain won them by 34. Let’s see how the Ryan plan would play with the 65+ block in the No. 2 most-populous state in the country.

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Well, he should be able to hold his home state’s previous election’s 950,000-plus raw-vote margin, as well as the percentage margin of 11.76%. Especially from a state that was 19.02% more Republican than on average to the rest of the country.

Gov. Rick Perry [R-Texas] won’t be the 2012 R nominee. His potential is with the fact that all presidents the past 25 election cycles — 1912–2008 — have claimed as their home states ones in the Top 20. Well, there was just one exception: Arkansas’s Bill Clinton. Perhaps he’s relying on failure from Mitt Romney: Romney cannot flip/win Massachusetts — in the general — unless he’s Ronald Reagan 2012, and the electorate votes somewhat accordingly, despite the fact the party hasn’t won nationally by more than 2.46% since the 1980s ended. So, if the Rs deem Mitt not good enough for the nomination, there may be the Rs’ temptation to return once again to the Lone Star. 

Hey — redundancies happen. In the second half of the 20th century, Democrats picked the following on their tickets from Massachusetts and Minnesota. And, with inclusion of the first decade of the 21st century, Republicans went with candidates from California and Texas. 

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Who has more poll? …Mississippi or Alabama? The two first voted in 1820 and have voted differently only once — in 1840. Thing is, over the last 25 election cycles (beginning in 1912, when New Mexico and Arizona completed our 48 contiguous United States), Ala. and Miss. have had a dismal record — percentage wise — in voting with the winner. They vote nearly polar opposite of Vermont (which was Republican while Ala. and Miss. were staunchly Democratic). For a prevailing candidate/party to carry all three in the same election — it would be in the scenario that about 85/90 percent of the overall 538 electoral votes would get reaped by the victor. A massive blowout would be required.

[pbrower2a]

This is clear. Should President Obama win all of the states and districts that he won in 2008 and nothing else in 2012, he gets 359 electoral votes. To do essentially well he must pick up one of Montana (362), Missouri (369), Arizona (370) or Georgia (375) if not losing Indiana or trade off Indiana for either Georgia or one of the two other states.

He will reasonably have to pick up Arizona, Missouri, and Georgia whole holding Indiana (396) and maybe Montana (399) to get into the 400 EV zone before going into the blowout range. At that point, he wins South Carolina and NE-01 or both Dakotas (406/409/402) before either the Clinton-but-not Obama states (AR, KY, LA, TN, and WV) or Texas -- either of which constitute 38 electoral votes.

Electoral blowouts aren't interesting. We have just had two elections that really were close (one state changes everything) and one that looked close for a very long time. But an Obama
blowout might have consequences beyond the Presidency.

The Democrats will be hard-pressed to maintain the Senate majority. The political conditions of 2006 (a disgraced presidency) made possible the most unlikely set of Senate gains -- all coming through Democratic defeats of six incumbent Senators, the political equivalent of betting everything on an inside straight. Two Democratic incumbents will be retiring, making two open seats available, and the Democratic US Senate seats in Montana and Nebraska look very shaky. They likely pick up a Senate seat in Nevada, wherein the Democrats likely challenge someone appointed in the wake of a scandal. Things must break right for the Democrats to win anything else.

The Republicans have powerful, loud, ruthless, well-funded front groups as allies in the effort to hold onto the House so that the House of Representatives can represent entities other than constituents. Can things work as well for Republicans in 2012 as in 2010 in the House?


 

[memphis]

Aside from the dubious results, why would an outfit put the tenths place in their polling. Are they trying to look stupid?

[pbrower2a]

Aside from the dubious results, why would an outfit put the tenths place in their polling. Are they trying to look stupid?

College students like excessive precision in results. That's all that I can figure.