A credit downgrade, unemployment at 9.1 per cent, spluttering growth — the economic cards are certainly stacked against Obama for his re-election in 2012. But here’s the thing: American punters still think that he’s more likely to win next November than not.
Perhaps that’s because, contrary to Clinton’s famous slogan, it’s not actually all about the economy. According to Nate Silver’s analysis of the last 25 presidential elections, a better rule of thumb is “it’s half the economy and half everything else, stupid”. So if Obama’s losing the first half, what about the “everything else”?
The proportion of Americans telling Gallup they approve of Obama’s performance hit a new low of 40 per cent last week:
But — again according to analysis by Silver — a President with that level of approval at this stage should be roughly evens for victory. The red lines on this graph are the Gallup approval ratings, the rest should be self-explanatory:
However, if Obama’s approval ratings haven’t recovered by February, his re-election chances will likely be down to around 30 per cent. If, on the other hand, he’s recovered to 50 per cent approval (where he was at the beginning of June), he should be the easy favourite at over 70 per cent.
One factor working strongly in Obama’s favour is the weakness of the Republican field. Here are the favourability ratings of the current candidates:
And for those who think that Rick Perry will be the man to topple Obama, bear in mind that even in his home (Red) state of Texas, Perry trails Obama 47-45 in the most recent head-to-head polling. As US pollster Tom Jensen says, “If one of the GOP candidates ever actually becomes really popular with voters, Obama’s in big trouble”. Luckily for the President, there are no real signs of that so far.
So Obama will certainly be hoping the economy picks up in time for next year’s election. But even if it doesn’t, he may still be able to secure four more years.
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