Gallup Poll: Obama Re-Election Now Far From A Shoo In
The latest Gallup Poll finds that if the election was held today President Barack Obama would lose to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and be tied with Texas Governor Rick Perry — a sign of Obama’s increasing vulnerability and the GOP’s increasing opportunity.
So the big drama that will unfold quickly will be whether Obama can decrease his vulnerability and whether Republicans will seize — or blow — their opportunity:
President Barack Obama is closely matched against each of four possible Republican opponents when registered voters are asked whom they would support if the 2012 presidential election were held today. Mitt Romney leads Obama by two percentage points, 48% to 46%, Rick Perry and Obama are tied at 47%, and Obama edges out Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann by two and four points, respectively.
These prospective election ballots — measured Aug. 17-18, well over a year before the Nov. 6, 2012, election — indicate that the race for president at this point is generally competitive, with voters fairly evenly divided in their preference for giving Obama a second term or electing a Republican candidate. Even though the four Republican candidates tested have varying degrees of name recognition, they all fare roughly the same.
Gallup’s generic presidential ballot — measured six times this year — shows a close race between Obama and a generic “Republican presidential candidate,” although there have been survey-to-survey variations on this measure, with the Republican candidate leading in June and July.
And to analyists who suggest Obama isn’t really doing that bad, Gallup has this tidbit:
President Obama’s job approval rating is hovering around the 40% mark. This is below the rating that any of the six incumbent presidents re-elected since Eisenhower has had at the time of the presidential election. However, in August of the year before they were re-elected, Ronald Reagan (43%) and Bill Clinton (46%) were both below 50%. Obama’s position of rough parity against leading GOP candidates shows that more Americans at the moment say they would vote for Obama than approve of the job he is doing — perhaps a reflection of the continuing lack of a strong front-runner on the Republican side.
Political spinners on the Dem side will say Obama’s cup is half full. But the reality is, the cup isn’t half full due to the reeling economy, Obama’s seeming inability to get his message out and live up to original expectations about his ability to communicate with the public and dominate the political scene, plus continued rumblings from Democratic Party liberals that once again some of them will decide to punish their party by sitting out the election or by mount a primary challenge to Obama — steps that would most likely undermine Obama’s election and help conservatives solidify what past Democratic voters’ have helped institute, a conservative Supreme Court. There is no sign that a primary challenge to Obama would do anything except weaken him and virtually no chance that a new Democratic challenger currently on the scene could beat the GOP in 2012 in a race for the White House.
The poll suggests that aside from outside events and an a near miraculous economic upturn, Obama’s best hope is that the GOP grab defeat from the jaws of victory — something some Republicans establishment types are starting to fear might happen if the party nominates someone who might please Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Party and turn off many other American voters, particularly independent voters. Even conservatives are concerned by the existing GOP field.
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Refuse power, others will happily partake.
I can say that neither Romney or Perry will be Tea Party favorites. However, they obviously have the big money behind them.
It’s probably going to be a close fight, as usual, but hardly an exciting one.
And I don’t know of anyone of any stripe that doesn’t acknowledge/admire Obama’s ability to deliver a good speech. He HAS gotten the message out — the people rejected it. There’s simply not enough lipstick for the pig.
A weak economy always equals a vulnerable president. If the Republicans nominate an electable candidate, they can win. I would give either Perry or Romney an even chance. Perry’s never lost a campaign, and he will probably learn to control his mouth. If he runs on Texas’s economic record, he will be very electable; there’s no denying that Texas is doing better than much of the country, though it has little to do with Perry’s governance. Romney will slide because the longer you look at him, the more obvious his insincerity and phoniness become, but he still has a good record as governor and his ideas are less alienating than Perry’s to the American center. He can win if the economy gets weak enough.
Prof, I agree that Romney is not a Tea Party darling, however I take issue with Perry not being one. Recent reports have shown that the Tea Party is not a secular, strictly fiscally conservative libertarian movement. They are largely religious, not fearful of theocratic assertions by the federal government. Additionally, they are largely xenophobic, resistant to change, and there are racial elements to the distate for Obama (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/#44181387 ; yes, sorry, MSNBC… I find Chris Matthews and Morning Joe to be the only tolerable news and talk from that channel). Perry has all of the racial-undertone code-wording at play. He may not be their man economically, but I think it’s safe to say they’re not entirely concerned only about spending. They are the Christian Conservatives largely rebranded.
It’s really too bad that Huntsman won’t get the nomination, because that is a race I’d like to see. Huntsman could prove to be an amazing statesman with an eye for business but without the cultural baggage weighing down the current GOP.
I think one of the more telling examples of Obama’s vulnerability is the race listed between himself and Bachmann or Paul. Where Romney and Perry have a higher profile with a larger number of people due to press coverage, Bachmann and Paul have a smaller appeal to mainstream America. When they can make a run this close, it seems like Obama has stronger negatives to move people to vote “anyone but Obama”.
Obama still has the ability to deliver a speech, but where Ronald Reagan was also able to deliver a speech, he was also able to deliver results after a couple years in office. Obama has not been able to deliver any results that have anyone believing the economy will be better next year. His vision that the Right ran the car into the ditch has become one where America still finds the car in the ditch and nothing has been done to move it any at all. The economy has become his economy and he no longer can blame prior administrations and have the voters believe that position any longer.
However, Republicans have a way of snatching defeat from victory. One only needs to look at the past Senate races in Nevada and Delaware for a couple examples. Somehow, I fear, they will find a way to reelect Obama.
The more narrowly you define the tea party, steadystate, the less the election hinges on them. By any label there are plenty of fiscally-sensible voters disenchanted with the Democrats’ performance in general and disappointed in Obama’s leadership.
Dr J., to a certain extent, I’m one of those voters but it’s a bitter pill to try to swallow all of the cultural authoritarian-state BS that candidates needs to spew to win over the far-right primaries/straw-polls in places like Iowa.
I’m not suggesting that the Democrats offer virile leadership in comparison to the Tea Party, but given the choice between the two evils, I don’t have it in me to vote for Perry over Obama unless Perry course-corrects considerably. Perry is, after-all, the character who was flirting with secession. He talked about pulling away from the country for which he is now running for President and barely a peep is mentioned, but Obama’s experience as a black man in our country was mulled over to the point of exhaustion with regard to whether or not he’d be patriotic enough. His patriotism and love-of-country is still questioned, yet Perry, of all people, is the one who questions it.
Obama has been disappointing, especially to someone who had hoped to see political discourse rise above the muck, but people have been discounting him before he got off the blocks.
@steadystate
The tea party isn’t what most people, Democrat or Republican, think it is. There are reactionary members in the group, but it’s a lot more diverse than the press thinks. That’s why the old guard Republicans have been surprised by the freshmen more than once.
One of the core members has been emailing links to the group, and it’s safe to say that he’s connected to more than one outside group. This is lot more indicative of the tea parties than people’s assumptions:
Yes, Rick Perry is the 5th column candidate
Rick Perry’s Bad Medicine
Lol, that poll shows a 4 pt only win for Obama vs. Bachmann. That is the first indication that this poll is worthless. He would trounce her in a general. It is too early or something else is wrong. I do believe Romney is the only candidate that can beat Obama, but this poll means nothing.
I think Obama will have a tough time in his re-election for two main reasons: the economy and all the mud the Republicans have thrown at him, including over the healthcare reform which is based on conservative principles. Obama had reduced taxes, has not instituted ongoing policies which will cost taxpayers as much as Bush, he has ended Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and done many other good things for this country. The Republicans have done everything they can to block him, including filibustering bills. When he dies something right, conservatives lambast him. Remember those pirates off Africa who killed people and held a hostage? Rush Limbaugh thought Obama was too hard on them…. That they were just kids who wanted to go home…. And look at Libya…. McCain even found a way to label our success a “failure”. And let’s not forget that our troops in Iraq are coming home. Where’s the celebration over that? Obama’s biggest fault is his willingness to negotiate with Republicans who refuse to budge. Look at the debt ceiling crises. The R’s governed from the far extreme right, willing to take our country to default to get their way. What has always made our country great is the middle ground of ideas between the parties. We have seen the results of the recent years of Republican intransigence. We need two parties both willing to meet halfway on ideas.
FDR first ran “against the banks” in Great Depression I, which was obviously successful. If Great Depression II comes out before the election (I’ll go on record that I believe it’s coming, but not on when), or even before the primary, we might be looking at a whole new ball of wax.
The economic trouble is far more than just “the Presidency”.
It’s an entire political system that allows large campaign contributions, that give the people of the United States “the shaft”, and support special interest groups.
Politicians should be limited to $10,000 self contributions. No corporation should be allowed to contribute to a campaign, and each person should be limited to a total of $100 contribution.
These politicians need to learn how to do things on a budget, and learn that the people are who they should represent, and not groups with large offerings of cash.
Perry’s main problem in winning over the Tea Party will be his very lax record on immigration. That will give him some trouble in the primary, but if he gets the nomination, the Tea Party will certainly vote for him rather than risk letting Obama win.
Let’s pretend that these things happened during the first four years of the Bush administration and let’s suppose what the republican talking points would have been. Anyone want to guess?
• Osama bin Laden killed.
• Mubarak ousted and on trial for his life.
• Gadhafi ousted.
• Assad on his way out.
Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of decisions that Obama has made that I don’t like, but…
Yeeeeaaaaaaah…. Obama is still going to cake walk through the general election. Reps will nominate Perry, or Parry, and independents will run to the Dems.
And if even Reps are smart enough to nominate Romney, Obama will still be a monster on the campaign trail. The man can still give an amazing speech and can save all of his campaign funding for the general election.
Oh my, there goes 13% of the vote!
SteveK, the Republicans obviously can’t win without that 13% of the vote. That’s why they’ve been pandering to that 13% so shamelessly. And they will continue to do so, until they calculate that their efforts are costing them more than that number of swing voters.