Check That Reality Check
Sullivan points out that some maps projecting the candidates’ electoral votes at this time four years ago were wildly wrong as predictions of the outcome, which ought to send cold shudders through every Obamaite in the country for a couple reasons. First, the electoral maps are only representations of the polling at the time, and most polling (except for reliable operations such as Rasmussen) in mid-2004 did show Kerry with sizeable leads. John Zogby, to his everlasting embarrassment, was predicting a Kerry landslide on Election Night itself. Oops. Second, Kerry’s lead earlier in the year in many polls gradually evaporated over the summer and fall, which reflected the typical erosion of support for the candidate from the non-incumbent party. What does this mean? It means that Obama’s continued weak levels of support in reputable national tracking polls (he continues to trail in both Gallup and Rasmussen this week) and his anemic polling in many swing states should be worrying his supporters a lot more than they are, and it may mean that Obama’s results on Election Day may be much worse than what those electoral maps are projecting today. Just as polls are not predictive, but are a rough measurement of opinion at the time they are taken, these electoral maps are not predictive, and we all understand that things will change between now and Election Day. The rather grim thing for Obama boosters to consider is that the change is more likely to be for the worse for their candidate than it will be for the better.
” It means that Obama’s continued weak levels of support in reputable national tracking polls (he continues to trail in both Gallup and Rasmussen this week) and his anemic polling in many swing states should be worrying his supporters a lot more than they are, and it may mean that Obama’s results on Election Day may be much worse than what those electoral maps are projecting today.”
Obama will, of course, consolidate a great deal of the support that Clinton currently have, and will most likely get a nice bump when (if?) Clinton drops out. The problem for him is that he could consolidate it in states that he can’t possible lose.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10691.html
Barack Obama’s favorability ratings among white women have declined significantly in recent months, particularly among Democrats and independents, presenting an immediate obstacle for the likely Democratic nominee as he moves to shore up his party’s base.
According to a new report by The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, half of white women now have a negative perception of Obama.
Forty-nine percent of white women view Obama unfavorably, while only 43 percent hold a favorable opinion. In February, 36 percent of these women viewed Obama unfavorably, while 56 percent had a positive perception of the likely Democratic nominee.
Over the same period, Democratic white women’s negative view of Obama increased from 21 percent to 35 percent, while their positive view decreased from 72 percent to 60 percent — roughly the same rate as white women overall.{…}
Is there a typical erosion of support for the non-incumbent party? I realize that’s clearly true of Kerry, but did we see that for Bush in 2000? Or Reagan in 1980? I recall something similar happening in 1988 with Dukakis, but I’m trying to figure out if it’s a pattern or just true variation from candidate to candidate. Do you have numbers and pictures?
Less than 3 weeks after Sullivan’s May28 map, the same website reported:
This seems to me to be a very reasonable summary of the race. So we’re saying Bush, not just Kerry, was ahead at times in May and June. At the risk of taking the polling from the electoral-vote website too seriously, let’s look at the numbers. The graph we are effectively all talking about is here (including some really useful reminders of the swift-boating dates etc). This is the perspective we need:
http://electoral-vote.com/evp2004/info/graph.html
Your basic thesis is that the challenging candidate must be significantly ahead in the months before the election, as the incumbent will necessarily make up ground as the vote nears.
To me, the graph suggests Kerry was strong in the summer, Bush strong in September with the final weeks ending in a brutal scrap. The trends don’t quite support your argument: why the sudden surge in support for the challenger in September-October? I’d also point out Kerry held large but never knock-out leads (which I’ll arbitrarily call 350 electoral votes to prove my own point). Bush was always in the game.
The current level-pegging is reminiscent of the mid-June Bush-Kerry scrap in 04. If this doesn’t change over the next couple of months, maybe we’ll see a fight all the way to the polls. I don’t know what that implies (you’d say a McCain victory for sure). If Obama starts taking some leads soon for long periods we’re merely on the broad 2004 trajectory (though the punditocracy will be going nuts) or, just maybe, on our way to an Obama landslide. We’d only know if the latter was implied if he was able to maintain those highly putative leads into September (which I doubt).
If McCain starts taking leads for long periods any time soon, Obama is toast. You may hold me to that, at least.
I think comparisons to 2004 are misleading, in that Kerry won his nomination very quickly, and had no distraction by primary challengers to deal with. Thus, his early lead was misleading, in that it was the result of not facing direct battles by unscrupulous opponents playing the kitchen sink strategy. When Kerry did face that kind of opposition later on, his numbers sank. Obama has already faced that kind of opposition, and he’s still doing quite well.
The better precedent, I think, is 1992, when Clinton won the Dem primary, but faced a three-way race with Perot and Bush. Obama has, essentially, been in a three-way race for the last three months, and his numbers have been hurt by that. But not hurt nearly as much as Bill Clinton was hurt in 1992 by the three-way race with Perot and Bush. As I recall, at this time back then, Clinton was actually running in third place, behind even Perot. His chances seemed virtually hopeless, and scandal-ridden, and the Dems were in deep trouble. And yet, he was able to recover, increase his numbers, and actually win.
I think it’s a little silly to make too much of these comparisons, in that Obama is different from both Kerry and BIll Clinton, but the notion that Kerry’s example is somehow the same as Obama’s current situation, and that therefore Obama supporter should be quivering in fear, is just willfully ignorant of the actual historical parallels. I’m not suggesting that Obama has no troubles to overcome. But they are very different obstacles than Kerry had in 2004. The damage he’s suffered is largely due to a very hostile intra-party fight that’s gotten very personal. That’s not anything that Kerry ever suffered from. And Kerry’s failures stemmed from an incredibly weak personality that lacked either charisma or campaigning skills, and a very effective opposition campaign of character assassination that took Kerry by surprise, and to which he failed to respond.
The good news is that Hillary Clinton’s opposition to Obama is purely personal, and not ideological or even principlied, and hence it’s easier to overcome. The Dem women who are not supporting Obama now are likely to do so in the fall, once Hillary drops out and supports him as the nominee. The bad news is that her opposition may persist if she decides to suicide bomb her own party, which seems entirely possible. Also, the opposition attacks on Obama’s character have already taken place, and he’s survived him, which is reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s ability to survive personal attacks on him in 1992 and still go on to win. Like Clinton, Obama has taken his worst hits early on, which means he’s likely to go up from here, not down like Kerry in 2004.
So the analogy to Kerry really doesn’t work, except if one ignores the actual details and merely assumes that all things are equal. They aren’t.