Obama approval in battleground states (voters, campaign, thought, Democrats)
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I'm going to consider the following states "battleground states" for the purposes of this thread:
Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin
No incumbent president has overperformed his national approval rating at the time of the election (among the actual electorate at least) in the percentage of the national popular vote he received when running for re-election since Carter in 1980...and we all know how that election turned out. I am not sure whether the same is true when looking at it state by state, but I see no reason why it would be drastically different.
So I thought it would be good to take a look at Obama's approval in the battleground states.
I am using Pollster - from the liberals' beloved Huffington Post. I'm not sure which polls they use to calculate their averages, but I am calculating the averages using the three most recent polls they list OR any polls that were conducted either entirely or partially in the past month if there are more than three in the past month (if the last date on which the poll was conducted was June 21 or later...I include it).
What's the point of this post? To try to find a silver lining in a big old dark cloud hanging over the Romney campaign?
You're inventive to say the least.
Refute what I said. No incumbent president running for re-election has overperformed his approval (nationally at least) since 1980. Carter slightly overperformed his approval, but still lost in a landslide.
For the record, I think the Romney campaign is being run horribly. That being said, to suggest that Obama has no problems of his own is laughable. Not to mention - a lot of these are Democratic-leaning states and not exactly swing states. Furthermore, most of these polls are of registered voters. You know as well as I do that the actual electorate will likely be more Republican than registered voters as a whole.
Yeah, an encumbent with unfavorables like that, before people start paying attention - during the summer - don't get reelected. That is history speaking. We all know he is superman, but he better be SUPERMAN. or it will only get worse.
It's the economy, and none of the manufactured distractions; nothing else.
PPP is a Democratic pollster that Nate Silver said has a Democratic-leaning house effect. And they oversampled Democrats compared to Republicans - even when comparing party ID among this poll's respondents to the party ID of the electorate in the Democratic wave elections of 2006 and 2008.
This is the only Oregon poll I'm aware of since March where respondents were asked whether they approve of how Obama is handling his job.
Obama approval in NM is 48% according to this poll - the only even fairly recent one I'm aware of in this state as well where respondents were asked whether they approve of how he his handling his job. And this was also PPP.
Last edited by afoigrokerkok; 07-21-2012 at 12:27 PM..
Does that look at approval ratings? No.... Approval ratings are the subject of this thread. We have countless threads about horse race polling.
For the record, Obama is below 50% in pretty much all the battleground states according to that. Undecideds are historically more likely to break for the challenger than the incumbent, particularly when they don't approve of the incumbent's job performance.
Using approval ratings - from polls where the approval question was asked mostly of registered voters and not even the likely electorate - the electoral map looks like this (Nevada is a tossup):
This is certainly not the map I expect. That being said, approval ratings are typically a good predictor. Obama lovers seem to ignore this. Furthermore, this map assumes that he's able to get a percentage of the vote equal to his approval and not underperform his approval at all. That doesn't typically happen. Even though Kerry was a weak challenger, Bush was only able to get 51% of the popular vote nationally in 2004 even with a 53% approval rating among the electorate.
I hesitate to assume that Obama's approval is below 50% OR and NM based on a single poll in each state, but there have been no other recent polls where approval was asked in those states, as I said earlier, and they were both PPP polls which lean Democrat.
Last edited by afoigrokerkok; 07-21-2012 at 12:34 PM..
What is the rule of thumb percentage (for win or lose) for approval ratings in a given state, based on historic polling and actual voting?
If approval rating is above X% than candidate is likely to win that state?
If approval rating is below X% than candidate is likely to lose that state?
The lowest approval rating a modern president has been reelected with is Bush Jr. at 48%, but it's not a reliable indicator. Anything above 50% and below 40% are the bounds of certainty.
The lowest approval rating a modern president has been reelected with is Bush Jr. at 48%, but it's not a reliable indicator. Anything above 50% and below 40% are the bounds of certainty.
is the lowest approval rating of 48% for each state won or for the entire nation?
I am more interested in seeing the date split out by states since this is how the votes are counted. Nationwide approval ratings, nationwide polls and nationwide election results are pretty worthless as far as president, since we have the electoral college. especially important this year since only the swing states are in play, for the most part. It's best to simply watch the polling and approval ratings only in the swing states.
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