This is Political Sphere, doing a guest blog today while my mother Mrs. Spherical Model is out of town. As she has previously mentioned I do a lot of reading while I am at work. My favorite thing to read is political analysts’ observations of the political scene. Most recently I enjoyed this piece by Sean Trende, which gave some very good insight into what re-election campaigns are decided by and what poll numbers to pay attention to if you would like to get an idea of the outcome.
Trende explains that in a re-election, especially of a President, two questions are asked by the voter to determine who they will vote for. First, does the voter approve of the incumbent candidate and the job that they are doing? Second, is the challenger an acceptable alternative? Reading further he explains the correlation that brings him to the conclusion that the challenger faces a low threshold to be an acceptable alternative as actual results, at least in recent presidential elections, have been within a point or two of the job approval rating.
With this in mind I decided to take a look at an estimate of Electoral College outcomes based on Gallup’s state-by-state 2011 average presidential job approval ratings. It may not be perfect, but it provides us with a starting point to understanding the 2012 presidential election. So let’s look at the numbers.
| State | Presidential Job Aprroval | Delegates |
| Washington D.C. | 81.1% | 3 |
| Hawaii | 56.1% | 4 |
| Maryland | 55.5% | 10 |
| Massachusetts | 55.1% | 11 |
| Connecticut | 55.0% | 7 |
| New York | 54.7% | 29 |
| Vermont | 51.3% | 3 |
| Delaware | 50.9% | 3 |
| New Jersey | 50.8% | 14 |
| Illinois | 50.4% | 20 |
| California | 50.1% | 55 |
| Rhode Island | 49.2% | 4 |
| Michigan | 48.1% | 16 |
| Minnesota | 47.7% | 10 |
| Washington | 47.6% | 12 |
| Wisconsin | 47.4% | 10 |
| Maine | 47.2% | 4 |
| Iowa | 45.6% | 6 |
| Pennsylvania | 45.0% | 20 |
| Georgia | 44.6% | 16 |
| Oregon | 44.5% | 7 |
| Virginia | 44.5% | 13 |
| North Carolina | 43.7% | 15 |
| Florida | 43.6% | 29 |
| Ohio | 42.1% | 18 |
| Mississippi | 42.0% | 6 |
| New Mexico | 41.7% | 5 |
| Nevada | 41.3% | 6 |
| South Carolina | 40.9% | 9 |
| Colorado | 40.4% | 9 |
| Indiana | 40.1% | 11 |
| Arizona | 39.7% | 11 |
| Louisiana | 39.0% | 8 |
| Texas | 39.0% | 38 |
| New Hampshire | 38.7% | 4 |
| Missouri | 38.6% | 10 |
| Nebraska | 37.8% | 5 |
| Tennessee | 37.6% | 11 |
| Alabama | 36.9% | 9 |
| Kansas | 36.8% | 6 |
| Kentucky | 36.5% | 8 |
| North Dakota | 36.3% | 3 |
| Alaska | 35.7% | 3 |
| South Dakota | 35.3% | 3 |
| Arkansas | 34.3% | 6 |
| Montana | 33.8% | 3 |
| West Virginia | 32.7% | 5 |
| Wyoming | 30.6% | 3 |
| Oklahoma | 30.3% | 7 |
| Idaho | 29.3% | 4 |
| Utah | 28.6% | 6 |
Recent elections have not required the winning candidate to receive 50% of the vote, but if they did then Obama would be in serious trouble winning the same number of states as Michael Dukakis in 1988 (10 states plus Washington D.C.). He would walk away with a total of only 159 delegates (please note that for ease of calculation I am not splitting the Nebraska or Maine delegates.) I think instead we could look a little lower allowing for the one to two point margin. I noticed there was a reasonable break between Maine (47.2%) and Iowa (45.6%) and decided in this scenario to have Maine and everything above go to Obama with all else going to Romney. With this scenario Obama is still in significant trouble with Romney getting 323 delegates to Obama’s 215. This may seem like a larger shift than would be expected, but the truth is we had similar results in 2004. The only difference between this scenario and 2004 is that Pennsylvania, Oregon, and New Hampshire have flipped to the Republican candidate.
If we were to look at another scenario, believing Obama would be unlikely to lose either Pennsylvania, a solid blue state in almost all of the last thirteen presidential elections, or Oregon, a solid blue state since they voted Dukakis in 1988, (New Hampshire is at a 38.7% approval rating and has flipped many times in the last thirteen presidential elections as you can see here) Obama would still lose. In this scenario I had Oregon and everything above it on the chart go to Obama, including Georgia which seems unlikely, while everything below, including Virginia, went to Romney. In this scenario Romney still commands 274 delegates with Obama at 264. (If we switch Georgia to Romney and Virginia to Obama we get a similar score of Romney 277 to 261 for Obama.)
Just to show how far Obama’s approval has fallen, let me offer one final scenario comparable to the 2008 results. In 2008 Obama won a landslide against John McCain 359 to 179. To get a result like this again (356 to 182) Obama would need to get every state that has greater than 41% approval of his job as President. In other words he would need to either get a drastic improvement in his approval numbers or hope that the Americans Elect group siphons off a significant number of voters who disapprove of his job as President.
Of course these numbers are subject to change as they are averages of 2011, and they include all adults 18 and over rather than just the voting populace (which is generally more Republican). But many of the polls in 2012 seem to be mirroring the trends of 2011. This is likely because the economy to this point is mirroring the trends of 2011, with unexpected job gains early on providing hope that the recovery might finally be catching on despite government policies, followed by a slight dip in the spring, and possibly leading into another (non)-recovery summer. If the trends do continue to mirror 2011 closely, look for Obama to lose in a landslide this November.
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