Posted by
beltway girl on Monday, August 25, 2008 2:03:38 AM
Bill Clinton, the only Dem in the presidential winning column since single-termer Jimmy Carter. According to analysis of polling data, is Obama following in his footsteps?
It does not appear this way. In August of 1992, Bill Clinton had a monstrous lead of about 26 points at one point. This tightened to about nine points after the Republican National Convention.
Clinton also enjoyed juggernaut-scale leads at this time of year, particularly in August, over opponent Bob Dole in 1996.
Now, granted, Ross Perot was an enormous factor in the 1992 election, and even led in polls in the spring. He ultimately garnered about 19% of the vote in the general election. Clinton received only a plurality in that election with 43% of the total vote, while George H. W. Bush received about 37%.
However, Perot was not a significant factor in the 1996 race, but we should note that Clinton would at that time have been the incumbent. And although Clinton still did not break the 50% mark in terms of the total vote, he won very handily over Dole, and those August polling numbers would have presaged that victory.
So excluding, for now, the 1992 race because of the Perot factor, we can still at least reliably consider the data for the 1996 race, and also put the numbers for 1992 on the table.
In 1996, Dems would have been confident, even in August, that they had a winner. Now, the premise of this article is that a very hefty lead is necessary at this time of year, specifically in August, to score an ultimate Dem victory. Some might refute this by noting the data in the Michael Dukakis bid in 1988. But in this case, we should note that the pre-convention numbers for Dukakis in that year, with a late July convention, showed him with a six-point lead before the convention. This cannot possibly compare to Clinton's comparable numbers in 1996, but we have to consider he was an incumbent that year. In 1992, we have the Perot factor, and we'd note that Clinton's pre-convention numbers might have sometimes been close to Dukakis's numbers, at various points. But it is also to be figured into this that once Clinton gained a lead over Bush in July of that year, he never ceded it.
So let's also look at the year 2000, and we'd have Gore, who went on to lose the election (remember Florida) in the electoral college, but who did win the popular vote by a razor-thin margin. Gallup recorded notoriously erratic results in that election, but a four-point lead held by Gore in August was-- indeed-- something of a precursor of the actual outcome. Gore nearly took the presidency. And another poll in August even showed a statistical tie, another very, very reliable indication of what was to come.
Now let's look at Kerry. Kerry led the polls in July by eight points at one point, enjoying something of a bounce with his veep selection, John Edwards.
By the end of August, Bush had caught up with Kerry, however.
And looking at this from another angle, in terms of enjoying a bounce from veep selections, this has also been shown to make a difference when you look at the polling data.
Dole, in 1996, had an electrifying vice presidential selection in Jack Kemp, and he enjoyed a nine-point bounce after naming him. Bush enjoyed a three-point bounce after naming Cheney, a (granted) less than jolting choice. Gore gained five points after tapping Lieberman, now a name being bandied about by the McCain campaign. And Kerry moved four points ahead with Edwards.
Returning to the contest at hand, Gallup showed the race in a very dead heat in its poll released today. So far, no Biden bounce is apparent.
And even if it were, the one thing that the doomed Dole bid of '96 can show us is that voters cast their votes for a president, not a vice president.
If you look at the polling numbers, they seem to be foreshadowing yet another doomed Dem ticket. And the numbers show us even more than that.
Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter are the only Dems in the winning column since Kennedy & LBJ. And even when we look at these winners, Carter served only one term and Clinton couldn't break the 50% mark for his second term. On top of that, Clinton may have arguably owed his first term to the Perot factor.
One has to wonder about this very long list of losses and whether it means something.
Could it be the Dem platform?
Perhaps so. If it is, don't look for a landslide Obama win this year. And if it's close, it might not go for the Dems, either. When it's that close, the map doesn't seem to favor the Dems, as the Bush-Gore contest of 2000 showed us. And another tell-tale sign-- also tied to that 2000 race-- that it won't go Obama's way if it's that close is that Lieberman, the veep for the Gore ticket that year, is now under consideration by McCain. The broader point to be gleamed from this, though, is that when the voters don't like your ideas, no pocket of votes anywhere-- including Florida or Ohio-- is going to help you pull this one out.
Is it the ideas, stupid?
Maybe. And if it is, no election is going to show this in more stark contrast than the one now in the hands of the American voters.