The cautious Obama resurgence?

BenBurch said:
Depends on the error bars. We we know them?
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I think we need to look more at "likely voters," as well, something not well defined in either polls or trading values.

I suspect many if not most of the youth vote that put Obama into office is now disaffected by politics and without a virtual "anti-christ" figure like Bush or Chenney to motivate them and their more recent replacements, we are not likely to see near as many youthful Democratic workers, supporters or voters.

The Path to 270
Demographics Versus Economics in the 2012 Presidential Election
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/11/path_to_270.html
 
Neally said:
I thing the 51.4% for Obama and 34.9% for Romney does not as accurately reflect the closeness of the actual race the way 47.1 to 44.6 that the poll of polls does.
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Disagreed, the race between Obama and Romney is not all that close because Romney has not yet won the nomination and that is not a certainty.

But the 51.something Obama price is probably the best prediction right now of an Obama win over <the republican candidate>
 
That Obama stood his ground and made it clear that the republicons would be called to account at the polls if they walked away from the deal may have been the one shot that will secure his re-election.

Caving on some points of health care was pure politics, and will take some time to actually make a major difference in people's lives.

A ditch digger who used to make cars is going to notice when his pay envelope is 20 bucks light.

Obama let us know on whose side he stands on this.
 
Francesca R said:
Disagreed, the race between Obama and Romney is not all that close because Romney has not yet won the nomination and that is not a certainty.
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Obama hasn't not yet won the nomination either, though more of a certainty than Romney.
 
Tomtomkent said:
I can't comment on the tax issue, but would suggest, as an outsider looking in, that Obama has to continue being the calm and reasonable candidate, and let the other candidates continue to come out with what in this country would be "Borisisms". It isn't exactly that all the other candidates are in any way stupid (though, erm, some give that impression in most elections) it is more their choice of phrasing, when reduced down to a soundbite, which is all most of the rest of the world will hear, sounds silly. Even the greatest speech suffers when reduced to a soundbite, and frankly, some of the other candidates are making bad choices for selling their views, and allowing Obama to be the voice of reason even when he doesnt need to be.
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But so far the republican candidates are speechifying against each other. After their primaries the winner will run against Obama. I suspect things will change then.
 
casebro said:
But so far the republican candidates are speechifying against each other. After their primaries the winner will run against Obama. I suspect things will change then.
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As usual in these things, cat fights tend to damage the victor who then needs to run against somebody who hasn't been spending the last year fighting tooth-and-claw. It is part of the incumbent's advantage.
 
One thing that will change when Obama starts campaigning for re-election is that people will start hearing about the good stuff Obama has done, and there is quite a lot, especially in the foreign affairs realm. There are a lot of right-of-center people who will fondly remember how we took out OBL and how we helped defeat Ghadaffi without losing a single life, and how we rescued sailors from Somali pirates. Plus they will be reminded of how the economy was headed straight downhill when Obama took office and how it's leveled out since. They'll also be reminded of the most obstructionist Congress in history, where every vote required a supermajority, something rarely seen in even the most contentious days past.

I think that when the intermurals are finished, you'll see Obama widening the gap, because he has the better team.

Of course, we haven't seen what the dirt-shovelers will come up with yet. You can bet there will be a "Willy Horton" or "Swiftboating" attack forthcoming, and that kind of sleaze tends to be fairly effective. Still, I think they'll have a hard time making it stick this time.
 
Tricky said:
Of course, we haven't seen what the dirt-shovelers will come up with yet. You can bet there will be a "Willy Horton" or "Swiftboating" attack forthcoming, and that kind of sleaze tends to be fairly effective. Still, I think they'll have a hard time making it stick this time.
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The beauty and effectiveness of the Republican attack machine is it's not confined by the barriers of reality. ;)
 
I believe the balance of academic evidence is that they outperform polls but I am not about to link dump.

(In the UK in 2010 I recall Betfair never had anything like the same magnitude of "Clegg Bounce" as polls did after leadership TV debates, and it also consistently predicted a hung parliament for about a month before the event, maybe longer)
 
Francesca R said:
I believe the balance of academic evidence is that they outperform polls but I am not about to link dump.
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Evidence is mixed from what I've found:

"A more rigorous attempt to assess the performance of election stock markets is found in Berg et al. (2008); they report thatfor five recent elections covered by the Iowa Electronic Markets, the average absolute error in the market's prediction of the major-party presidential vote share across the 5 days prior to the election was 1.20 percentage points, while opinion polls conducted during that same time had an average error of 1.62 percentage points. Berg et al. (2008) also report evidence that election stock markets outperform polls for longer time periods before the election date."

"Erikson and Wlezien (2008) challenge the view that election stock markets outperform polls. They argue that polls only measure preferences on the polling day, whereas election stock markets forecast the outcome on election day. When poll leads are discounted using statistical techniques, they find that poll-based forecasts outperform vote-share market prices."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_Stock_Market
 
Francesca R said:
Disagreed, the race between Obama and Romney is not all that close because Romney has not yet won the nomination and that is not a certainty.

But the 51.something Obama price is probably the best prediction right now of an Obama win over <the republican candidate>
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The Iowa Electronic Market has really shown a big turn-around for Obama in recent weeks. The Winner-Take-All (WTA) prediction currently stands at

Dem12_WTA 56.9%
Rep12_WTA 43.5%

Which means that 56.9% of the people betting money on the outcome of the election believe that Obama's going to win (regardless of the actual vote counts or who the betters want to win the election). In addition, here's a graphic which shows the evolution of the market these last few months...



Given the fact that the Republicans have been so openly on display these last few months, spouting off their Tea Party talking points and having their views so publicly aired, coupled with the marked decline in their chances (via both polls and the prediction markets) does not bode well for them in the presidential race for 2012, methinks.

Should be interesting...
 
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Neally said:
Even the GOP antics can't reverse what many see as an ineffective president.
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Now show me a congressional republiclown with better approval ratings, or one of their presidential candidates who people think is a better pick.
 
Neally said:
Recent bump for BO has faded with job approval back to 50% disapprove and 41% approve. http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/gallup-daily-obama-job-approval.aspx

Even the GOP antics can't reverse what many see as an ineffective president.
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So what if Obma's approval rating is 41%?

If I recall correctly, approval ratings in the low 40's are typical for about the third and fourth years of a first term President who gets re-elected. The same thing happened with Reagan, Clinton, and the second Bush.
 
leftysergeant said:
Now show me a congressional republiclown with better approval ratings, or one of their presidential candidates who people think is a better pick.
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Rasmussen has Romney over BO 45/39. Average of all polls has BO up by just 1.6 over Romney.

Crossbow said:
So what if Obma's approval rating is 41%?

If I recall correctly, approval ratings in the low 40's are typical for about the third and fourth years of a first term President who gets re-elected. The same thing happened with Reagan, Clinton, and the second Bush.
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Approval ratings this far out are not good predictors of reelection, but if he can't get it up to the high 40s by election day, he is unlikely to be reelected.
 
Neally said:
Approval ratings this far out are not good predictors of reelection, but if he can't get it up to the high 40s by election day, he is unlikely to be reelected.
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After the way he forced the republicons to cave in to him for a change on the paytroll tax holiday, expect some changes.

If the clowns kjeep insisting that they get to force the Keystone Pipeine on us in exchange for a tax cut to the middle class, look for the GOP and whatever meat puppet they run against Obama to start smelling like last year's bait bucket.
 
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