According To The History Of Incumbents...This Bush Is Screwed

[DrFunkenstein]

Got this gem in my e-mail from the Kerry campaign:

There are some basic benchmarks by which an incumbent's success can be measured as the campaign heads into the fall:

The average winning incumbent has had a job approval rating of 60%.

Indeed, every incumbent who has won reelection has had his job approval in the mid-50's or higher at this point. In recent polling, Bush's average approval rating has been 48%. President Bush must emerge from his convention having dramatically altered public perception of his performance in office.

In recent years, when incumbents have gone on to victory, 52% of voters, on average, said the country was on the right track. Now, just 37% think things are moving in the right direction. Thus, President Bush must convince the electorate that the nation is in much better shape than voters now believe to be the case.

Every incumbent who has gone on to be reelected has had a double-digit lead at this point.

Following their conventions, the average elected incumbent has held a 16-point lead, while winning incumbents have led by an average of 27 points. Bush will need a very substantial bounce to reach the mark set by his successful predecessors.

Incumbents have enjoyed an average bounce in the vote margin of 8 points.

On average, incumbents' share of the two-party vote has declined by 4 points between their convention and Election Day.

President Bush has the opportunity to achieve an average, or even greater, bounce from his convention. Typically, elected incumbents go into their conventions with a 9-point lead, while incumbents who have gone on to win enter their conventions with a 21-point lead.

Most current polls show the race quite close. This gives the president substantial room to bounce. By contrast, Senator Kerry entered his convention in a far stronger position than the average challenger. The average challenger goes into his convention 16 points behind, while Senator Kerry entered his convention with a 1-2 point lead. This gave Senator Kerry much less room to bounce.

However, as the data above makes clear, average is not enough for President Bush. Incumbents who went on to win reelection had an average lead of 27 points after their convention. Indeed, the average elected incumbent -- winners and losers -- had a lead of 16 points after their conventions. An average bounce would still leave Bush well below the historical mark set by other incumbents, particularly those who went on to victory.

Perhaps most important, the average elected incumbent experienced a 4-point drop in his share of the two-party vote from the post-convention polling to Election Day. Thus, to beat the odds, President Bush will need to be garnering 55% of the two-party vote after his convention. Anything less than that and the president will remain in grave political danger.

[homerthompson]

1. yes, all good points, but...

republicans lie, cheat and steal.

[speedoo]

4. Also, all that history is pre-9/11.

Also, averages, as used in this piece, are not good predictors. There are other statistical measures that would be more useful.

But I still like our chances of sending dumbya back to Crawford, and ending this nightmare.

[David Dunham]

2. But the losing incumbnts did not "find" Bin Laden 2 weeks before election

We have to fight very, very hard to win this race.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

9. I can't think of any winning incumbents who lied us into war.

That's why LBJ didn't even try.

[physioex]

3. History never had to worry about Diebold voting machines.... EOM

[homerthompson]

5. but the numbers as they are now, show incredible progress...

from when bush was in the middle of his attack on iraq, when his numbers were ultra high. and then kerry comes along, with his gutter numbers.
a few months later, bush now has to resort to all sorts of despicable stuff just to stay near 50%.
i remember john kerry a while back saying something like, i'd rather be where we are, climbing up, than where they are, in decline.
but like someone posted above, there's still much work to do.

[Birthmark]

6. One stat that I want to find out

I'll be interested in seeing a comparison of the TV ratings for the Dem Convention and the Repub Convention. If my guess is right, then the Repubs will have much lower ratings. My take on that is that people have tuned out Bush and the Repubs. That will tell us far better where we stand in the upcoming election.

[Awsi Dooger]

7. Yeah, but meager single-digit sample sizes are not completely reliable

I do sports statistical work on Excel and the results are wild from year to year. Something will hold up 70% one season, then 40% a year later, even with 100 or more games in the sample.

Since WW II, the incumbents have been Truman, Eisenhower, LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41 and Clinton. I doubt the right track/wrong track polling goes back very far, and who knows about polling from the '40s,'50s and '60s.

In 2000 all the economic models suggested Gore was a cinch, with as much as 58% likely to vote for him. Now they adjust those models to account for Bush's "win." If Bush prevails this time, the numbers posted atop this thread will be carefully amended the next time an incumbent is at stake. It's called retrofitting or backfitting. Then they can always throw in some obscure or previously unseen peripherable number to account for an unexpected outcome. I do that in sports all the time.

Bush' approval rating is definitely a key, but where that needs to be for Kerry to win is an educated guess. I would be thrilled to have it remain slightly below 50% in early November.

[DrFunkenstein]

8. John Quincy Adams Had A 54% Approval At This Point

Actually, I have no idea.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

10. LOL

[tritsofme]

11. As this email points out, we're in a very grey area.

No incumbent with an approval rating so low has ever gone on to win reelection.

No incumbent with an approval rating so high has ever lost reelection.

Most polls today find bush in the high 40s or low 50s, his lowest point in the spring was low to mid 40s.

Carter and Bush41, the posterchildren of the modern failed incumbent dipped as low as the high 20s/low 30s in terms of approval the summer before the election.

While successful incumbents such as Reagan and Clinton stayed in the mid to high 50% range.

This election is going right down to the wire, and anyone who says differently is dead wrong.

[Awsi Dooger]

12. I agree, down to the wire

Plenty of the cable analysts like Chris Matthews are using previous races involving an incumbent to forecast a lopsided result, one way or another. That completely ignores the dynamics of this race, and polarized era.

When I moved to Las Vegas an oldtimer scoffed at my historical approach to sports analysis. "Son, let's talk about TODAY," he said. It took me nearly a decade to understand the clarity of those words, and balance the two factors.

[ISUGRADIA]

13. This is so true

there are a lot of things that can happen between now and November 2 to effect the dynamics of the race. Carter-Reagan was neck and neck until the last two weeks or so when Reagan pulled a landslide victory.

Hopefully Kerry will do the same thing but who knows. This has been a bizarre year.

[tritsofme]

14. The difference with Carter however

was his approval numbers being stuck in the shitter around 30% or lower most of 1980. Bush has never come even close to that far down.

And in a lot of ways he had Anderson coming at his left flank.

I came to terms with Carter's inevitible loss around January of 1980 (that bastard Ted Kennedy ripping him to pieces in a primary challenge didn't help much either) and here its nearly September and I still couldn't say in a nonpartisian manner who will win.