Assessing the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election
Like all but three presidents since the end of the Second World War, Barack Obama was reelected in 2012. (1) Obama triumphed over Republican challenger Mitt Romney by 332-206 in the Electoral College and by 51 to 47% in the national popular vote. Obama secured a second term with fewer electoral votes and fewer popular votes than he had accrued in the 2008 election cycle, becoming only the second Democrat in U.S. history, the other being Franklin Roosevelt, to win a majority of the popular vote more than once. Most preelection polls showed modest advantages for Obama (relative to Romney) over the course of the campaign, but the contest between the two contenders, at least according to preelection polls that registered voter preferences, remained close throughout (Panagopoulos 2013). The president faced several headwinds in his reelection quest. First, despite signs of economic recovery from the severe recession that began in 2008, the economy remained fragile. Economic growth was anemic. During 2009, gross domestic product (GDP) growth fell by 2.3% but only rebounded in 2010 and 2011 by 2.5% and 1.8%, respectively. This compares with an average GDP growth rate of 3.2% for all years from 1946 through 2011. (2) Unemployment tells a similar story. The unemployment rate stood at 8.2% in January 2012, about 2.4 percentage points higher than the average for all months from 1948 through 2011, according to data provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (3) Thus, on the economic front, often among the first factors that analysts look at in predicting and accounting for election outcomes, Barack Obama did not appear an overly successful steward. And the public seemed to agree that the president's economic leadership was lackluster. From mid-May 2009 onward, Gallup polls showed more voters disapproved of the president's handling of the economy than approved. (4) But elections are not only about economics. The passage of other important legislation may affect a president's reelection prospects, which is one reason Paul Light (1982), among others, urges presidents to hit the ground running to secure major legislative accomplishments. In the legislative domain, Obama was also challenged. His signature piece of domestic legislation, health care reform (or so-called Obamacare), was controversial. Early in the debate on health care reform, pluralities of voters disapproved of the president's job in handling the issue according to Gallup. Over the first six months of 2012, well into the reelection season, disapproval on health care ran ahead of approval by 15-25 percentage points in almost all Gallup polls. (5) Additionally, the passage of Obamacare contributed to a major voter backlash against the administration and to the emergence of the Tea Party, which led to a resounding election defeat for the Democrats in the 2010 midterm congressional elections. Looking at general indicators of public opinion would not necessarily indicate that Obama would be a formidable competitor. His overall job disapproval ratings tended to outpace his approval numbers by about two percentage points on average during the first six months of 2012, although his favorability ratings were stronger with about a four percentage-point edge for favorable versus unfavorable evaluations. Such modest favorability advantages do not portend a strong electoral showing. Despite these challenges for Obama, elections are contests between two candidates. In some respects, Obama likely benefitted from disarray and other developments in the GOP. First, Romney was not the darling of the Republican right wing, the strongest faction within the party. Romney had to contest for the nomination, along with other contenders including former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, and Texas Governor Rick Perry, who, at one point or another were frontrunners in the GOP field. Although Romney emerged without clear evidence that the primaries divided the party, Obama appeared to have more enthusiastic backing from Democrats than Romney had among Republicans. …
Campaign Effects and Dynamics in the 2012 Election
Abstract This article analyzes the evolution of voter preferences in the 2012 presidential election cycle. It also examines the influence of specific events, in order to help explain the dynamics we observe over the course of the campaign. I find considerable evidence of campaign-event effects on aggregate voter preferences in 2012, reinforcing the notion that events help to shape campaign dynamics.
Presidential Election Polls in 2000: A Study in Dynamics
The study of voters and elections has taught us a lot about individuals' vote choices and election outcomes themselves. We know that voters behave in fairly understandable ways on election day (see, e.g., Alvarez 1997; Campbell 2000; Campbell et al. 1960; Gelman and King 1993; Johnston et al. 1992; Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet 1944; Lewis-Beck 1988). We also know that the actual outcomes are fairly predictable (see, e.g., Campbell and Garand 2000). Of course, what we do know is imperfect. (1) Even to the extent we can predict what voters and electorates do at the very end, we know relatively little about how voter preferences evolve to that point. How does the outcome come into focus as the election campaign unfolds? Put differently, how does the campaign bring the fundamentals of the election to the voters? Previous research suggests that preferences evolve in a fairly patterned and understandable way (Campbell 2000; Wlezien and Erikson 2002). This research focuses on the relationship between election results for a set of years and trial-heat poll readings at varying points in time during the election cycle, mostly for presidential elections in the United States. (2) What it shows is that the predictability of outcomes increases in proportion to the closeness of the polling date to election day. The closer we are to the end of the race, the more the polls tell us about the ultimate outcome. Although this may not be surprising, it is important: the basic pattern implies that electoral sentiment crystallizes over the course of election campaigns. The previous research takes us only part of the way. That is, it does not explicitly address dynamics. This is quite understandable; after all, we lack anything approaching a daily time series of candidate preferences until only the most recent elections. In this context, the U.S. presidential race in 2000 offers us a fairly unique opportunity. The volume of available data for this election allows us to directly observe the dynamics of voter preferences for much of the election cycle. We cannot generalize with but a single series of polls. We nevertheless can explore at much greater depth than has been possible in the past. The analysis in this article attempts to answer two specific questions. First, to what extent does the observable variation in poll results reflect real change in electoral preferences as opposed to survey error? Second, to the extent poll results reflect real change in preferences, did this change in preferences actually last or else decay? Answers to these questions tell us a lot about the evolution of electoral sentiment during the 2000 presidential race. They also tell us something about the effects of the election campaign itself. Now, let us see what we can glean from the data. The Polls For the 2000 election year itself, the pollingreport.com Web site contains some 524 national polls of the Bush-Gore(-Nader) division reported by different survey organizations. In each of the polls, respondents were asked about how they would vote "if the election were held today," with slight differences in question wording. Where multiple results for different universes were reported for the same polling organizations and dates, data for the universe that best approximates the actual voting electorate are used, for example, a sample of likely voters over a sample of registered voters. Most important, all overlap in the polls-typically tracking polls-conducted by the same survey houses for the same reporting organizations is removed. For example, where a survey house operates a tracking poll and reports three-day moving averages, we only use poll results for every third day. This leaves 295 separate national polls. Wherever possible, respondents who were undecided but leaned toward one of the candidates were included in the tallies. Figure 1 displays results for the complete set of polls. Specifically, it shows Gore's percentage share of the two-party vote (ignoring Nader and Buchanan) for each poll. …