It’s just the first daily Gallup tracking poll of the general election, but Mitt Romney’s slim 47-45 lead on President Obama is already being called historically significant. As BuzzFeed reports, every president who was reelected since 1980 had a lead on his opponent at this point in the Gallup tracking poll.
But how meaningful is this really? Obama and Romney are still in a statistical tie. And Romney’s small lead isn’t due to unusually high support for him or low support for Obama. Both appear to fall within a fairly typical range. The president is still at 45 percent in the poll, which is only slightly lower than recent successful incumbents. George W. Bush was at 47 percent in April 2004, while Bill Clinton was at 49 percent in 1996.
The polling numbers for modern losing incumbents also show how unreliable the tracking poll is at this point. In April 1992, George H.W. Bush led Clinton by 14 points, and in April 1980 Jimmy Carter led Ronald Reagan by eight points. Obviously both Clinton and Reagan made up significant ground over the next seven months.
Daily tracking polls will swing back and forth between now and the election, and it’s probably futile to read historical significance into the first one of them. Today’s poll seems to show that Obama isn’t going to be handed an easy win like many of his supporters believe. But it definitely doesn’t predict a Romney victory in November.
I'm not going to argue with the basic gist of this post, but it is worth pointing out that both H. W. Bush and Carter were incumbents who lost, not challengers who squandered a lead. Big difference. (W.'s numbers in 2004 are a misleading benchmark, for reasons pointed out below.) nWhat is uplifting, and should get the attention of conservatives who have been busy writing Romney off as hopeless for months partly because they viewed him as a sure loser, is that he is neck and neck with Obama. (Rasmussen's trends back up Gallup, which is positive.) Finally, as Mr. Wehner comments above, Obama's fate is, to a tremendous extent, out of his hands now. That wasn't the case for Bush in 2004. He could still shape the public's perception on the major issues of the election – and he did so rather well, if the relatively drama free election day of 2004 is any indication. (The only "drama" was the exit polling misfire, and though Ohio was being watched closely, I seem to recall PA was actually closer. And Florida was downright boring.) nAll Obama can do, though, is send out his surrogates to argue that the moon really is made of cheese, that the stimulus worked, that the high price of oil is not his fault, and that Obamacare will save us all from whatever it is we need saving from. I think the Republicans will effectively campaign against that.
"In April 1992, George H.W. Bush led Clinton by 14 points, and in April 1980 Jimmy Carter led Ronald Reagan by eight points. Obviously both Clinton and Reagan made up significant ground over the next seven months." n nMuch more than that was that both were falling in popularity and this was a snapshot in time as they fell. Carter was dealing (badly) with the Iranian Embassy problem and a week later would have that disaster in the desert known as the rescue attempt — and then would bring back Draft Registration in July of 1980 and 18% interest rates and stagflation and a true mess of an economy. n nPappy Bush had been popular with the 100 hour Gulf War victory and having won the 50 years war (we had been at war from 1939 to 1989) and he had been quite popular a year earlier, but not so much at this point. n nThese two poll results are like the picture of the airplane before it crashes and saying that it hadn't crashed yet — it hadn't but it was plummeting toward the ground and inevitably would. So too here, both Carter and GHWB were plummeting in the polls and if the bottom is falling out from under you, it doesn't really matter what your numbers still are 7 months out. n nThe race is — and always has been – the GOP's to loose. This poll just shows that — good catch to point the numbers out, but in light of the circumstances, I argue their irrelevance…