2012: Why Smart Money Beats Big Money

Barack Obama might have been the first Democrat since Bill Clinton to win re-election.

However, Obama was the first American President since Franklin Roosevelt in 1944 to win with smaller popular vote totals than his prior election, normally the kiss of death for any reelection bid.

The recipe for electoral disaster for Obama was in place: an ailing economy, a well-funded opponent with well-orchestrated support, and an animated Congress sat in opposition. The bloom was off the historic moment where the first African American was elected President of the United States and “Hope and Change” was replaced by gridlock and division.

Yet he pulled it off. How?

My Presidential Prediction.

The race for the White House in 2016 begins on Wednesday.  Until then we will have to cool our heels and chew over the final embers of the 2012 race.  It has been one of the most exciting races in a very long time; perhaps this is what the 2008 race might have looked like without the collapse of the economy 6 weeks before election day.

Here are my prediction for Tuesday.  I am going out on a limb Obama 332, Romney 206.

Obama got to look very presidential post-Sandy and Romney has struggled for attention. I do think that just enough white female retirees in Florida who spent their lives in New York and New Jersey who saw Gov Christie’s tacit endorsement of Obama in the crisis may flip—not a lot but just enough to make it very close.  Oddly enough both PPP and Rasmussen (both partisan pollsters) have FL as a tie—and as they say, tie goes to the President.

The Romney people also know that their route to 270 is closing fast based on the interception they threw with the foolish Chrysler and GM ad.

Popular

• Obama 48% Romney 47%, Johnson 2%, everybody else 1%
• Breakouts with battleground states in bold

Obama 332 (26 states plus DC)

• Florida (by a squeaker)
• Virginia (Zogby has BHO +2%)
• Nevada
• Colorado (If Michael Bennet can win in 2010, Obama should win in 2012)
• Iowa
• Ohio (by 5%)
• Pennsylvania
• New Hampshire
• New York
• Maine
• Massachusetts
• Rhode Island
• New Jersey
• Maryland
• Delaware
• Connecticut
• Washington State
• Oregon
• California
• Hawaii
• New Mexico
• Iowa
• Minnesota
• Wisconsin
• Illinois
• Michigan
• Vermont
• DC

Romney 24 states 206 Electoral votes

• North Carolina
• South Carolina
• Montana
• Idaho
• Wyoming
• Utah
• Arizona
• North Dakota
• South Dakota
• Nebraska
• Kansas
• Oklahoma
• Texas
• Missouri
• Arkansas
• Louisiana
• Indiana
• West Virginia (A Carter state no less)
• Alaska
• Georgia
• Alabama
• Mississippi
• Tennessee
• Kentucky

Why we are a 49%-49% nation.

Over the past few days, I have had an ongoing email conversation with a friend of mine who served as a senior member of the Clinton White House over Obama’s polling weakness going into the final days of the election.

He feels that Obama move to the left in the early part of the Presidency hurt him and until he moves back to the center, he will have subpar polling numbers. I have a different approach.

To build on what Chris Rock said earlier, if in only 4 years, a Republican had killed bin Laden, helped to oust Muammar Gaddafi, ended the war in Iraq, wound down another war in Afghanistan, returned the auto industry to profitability, ended DADT, passed the first meaningful bank regulation since the New Deal, drove the Dow upwards nearly 50% to 13,000, and added 5x the jobs in 4 years verses the 8 years of George W Bush, he would be on Mt Rushmore and the dime.

So the bigger question is “If Obama has built up such a record, why is he still at 49% within Gallup’s approval rating?” Why isn’t he at stratospheric numbers?