As the Republican nomination contest ends, Mr Obama emerges as a moderate favourite for re-election. Following the departure of Rick Santorum from the presidential field, Mitt Romney has now effectively won the Republican nomination to challenge Barack Obama in November. The presidential election season thus now moves to the next phase between now and the party conventions in August, whereby Romney and the Republicans must decisively turn their focus of attention onto Obama and winning the White House.
The bruising Republican nomination contest in recent months has done little to endear Romney to the electorate, especially independents. He has been caricatured by his Republican opponents as inconsistent in his political positions (a ‘flip-flopper’), and out-of-touch with most voters, partly because of his extremely high wealth.
This is reflected in the potentially significant lead that Obama currently has in head-to-head match-up polls against Romney. Of the approximately 50 national head-to-head opinion surveys taken since the New Year, the president has prevailed in all but five (and three of these apparent outliers were weeks ago in the first half of January). Since late March, Obama’s average polling lead in such surveys has been some 5.2 percent.
Perhaps more distressingly for Romney are his poor favourability ratings. Whereas national polls in March gave Obama an average favourability rating of 51.1 percent, and an average unfavourable rating of 43.6 percent (a positive spread of plus 7.5), Romney’s corresponding average figures were 36.5 percent and 47 percent (a negative spread of negative10.4 percent). As a result, Romney entered this month with one of the highest ever negative ratings recorded by a major party candidate in US history.
In this context, some have already declared Obama an overwhelming favourite for re-election. However, this assessment is overdone and the fact remains that Romney could yet win the White House in November.
It is sometimes forgotten that Obama’s job approval ratings as president have been poor (sometimes far below 50 percent) during the last 12 months. This largely remains the case, with a majority of national polls in March showing a range of 41-48 percent approval.
In the past 40 years, those presidents who have gone on to secure re-election have generally enjoyed job approval ratings in advance of 50 percent in March of their re-election years as was true of Bill Clinton (1996), Ronald Reagan (1984), and Richard Nixon (1972). Conversely, the ratings of Gerald Ford (1976), Jimmy Carter (1980), and George H W Bush (1992) were all well below 50 percent at the same point in the electoral cycle and all went on to defeats later the same year.
The only (partial) exception to this trend is George W Bush in 2004 who went on from average approval ratings of just below or around 50 percent in March to win a close re-election contest in November. Obama will thus be repeating a not dissimilar feat as his immediate predecessor in the White House should he go on to win against Romney.
Aside from the salience of the ‘war on terror’, perhaps the key difference in the US political climates between George W Bush’s re-election year in 2004 and Obama’s in 2012 is the weaker economy this time around. This is underlined in the differences between the unemployment rates in March of both years (5.8 percent and 8.5 percent respectively). Without question, one of the key remaining drags on Obama’s prospects is the high unemployment rate, which cursed Ford, Carter and George H W Bush in their re-election years. Indeed, the only president to win re-election in the last 40 years with an unemployment rate above seven percent (let alone eight percent) was Reagan in 1984.
One of the keys to Reagan’s re-election success was the perception by voters in 1984 of robust economic recovery after the recession of the early 1980s. Throughout 1984, GDP growth was strong and the unemployment rate declined consistently. For Obama to win, it would be enormously useful for him to have a similar positive economic headwind going into November. Here, the still weak unemployment picture has improved in recent months and, if this continues, will undercut Romney’s attacks on what he perceives to be Obama’s economic mismanagement since 2009.
Of course, even the relative resilience of Obama’s popularity with the electorate, despite the worst downturn since at least the 1930s, does not guarantee him re-election even if the US recovery picks up significantly in coming months. For instance, numerous political hazards could yet surface, including a potential Israeli attack on Iran, with the potential to reframe the presidential election in an uncertain direction.
Nevertheless, for now at least, the fragile and uneven economic and political environment, including the improving unemployment picture and the legacy of the bruising Republican nomination contest, is underpinning Obama’s re-election hopes. While he is not an overwhelming favourite, he currently stands a slightly better than evens prospect of securing a second term.
The writer is an Associate Partner at Reputation Inc. He is a former US editor at Oxford Analytica and a former special adviser in the Government of UK Prime Minister Tony Blair