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2012 election, bush, campaign, carter, clinton, dole, dukakis, election, favorability, gore, kerry, mondale, obama, politics, reagan, romney, unfavorability
Yes, it’s still late March. However, it seems like the presidential race has its 2 major participants: President Obama and Mitt Romney. While he hasn’t officially won yet, it is very hard to imagine a scenario with Romney not as the Republican nominee. Plus, there are plenty of indicators available to form some type of prediction for the general election. In this post, I will discuss some of these indicators, and explain why I disagree with the mainstream idea that this will be a close election.
Perhaps the most important poll when predicting the next president is each candidates’ favorable and unfavorable ratings. No president in recent history has won the president election with a higher unfavorable than favorable rating. While voters certainly can change from viewing a candidate favorably to unfavorably after more media attention is devoted to that candidate and voters learns more about the candidate. But, logically, it doesn’t seem that this change would work in the reverse direction. Once a voter finds out something that he/she doesn’t like about the candidate, it is very difficult to forget that information. Unfavorable ratings always increase as the election becomes more heated, with more mudslinging and more focus on the candidates’ negatives.