Why so pessimistic, Nate Silver? Isn't Obama still the favorite?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Political numbers guru Nate Silver wrote yesterday (in a long but interesting piece) at the Times that "Obama has gone from a modest favorite to win re-election to, probably, a slight underdog." He bases this on the fact that the president's approval rates are fairly low, as well as on the fact that the economy is in terrible shape. I encourage you to read the whole piece, but he concludes:

It is early, and almost no matter what, the election will be a losable one for Republicans. But Obama's position is tenuous enough that it might not be a winnable one for him. 

The numbers are certainly not in Obama's favour at this point, and the economy does indeed suck, but there's more to this than Silver suggests, and there are other variables at work. As Jon Chait writes:

Silver's key assumption is that Obama's approval rating is likely to hover around 43 percent, where it currently stands. Obama is an incumbent presiding over a terrible economy. That is typically a recipe for doom. On the other hand, the terrible economy started under his predecessor, whom large numbers of Americans continue to blame. What's more, the opposition party remains wildly unpopular, with a majority of Floridians recently saying they believe Republicans are deliberately sabotaging the economy...

Obama has a chance to have his approval rating rise simply by drawing a sharp contrast against the Republican nominee. In other words, incumbent approval rating isn't something that's independent of the opposing candidate. Voters may shape their view of the incumbent by making a comparison.

I think that's right. Basically, approval ratings consider Obama in a vacuum -- do you approve or not? But an election isn't a vacuum. An election provides a choice. If next year's election were a pure referendum on Obama, then maybe, just maybe, he'd lose (though I suspect not). But it won't be. Instead, it will pit the president against a Republican. That Republican may have some centrist appeal, like Romney, or may not, like Perry. Either way, the Republican alternative to Obama will be deeply flawed, either an extremist or, in Romney's case, an ex-moderate posing as a conservative and playing to the GOP's right-wing base who is widely loathed in his own party and who has little credibility given his long history of flips and flops.

Simply put, "Obama: Yes or No" is much different than "Obama or Romney/Perry." In the latter case, that is, in the election, the president will have an enormous advantage given the unpopularity of the Republican Party and its extremism and the lack of strong appeal of the Republican candidate to any constituency outside a certain part of the GOP -- for Perry, the right-wing base; for Romney, the somewhat more moderate but still deeply conservative establishment.

As well, Obama is an outstanding campaigner. He will draw sharp distinctions between himself and his Republican challenger, shaping the election's dominant narratives, and will likely energize voters much as he did in '08 -- perhaps not to that degree, but I suspect more than his detractors expect. He's got appeal that no one on the Republican side can even approach.

For more on this, I highly recommend this post by our friend Zandar:

I'm going to say the selection of any single Republican makes him the favorite again.

Yes, that sounds about right.