The GOP’s 2016 Edge

[Formerly Once-Ler]

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/2016-gop-edge-114919.html

The 2016 presidential election is going to resemble Thomas Hobbes’ famous description of the natural state of human life in two ways: It will be nasty and brutish.

What it will not be is short.

The campaign shifted into full swing on December 16, when former Florida governor Jeb Bush announced that he would “actively explore the possibility of running for president,” and it accelerated with Mitt Romney’s double January bombshell that he was considering, then had stopped considering, a third run.

Beyond Bush, a growing list of credible and incredible Republicans have been gearing up to run, while the Democratic heavyweight, Hillary Clinton, has been agonizing not over if, but when, she will announce her campaign.

Let’s put the primaries aside, though, and assume (maybe dangerously) that both parties, as they typically do, produce credible nominees from each party’s mainstream to compete for the presidency.

At this early stage, does either party have an obvious edge?

Around the time of the GOP-dominated midterms, it seemed logical to say the Republicans held the advantage. Not because their strong performance in congressional and gubernatorial races has any predictive value—ask President Romney about how well 2010’s midterms predicted the future—but because President Barack Obama’s approval rating was mired in the low 40s. Should Obama’s approval be low, he’ll be a drag on any Democratic nominee, who will effectively be running for his third term.

Alan Abramowitz of Emory University, writing for our Crystal Ball newsletter, recently assessed the importance of Obama’s approval to the next election. Basically, if Obama’s over 50 percent, the Democratic nominee gets an edge; if he’s under, the Republican does. The election won’t be quite this simple, of course, but you can’t beat presidential job approval as a leading predictive indicator—though it is a bit less powerful when the incumbent isn’t running.

Obama is not at 50 percent approval in most polls, but his numbers have been better lately as the country’s economic outlook has improved. In addition to sunnier GDP and unemployment statistics, consumer confidence is at its highest point in a decade, according to a University of Michigan survey.

This upward trend could change, of course, with a new recession, a Middle Eastern crisis or a fresh political scandal. We just don’t know what Obama’s approval rating will be when 2016 rolls around, but his standing matters a great deal even though he isn’t on the ballot.

On the other side of the party ledger, it’s very possible the Republicans will split deeply or choose an ideologically narrow, unelectable nominee. It appears that the GOP will have one of the largest, and probably the largest, field of candidates in modern presidential history (while Democrats have one of the smallest). Intense competition can invigorate a party, but the dangers of corrosive factionalism are substantial—and the current Republican Party is faction-ridden.

All that said, some might put a pinkie on the scale for the GOP at this very early moment. Why? Primarily because American politics is cyclical, and our recurrent history makes an argument for turnover at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Running for a third consecutive presidential party term probably does exact a penalty on the incumbent’s party. Dan McLaughlin, writing at the conservative website The Federalist, looked at the 11 elections conducted since the end of the Civil War when there was no incumbent on the ballot and an incumbent had been reelected in the previous election (which is what we’ll have in 2016). He found that the incumbent party lost an average of 6.9 percent of the two-party vote in the next election. So, subtract 6.9 percent from Obama’s 2012 share of 52 percent, and the Republican wins the presidency quite easily—though in today’s polarized America such a significant shift from one election to the next doesn’t seem very likely.

Still, if in every state there were a more modest uniform shift of 3 points in the 2012 result from the Democratic ticket to the Republican ticket, Republicans would win 305 electoral votes—35 votes more than the 270 needed to lock up the election. Precisely uniform shifts among a diverse 50 states don’t happen, but 270 electoral votes certainly isn’t an impossible dream for the GOP, despite demographic changes — including the growth of the Hispanic electorate — that favor Democrats. Does the Electoral College really feature a “Big Blue Wall”? Not necessarily.

There’s also this: A party winning three presidential victories in a row is uncommon. George H.W. Bush won what was effectively Ronald Reagan’s third term in 1988. Before that, the Democrats were the last to win the White House in at least three consecutive elections, from 1932 through 1948 (four elections for Franklin Roosevelt, and one for Harry Truman).

Granted, this history is not conclusive. In recent postwar elections, several candidates have come achingly close to winning a third term for their parties.

A decade and a half ago, Al Gore won the popular vote but narrowly lost the Electoral College to George W. Bush in 2000. Flipping a few hundred votes in Florida would have given him a victory; he also would have won if fewer than 4,000 voters in New Hampshire had voted for him instead of Bush, or if he would have gotten just a little more than a third of the votes that Ralph Nader won.

Obama is not popular like Clinton.  Clinton's approval rating hovered between 55% and 65% his last 2 years.  Obama is going to be a drag on Hitlery.