White House 2012

Voter perceptions of economic performance and the link with the White House incumbent are a large driver of elections.

And a new poll by CNN says that just one in three Americans think Obama is doing a good job of handling the economy, suggesting that it is going to take a miracle between now and next November if Obama is not going to be a one term president.

Essentially this was my assessment of why Obama won in 2008:

‘A psephologist once said that elections are easier to describe than interpret, and polling data for 2008 is still in its infancy. But it could be argued that Obama rode a Democratic wave, and that Clinton would have stood as good a chance of obtaining victory had she been selected as the Democratic nominee. The figures for the increase in Democratic alignment since 2004, the backdrop of poor economic performance, and the almost unprecedented unpopularity of the incumbent President meant that any Republican was likely to struggle.

Polling figures for theoretical match-ups between either Clinton or Obama versus McCain as far back as May were reflected in the final result. There were ups and downs in the campaign for Obama and McCain, and opinion polls reflected these, but ultimately the underlying dynamics prevailed.’ (This was taken from an article I did for t2u’s first past the post)

Of course only a fool would predict the outcome of 2012 at this stage. Back at a similar point four years ago experts thought that Rudy Giuliani would secure the GOP nomination, but the former New York mayor would lose the General Election to Hillary Clinton since despite her poor personal ratings as a candidate, it was a Democratic year given the whitewash for the Republicans in the mid-terms, and the faltering economy. Well that analysis was partly correct. So my guess? Rick Perry will re-establish the trend of governors from outside the north eastern states winning the White House