Talk Elections

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_OH_02012.pdf

Obama-49
Romney-42

D:45% R:36% I: 11%

45% is quite D friendly, no?

Yup.

The race will be tighter in Ohio, but Obama seems to be in good shape to match what he did in 2008.

Those damn poor people.

Romney's favourables are dire, as you might expect.

I do find it funny that Rick does the best against Obama in Ohio at the moment.

This shows that Romney is a horrible match to Rust Belt, that is a place where he needs to win one or two states to win election. Only people interested in Romney nomination are establishment kinds that don't want to lose Congress power. If Obama gains a good mandate against Romney, he'll get a strong mandate in November.

This is why the nomination fight needs to end.

Obama is winning independents 45-40 though.

Not to worry guys, Romney will close the gap once he money-bombs the state.

As PPP points out, McCain led Obama 49-41 at the same time in 08, though I doubt Obama's favorables were that low.

And by the way the nomination fight didn't cost Obama Ohio, and he didn't even win it's primary.

Not surprising, I don't expect Romney to be a very good candidate for that area.

The failure of the anti-union vote last November, with the NO racking huge margins in some heavily Republican areas shows than the state is Republican for social reasons, not economic ones.

Sure, Obama isn't a good candidate for there, but Ronmey is worse. And it is not surprising than Santorum runs well there, because of that.

Hard-right economics aren't good to win in the Rust Belt.

Ohio was D+8 (39-31-30) in 2008 exit polls when Obama won by 4 and R+5 in 2004 (35-40-25) when Bush won by 3.

This leads to believe the voters of Ohio are liars.


A look at our database shows McCain consistently led Obama in Ohio until the September economic collapse.

A double dip is the only GOP hope.

You needed to look into polling to figure that out?

This is the state of Mike Naso and Joe Delaney, of course they're liars! ;D

Looking deeper into the results, I can't see how Obama loses this election.  He has a 61% approval rating in this state with people who classify themselves as moderate, meanwhile the favorability among moderates is Gingrich -53, Romney -33, Santorum -31, Paul -29. 

Worse yet, Obama leads Gingrich, Paul and Romney among seniors, which McCain carried by 11 points in a 2008 losing effort and Bush by 16 in a narrow victory.

I'm reading D:42%; R: 36% and I:21%

Yep, the centre seems to be holding nicely for the president

I'd expect that, since about 40% of America self-identifies as conservative and over 30% as moderate, meaning that there are more moderates who would be to the left of a theoretical American 'mean' (self-identification-wise if not policy-wise) than right of it. It's still good to know, particularly with how it translates on to the 'independent' political bloc.

I'm not surprised. Romney is not a midwestern candidate. That said, if the economy doesn't get worse, the GOP isn't winning regardless of who they nominate just like the GOP wasn't winning in 2008 regardless of who they nominated. McCain would've won the election had the economy not collapsed in September.

Yeah, I don't see any chance for victory. Obama has been a successful president, and the electoral map has simply moved away from the Republicans. I wouldn't be surprised if the GOP doesn't win anymore presidential elections. I think Romney would really be an amazing president, but it looks like we won't get a chance to see. I just hate to see pbrower win.

Do they really deserve to?

Of course the Democrats need viable opposition, but the country deserves better than the GOP.

I'm trying to figure out if this sentence is hyperbolic, if you have a perspective on the future of the party system that I might not, or if it's supposed to be an indication that the whole comment is less than entirely serious.

I think they will have the White House in 2016, they have a very good field while the Democrats would be a bit weaker.

Who does the GOP have who's any good?

Chris Christie and Marco Rubio, among others, are considered 'good' for reasons that elude me but which polling seems to bear out.

I don't think the Democrats have anything to fear then.

President will always be about person not policy.  Congressional control is a better indicator of public opinion.  The second the Democrats nominate another Gore the Bore or Kerrybot, they'll lose to a more charismatic choice like Rubio.

Chris Christie is basically unelectable nationally for the same reasons that Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich were/are. But yeah, Marco Rubio would be a terrific candidate.

True.

It is far too early for the Republican party to be written off like the Federalists or Whigs. To win any later Presidential election it will need a new coalition much broader than what it now relies upon. The acid test for the Republican Party will be in 2016 when it has a raft of Senate seats to defend -- most of the winners of 2010 and maybe some that old guys (most likely Grassley and McCain) vacate. Even if a Republican (let us say Bob McDonnell) wins in 2016 he will have a difficult time pushing a "conservative" agenda whenhe gets little cooperation from a large D majority in the Senate.

The Republicans survived the FDR era after losing control of Congress in 1930 and the Presidency in 1932... but it took them until 1946 to win back Congress and until 1948 to have a real chance at the Presidency.  No way is Barack Obama quite up to the level of FDR as President, and no way is he getting any Third Term. But remember -- the Democrats and Republicans  were long very similar on the whole. The Democrats had John Stennis and the Republicans had Jacob Javits in the Senate at one time. In the early 1960s the Democrats were a liberal Party in the North but a semi-fascist Party in most of the South while the Republicans were a conservative Party in the North and irrelevant in most of the South.

If the Republicans can't broaden their coalition they are doomed. Most likely the Democratic party does what it did  after it became the only major Party with the demise of the Federalists and Whigs: it will split. Single parties are almost always too unwieldy in a democracy.  (I predict that the ANC in South Africa will eventually rift). The Whigs initiated as a rift from the Democratic Party of Jefferson, and the "Free-Soil" Republicans rifted from Jacksonian Democrats.    

Ideological extremism is not good for winning more than a couple of elections. The Democrats would be in deep trouble, for instance, if they adopted a Marxist agenda. But that said, the Republicans could still win the Presidency in 2016 -- but they will need a much broader coalition with which to win. Part of that coalition might be a segment that the Democrats serve less than well.

I'm almost surprised that it's as close as it is given Romney's disastrous favorability numbers. Almost.

But that's just it, where is a new coalition going to come from? The tea party movement is hijacking the party, and they represent the views of the America that is slowly fading away. Their nonsense has scared off all the moderates, I'm fairly right-leaning and I wouldn't vote for Gingrich or anyone else spewing that rhetoric. It tells me they are either pandering trolls or insane. I suspect lots of other Americans feel the same way.

The country isn't going to get more socially conservative, Obama being the face of the Democratic party has destroyed any chance of the GOP making inroads into the African American community, and as much as I like Romney I think he could really damage the GOP with Hispanics this year. And younger voters, the ones who care, see them as the war/homophobic/fascist party and I don't think that's going to change any time soon.

I do think the GOP could come back, but they are looking at having a minority party status for a long time. If and when they re-emerge, the party will almost certainly have changed drastically.

I'd have to disagree.  McCain led for as long as his post-convention bounce lasted.  The Dems led most of the time until then and thereafter because off an economy that was declining for almost two years before the markets crashed and because Bush was by and large judged a failure.  McCain didn't help himself with his grandstanding during the crash and Palin was a high risk choice that didn't pan out.  IMO, if Hilary Clinton had been the nominee, she would have won by an even larger margin because race appears to have played a part in paring Obama's victory margin.

Parties have changed their stripes before.  However, the GOP faces a demographic problem particularly with Hispanic voters that the GOP has managed to exacerbate despite Hispanics being socially conservative.  I don't see that changing in the near future. 

Any illegal immigration solution that allows a path to citizenship creates more Democratic voters proportionally.  Any illegal immigration solution that does not allow a path to citizenship creates additional legal Hispanic resistance to the GOP which combined with the Hispanics' higher birth rate damns the GOP either way. 

That leaves the GOP relegated toward voter suppression efforts which will likely to be self-defeating in the long run by creating more resentment especially if those efforts work in the short run.

It seems Romney won't win Ohio, so he is going to have to win Pennsylvania or lose the election.

I doubt McCain would have won even if the economy hadnt collapsed in September.  The economy had been in recession since December 2007 and the unemployment rate increased by almost two percentage points since fall 2007. 

The Bush people and the Republicans higher up got nervous in September when it looked like McCain might win and crashed the economy just to make sure he didnt by pushing Lehman into bankruptcy. 

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2012/02/brown-up-11-on-mandel.html

In general, Ohio looks like a disaster for Republicans beyond the Presidency in November.