Kerry or Romney: Who came closer to winning the presidency?

[emcee0]

Out of these two Massachusetts challengers and were both considered flip floppers, who came closer to winning the election?

[IceSpear]

Uh...am I missing something here? The answer is objectively Kerry. He only needed to swing one state to win, Romney needed to swing multiple.

[ElectionsGuy]

Kerry was 2.1% away from the presidency, Romney was 5.4% away.

[Thunderbird is the word]

Yeah, I don't see how this is even up for debate.

[bobloblaw]

Kerry was 2.1% away from the presidency, Romney was 5.4% away.

According to this very site:
Romney was 3.86% and Kerry was 2.5%

[ElectionsGuy]

Kerry was 2.1% away from the presidency, Romney was 5.4% away.

According to this very site:
Romney was 3.86% and Kerry was 2.5%

For the popular vote, but the Electoral College elects the president. Ohio was the tipping point in 2004 (2.1%), Colorado was the tipping point in 2012 (5.4%).

[emcee0]

I guess the question I was trying to raise is who was the more effective challenger?

[DS0816]

A 2012 Mitt Romney needed to shift 7.27 percentage points nationwide of the 7.26 percentage points margin by which John McCain lost the 2008 presidential election in order to win a 2012 Republican pickup of the U.S. Popular Vote by a minimum margin of 0.01 percent.

The amount of states Mitt Romney was able to shift to that level were just nine: President Obama's home state Illinois; Indiana (a Republican pickup); Missouri; Montana; North Dakota; South Dakota; Utah; West Virginia; and Wyoming.

Romney failed to shift the remaining, double-digit, electoral-vote Republican base states—Texas, Georgia, Arizona, and Tennessee—to the levels necessary. The b.s. noise made during the election season, with speculation on Election Night regarding whether Romney might win over the popular vote, and even with some post-election analyses provided little or no use. (I don't think they intended to.) 2012 was not a close election. It was a unique election. (Incumbents, re-elected to second terms, historically performer better with re-elections than first-term elections.) The shifting of fewer than ten states to the [popular-vote margin] level necessary was merely double the success with what had happened with 1996's losing Republican nominee Bob Dole. (Dole managed to get just four states—Alaska; Colorado [a Republican pickup]; Kansas; and Wyoming—to deliver a shift of at least 5.57 percentage points after the 1992 unseating of George Bush's 5.56 percentage points loss of the popular vote.)

By comparison to this: John Kerry's failure to flip Ohio, in 2004, by a raw-vote margin of 118,601 votes, as the state carried for George W. Bush, was obviously a lot closer than Mitt Romney's 2012 performance.

[Mechaman]

I guess the question I was trying to raise is who was the more effective challenger?

Kind of impossible to ignore the numbers, but even without them the answer has to be Kerry.
Unlike Romney Kerry was put in charge of an already sinking ship.  Really, you could argue that the pro-peace hippie narrative was in as soon as Howard Dean announced his run for president.  While Obama certainly had the foresight to implicate his opponent more than a year before the election, it wasn't until the nomination was Game Set Romney that he had it down.

Not to mention that up to maybe a few days before election the 2004 election was up in the air.  Only the naive thought Romney would win in 2012 despite having a much better political climate to challenge an incumbent.

[Ebsy]

If Kerry had won Ohio, he would have won the presidency. So, objectively, Kerry was much closer to being President than Mitt Romney, who would have needed to win like Ohio and 3-4 other states.

[Mechaman]

If Kerry had won Ohio, he would have won the presidency. So, objectively, Kerry was much closer to being President than Mitt Romney, who would have needed to win like Ohio and 3-4 other states.

To continue on with the ship theme, Kerry is the guy who became captain after the former captain shot himself rather than face drowning to death.  He is able to get the boat to view within an offshore oil derrick that signals to a rescue team to save his crew while he valiantly tries to fix the hole in the boat.  He is presumed dead for a couple of years until he is found living on Boca Boca with a hot tanned native who has been mending his war wounds.

Mitt Romney is the idiot who ran the Titanic into the iceberg.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Kerry obviously would have won had OH had moved to touched screen alot sooner. Dimpled chads were alot confusing to voters and it was still a problem in IL and OH. We will never know, but one can only hoped it to be so, since the state was so close and some provisional ballots werent counted.

[Sumner 1868]

Kerry is the obvious answer.

[bobloblaw]

Kerry obviously would have won had OH had moved to touched screen alot sooner. Dimpled chads were alot confusing to voters and it was still a problem in IL and OH. We will never know, but one can only hoped it to be so, since the state was so close and some provisional ballots werent counted.

BS...OH's PVI would have to be solid D for Kerry to win. Ohio has never had a D+ PVI.

For Kerry to win Ohio, the PVI would have had to have been nearly D+3. Something OH has never been.

Too bad you reject math and statistics in favor of partisan emotion

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Yeah, Kerry should of picked Mark Warner as VP, and the spending in VA could have possibly tipped OH, but the answer to the question, wasn't who actually won, who came closest, it was clearly Kerry, in favor of a better VP.

[Cape Verde]

I don't have an answer, but I don't think the questioner expected pure statistic numbers as an answer.

[emcee0]

No I'm trying to ask who ran the better challenger campaign, results aside

[Mr. Smith]

No I'm trying to ask who ran the better challenger campaign, results aside

Still Kerry.

There is nothing Kerry really did that equates to the disastrous foreign trips Romney took. Romney literally insulted every country he went to...almost as if he had a gift for it.

Then there's "47%", "binders full of women", and so on.


What does Kerry have? "I voted for Iraq before I voted against it?"...Not comparable.

Kerry's more like Tom Dewey the Do-Nothing than Romney.

[MATTROSE94]

Probably John Kerry, as he only needed to swing Ohio to win. In order for Mitt Romney to have won, he would have needed to swing Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire away from Obama to win.

[IceSpear]

No I'm trying to ask who ran the better challenger campaign, results aside

Still Kerry. Obama's approval numbers were fairly weak from the very beginning, but Romney couldn't capitalize on it. Kerry managed to whittle down Dubya's once strong approval into a near deadlock, then came one state away from a victory.

[bobloblaw]

No I'm trying to ask who ran the better challenger campaign, results aside

Still Kerry. Obama's approval numbers were fairly weak from the very beginning, but Romney couldn't capitalize on it. Kerry managed to whittle down Dubya's once strong approval into a near deadlock, then came one state away from a victory.

No, Bush's approval rating rose through out 2004. Bush's had mid 40s approval in early 2004. Every single president running for re-election, including even Carter had rising approvals as the elections year progressed.

[IceSpear]

No I'm trying to ask who ran the better challenger campaign, results aside

Still Kerry. Obama's approval numbers were fairly weak from the very beginning, but Romney couldn't capitalize on it. Kerry managed to whittle down Dubya's once strong approval into a near deadlock, then came one state away from a victory.

No, Bush's approval rating rose through out 2004. Bush's had mid 40s approval in early 2004. Every single president running for re-election, including even Carter had rising approvals as the elections year progressed.

Bush's approval rating was very high in January '04. It fell as he gained scrutiny after the Democratic primary, then rose again near the election.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_bush_job_approval-904.html

[bobloblaw]

No I'm trying to ask who ran the better challenger campaign, results aside

Still Kerry. Obama's approval numbers were fairly weak from the very beginning, but Romney couldn't capitalize on it. Kerry managed to whittle down Dubya's once strong approval into a near deadlock, then came one state away from a victory.

No, Bush's approval rating rose through out 2004. Bush's had mid 40s approval in early 2004. Every single president running for re-election, including even Carter had rising approvals as the elections year progressed.

Bush's approval rating was very high in January '04. It fell as he gained scrutiny after the Democratic primary, then rose again near the election.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_bush_job_approval-904.html

Your link shows nothing of the sort.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/116500/presidential-approval-ratings-george-bush.aspx

What I see is an approval rating at or under 50% for the entire year of 2004 with an uptick from mid 2004 until the end. You fail (the peak in late 2003 was due to capturing Saddam Hussein)

[IceSpear]

No I'm trying to ask who ran the better challenger campaign, results aside

Still Kerry. Obama's approval numbers were fairly weak from the very beginning, but Romney couldn't capitalize on it. Kerry managed to whittle down Dubya's once strong approval into a near deadlock, then came one state away from a victory.

No, Bush's approval rating rose through out 2004. Bush's had mid 40s approval in early 2004. Every single president running for re-election, including even Carter had rising approvals as the elections year progressed.

Bush's approval rating was very high in January '04. It fell as he gained scrutiny after the Democratic primary, then rose again near the election.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_bush_job_approval-904.html

Your link shows nothing of the sort.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/116500/presidential-approval-ratings-george-bush.aspx

What I see is an approval rating at or under 50% for the entire year of 2004 with an uptick from mid 2004 until the end. You fail (the peak in late 2003 was due to capturing Saddam Hussein)

So apparently you're blind and can't read your own links. Both the aggregate and Gallup show Bush with a high approval rating in January 2004.

[bobloblaw]

No I'm trying to ask who ran the better challenger campaign, results aside

Still Kerry. Obama's approval numbers were fairly weak from the very beginning, but Romney couldn't capitalize on it. Kerry managed to whittle down Dubya's once strong approval into a near deadlock, then came one state away from a victory.

No, Bush's approval rating rose through out 2004. Bush's had mid 40s approval in early 2004. Every single president running for re-election, including even Carter had rising approvals as the elections year progressed.

Bush's approval rating was very high in January '04. It fell as he gained scrutiny after the Democratic primary, then rose again near the election.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_bush_job_approval-904.html

Your link shows nothing of the sort.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/116500/presidential-approval-ratings-george-bush.aspx

What I see is an approval rating at or under 50% for the entire year of 2004 with an uptick from mid 2004 until the end. You fail (the peak in late 2003 was due to capturing Saddam Hussein)

So apparently you're blind and can't read your own links. Both the aggregate and Gallup show Bush with a high approval rating in January 2004.

Do you not see the bounce in Dec 2003??? It was short lived. But the trend is upward for Bush though out 2004, not downward. Youre focused on a one time event rather than looking at the trend.

Youre really not good at understanding long term trends. So I am right in that your job you dont analyze data and youre not very analytical. Math isnt your strength