2012 President

“I think we know with reasonable certainty that standing up there on the west front of the Capitol on Jan. 20, 2013 will be one of three people: Obama, [Tim] Pawlenty and [Mitch] Daniels. I think that’s it.” – George Will, May 15, 2011, on ABC’s “This Week” (AMES, Iowa) — Those of us in the projection business point out misfired predictions at our peril, because anyone in this business is going to get a whole lot wrong. And hey, Will can still be right: President Barack Obama may very well be sworn in for a second term in January 2013. But Tim Pawlenty and Mitch Daniels? Errr… Daniels never got in, and Pawlenty is now out. The ex-Minnesota governor had a dreadful finish at the Iowa Straw Poll here Saturday. While his third-place finish was not necessarily surprising, the fact that his finish (2,293 votes) was closer to Thaddeus McCotter (35 votes) than second-place finisher Ron Paul (4,671) created a situation where Pawlenty could not continue on. So he won’t, and he deserves credit for bowing to reality. George Will surely was not the only pundit to set high expectations for Pawlenty. At the Crystal Ball, we had him

(AMES, Iowa) – In his fascinating new book of alternate histories, Then Everything Changed, noted political journalist Jeff Greenfield envisions a scenario – not to give too much away – in which Hubert Humphrey, the liberal Minnesotan, is thrust into the president’s chair to handle an international crisis. But, unfortunately for HHH, only an act of fiction could make him president: He lost his Democratic Party’s primary in 1960 and 1972 and a relatively close general election matchup against Richard Nixon in 1968. Indeed, while many Gophers have tried to become president – Sen. Eugene McCarthy, Humphrey’s 1968 rival; perennial candidate Harold Stassen, who served as governor; and 1984 landslide loser Walter Mondale, a former vice president – none has succeeded. Can the North Star State’s jinx be ended in 2012? The key takeaway from Thursday night’s Republican presidential debate is that it’s going to be very difficult. The main story coming out of the third GOP debate is the pointed showdown between Minnesota’s two candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, ex-Gov. Tim Pawlenty and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann. Bachmann charges that Pawlenty is a phony conservative; Pawlenty argues that Bachmann, for all her conservative talk, has no results to

Programming Note: The Crystal Ball‘s Kyle Kondik will be reporting from the Republican presidential debate and the Iowa Straw Poll over the next several days. Follow him on Twitter @kkondik and check the

American voters just tuning into the debt ceiling crisis might be asking, “What is this mess all about?” An answer one won’t hear from either party, which both castigate “Washington” despite running it, is that the nation’s potential failure to pay its bills is due in no small part to the choices that voters make. This, after all, is the government voters elected, even though it might not be performing the way some hoped it would. A popular political question — who loses politically if the United States defaults — would seem to have a fairly obvious answer: Such an unnecessary, self-inflicted wound would stain everyone. After the dueling Monday night speeches from President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, Nate Silver, the incisive New York Times political commentator, noted a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, which showed both Obama and the Republican House with very low approval ratings on economic issues. “Love the Romney + Democratic Congress parlay,” he tweeted, referring to a kind of bet in which a bettor can strike gold if two seemingly unlikely occurrences happen. Parlays are typically losers, and this one is no exception: Since 1856 — the beginning of the modern Democratic/Republican

A recent New York Times story ricocheted around the political community after opening with this revelatory sentence: “No American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on Election Day topped 7.2 percent.” There is the magic number! If unemployment is higher than 7.2% as we head into the general election in 2012, we know President Obama is a goner. If it is lower, Obama gets an encore term. Can it really be this simple? First, note the necessary qualifier, “since FDR.” That is because Roosevelt was reelected to the White House in 1936 despite estimated unemployment at about 17%, but that was down several percentage points from Herbert Hoover’s Waterloo in 1932. Again in 1940, Roosevelt won a third term with unemployment at 15%. Maybe these data are too outdated to matter, but they certainly suggest it may be the trend of unemployment that makes the difference. Is the rate going up or down? Are people optimistic or pessimistic about their economic future? FDR gave people hope. Of course, President Obama famously ran on “hope and change” in 2008, and his problem in 2012 is that, so far on the economy,

There they go again. The presidential campaign season is barely under way but already pundits and pollsters are making misleading claims about independent voters and the role they play in presidential elections. Here are some of the things you’ve probably read or heard in recent weeks: Independents make up the largest segment of the American electorate. Independent voters are up for grabs in 2012. Whichever party wins a majority of the independent vote will almost certainly win the presidency. These beliefs about the crucial role of independent voters in presidential elections have become the conventional wisdom among the Washington commentariat, reinforced by groups like “No Labels” and “Third Way” that try to promote centrist solutions to the nation’s problems. Recently, the Pew Research Center provided additional support for this theory with a report claiming that independents constitute a rapidly growing and diverse group of voters who swing dramatically back and forth from election to election. It sounds convincing, but when it comes to media commentary about independent voters, you shouldn’t believe everything you read or hear. It’s true that independents are a diverse group. But that’s mostly because the large majority of independents are independents in name only. Research by

With the Republican primary field in a state of constant flux, we will be frequently updating our rankings of the GOP contenders. The new chart is available here. Mitt Romney retains his hold on the top spot in our rankings, but Michele Bachmann has skyrocketed up the rankings into our first tier, right behind Romney. Rounding out the updated top tier is a new entrant to our list: Rick Perry, who is generating a lot of buzz as a possible candidate. At this point, we believe Perry is likelier to run than two other rumored candidates, Sarah Palin and Chris Christie, so we have taken those two off of our list for now. Dropping from the top tier to the second tier is Tim Pawlenty, who has yet to gain traction with actual voters and in polls despite a lot of media buzz. Herman Cain, who moved up from our third tier, is now right behind Pawlenty in our rankings. Newt Gingrich, meanwhile, is sinking like a rock. To get updates to our rankings as they happen, make sure to follow @LarrySabato on Twitter.

In his column in The Wall Street Journal June 23, Republican strategist Karl Rove explained all the reasons why he thought President Barack Obama would likely lose his reelection bid in 2012. Rove made a compelling case: a sour economy that he doubts will improve much before next November; a Democratic base showing signs of dissatisfaction with Obama; a sharp decline in support for the president since 2008 among key voting groups such as independents and seniors; and a strategic blunder by Obama in too soon shedding the mantle of president to assume the guise of money-grubbing presidential candidate. And Rove’s analysis did not include growing dissatisfaction with Obama’s handling of wars in the Middle East, the political ramifications of high gas prices and a falling presidential approval rating that, in a late June Gallup Poll, had plunged to 43%. Put all this baggage together, and it would probably be enough to sink the Titanic, no iceberg needed. Yet amidst all this carnage, there is a big asset in Obama’s favor that has long been associated with presidents who successfully win reelection: a clear path to renomination. For some time now there has been a political rule of thumb: Presidents

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) had a lot to be happy about as she kicked off her presidential campaign earlier this week in her birthplace, Waterloo, IA: She performed well at the presidential debate held June 13 in New Hampshire, and over the weekend she finished a close second in the first Des Moines Register poll of the Iowa caucus. But an eventual victory in Iowa by Bachmann, a Tea Party favorite, might end up making the decidedly non-Tea Party candidate, ex-MA Gov. Mitt Romney, quite happy too. The aforementioned Register poll, released Saturday evening, showed a virtual dead heat at the top of the field in Iowa: Romney 23%, Bachmann 22%. Ex-MN Gov. Tim Pawlenty was way behind at 6%. Pawlenty, who has appeared to be Romney’s most serious challenger for the nomination, has not been able to transfer his considerable assets on paper — reasonably successful governor of key swing state, potential appeal to both social and economic conservatives — to reality. It is too early to write him off, but his months of campaigning have not translated into actual support. If his weakness continues, important endorsers and donors will go looking for someone else. If Bachmann eclipses Pawlenty

Presidents are the big winners in American politics, and so naturally we tend to think of them as blessed, preternaturally lucky and untouched by defeat. But it just isn’t so. We decided to take a look back to see just how many of the 43 men who have held the nation’s highest office had lost one or more contests on the road to the White House. You may be as surprised as we were that 31 of 43 presidents had been defeated at least once. Click here for a complete list. We did not count presidential primary defeats as long as the individual was nominated for president that year. Remarkably, two presidents were defeated three times (William McKinley and George H.W. Bush); three others lost four times (Benjamin Harrison, as well as one of our best presidents, Abraham Lincoln; and one of our worst, James Buchanan); and one was defeated five times (William Henry Harrison)** Of the 12 presidents who entered the White House with an undefeated electoral record, Gerald Ford is the most recent. Of course, he wasn’t elected president — or vice president, for that matter — and his victories consisted entirely of a string of U.S. House

In the immediate aftermath of President Obama’s trip to Puerto Rico earlier this week, much ink has been spilled speculating about the political motivations and ramifications of the first official presidential visit to the island since 1961. Will the president choose a side on the issue of Puerto Rican statehood? Is he courting the Puerto Rican vote in swing states like Florida? Maybe he was just brushing up on his Spanish and sampling the lunch options in San Juan? The issue of statehood is a politically perilous one. Puerto Ricans themselves are sharply divided on the issue. In the three official plebiscite votes on the island — in 1967, 1993, and 1998 — those puertorriqueños favoring full statehood have not yet won a majority, but never garnered less than 39% of the vote. The last vote between commonwealth, statehood and independence in 1998 saw a 50.3% majority of Puerto Ricans vote for “none of the above,” effectively maintaining the commonwealth status quo. Stateside Puerto Ricans, however, tend to favor statehood more than their island brethren. While they have less complicated feelings about their homeland than Cuban-Americans, many share a similar sentiment that the island would benefit economically by a closer association with

Rarely if ever has one of the two major parties been so confounded by dissatisfaction with its presidential field and the refusal by the base’s and establishment’s preferred choices to run. The void in the GOP ranks has led to a big tease: Potential contender after potential contender, many of them with no real hope of being nominated, coming forward to dip a toe, foot or leg in the White House waters. Some prominent names have already ruled themselves out: Gov. Mitch Daniels (IN), whom the establishment tried to draft into the race; and Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and 2008 GOP primary phenomenon, who appealed to the socially conservative wing of the party. Both recently announced that they were passing on the race, as did Gov. Haley Barbour (MS), an insider favorite who nonetheless was a long-shot candidate; and Donald Trump (NY), whose surreal candidacy was the epitome of farce. In this seemingly open field, many are making noises about getting in: Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (MI), former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Gov. George Pataki (NY), Rep. Peter King (NY), former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton (MD), etc. This is not a complete list

President Obama’s recent speech calling on the Israeli government to accept Israel’s 1967 borders as a starting point for negotiations toward a peace agreement with the Palestinians has led to widespread speculation that large numbers of Jewish voters may turn against Obama in 2012. Republican presidential candidates and congressional leaders have criticized the president’s speech even though his support for the 1967 borders as a starting point for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations has been the official policy of the U.S. government for some time. But regardless of whether the president was breaking new ground in his speech, how realistic is the belief that a substantial number of Jewish voters would abandon their traditional loyalty to the Democratic Party out of concern over Obama’s support for the state of Israel? Based on an analysis of Jewish public opinion and voting behavior over the past two decades, the answer to this question appears to be that such a scenario is not very realistic for at least three reasons. First, similar concerns voiced by political opponents about Obama’s support for Israel had little impact on Jewish voters in 2008; second, Jewish loyalty to the Democratic Party appears to be based primarily on the liberal views