This Election Really Is Different
After my prognostication yesterday, I thought I’d do some research into historical precedents: how have other incumbent Presidents fared? I found Presidental approval ratings back to Truman at
The Roper Center and I found the popular vote and electoral college numbers at
Word IQ. All of the job performance approval rating numbers are from Gallup polls, and in all cases I picked the one that was taken closest to the election.
| Year | President | Poll Dates | Approve / Disapprove / No Opinion | Popular Vote % (Incumbent / Opponent) | Electoral College (Incumbent / Opponent) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 48 | Truman | 6/18-24/48 | 39/46/16 | 50/45 | 303/189/39* |
| 56 | Eisenhower | 8/3-8/56 | 67/19/13 | 57/42 | 457/73 |
| 64 | Johnson | 6/25-30/64 | 74/15/11 | 61/38 | 486/52 |
| 72 | Nixon | 6/23-26/72 | 57/33/10 | 61/38 | 520/17 |
| 76 | Ford | 6/11-14/76 | 45/40/5 | 48/50 | 240/297 |
| 80 | Carter | 9/12-15/80 | 37/55/8 | 41/51 | 49/489 |
| 84 | Reagan | 10/26-29/84 | 58/33/9 | 59/41 | 525/13 |
| 92 | G.H.W. Bush | 10/12-14/92 | 34/56/10 | 37/43/19** | 168/370 |
| 96 | Clinton | 10/26-29/96 | 54/36/10 | 49/41/8** | 379/159 |
| 04 | G.W. Bush | 10/14-16/04 | 51/47/2 | ? | ? |
* Thurmond
** Perot
The thing that’s unique about G.W. Bush is that only 2% have “no opinion” of his job performance. That means there aren’t many opinions out there to sway.
Looking at the numbers, the only races that are at all similar are ’48 (Truman’s disapproval rating was almost the same as Bush’s), ’76, and ’96 (Ford and Clinton had approval ratings not far from Bush’s). But I don’t think any of the 3 are good camparisons. Truman ran a superb campaign, Dewey ran a terrible one, and Truman had a large pool of “no opinion” folks he could sway (unfortunately, the poll was taken in June, before the height of the campaign season). In ’76, the country was still working through its hangover from Watergate, and Ford committed a major blunder in the 2nd debate (insisting that Eastern Europe was not under Soviet domination). In ’96, the Dole campaign was lackluster, and Perot was muddying the waters.
So I stand by my prediction yesterday: Bush’s negatives are high, and unlike Truman, there isn’t a big “no opinion” pool for him to draw on. I should also point out that his 51% approval rating in the table is higher than the numbers from other polls around the same time period – most
put Bush under 50%. And as I’ve discussed before, I think there are methodological problems with most of the polls, which skew the numbers towards Bush (I don’t think there were similar problems in the past, as people’s relationships with their phones have been changing in recent years, and I think this election is going to have a surge of new voters unlike anything in the post-WWII era).
