Republicans Need To Quit Fretting

Promoted - Oxendine points out that early polling has not historically been a great predictor.  Jon Henke

It seems like every day, a new post appears somewhere in the blogosphere decrying John McCain's chances of becoming President. Today it is Stu Rothenberg, yesterday it was  DaveG at Race42008 (though an allowance is made by Dave for the possibility of a Bush-like EV/PV split in McCain's favor).

To which I reply, for the umpteenth time, IT IS EARLY. John McCain is in fine shape to win this. In fact, he is probably in better shape than Bush was in 2004, when he was an incumbent polling in the 43%-45% range. Do I think he's the odds-on favorite, or even the favorite? No. But I think for a variety of reasons it is waaaaay too EARLY to count him out.

For yet another reason, over at Politico they have a nice summary of Gallup mid-year polling. There are hundreds of ways to dissect these data, but the main point is that mid-year polling is not especially predictive of the final results.

But remember that Obama is the fresh young face in politics. He's the new thing on the national scene. McCain is well-known and well-established. There's the possibility that the undecideds are people who are curious about Obama, but who are uncertain about departing from the established product. How do fresh young faces historically fare from their mid-year polling? Let's look at races that featured an established national figure, running against someone who had never held or run for either Article II office before:

• 1952: Ike/Stevenson was at 56-34. It ended up at 55-44. This race obviously broke for the fresh new face, although it is worth pointing out that neither candidate had substantial ties to the status quo.
• 1960: Nixon/Kennedy was at 41/46. It ended up at 49.5-49.7. The established product overperformed here.
• 1964: Goldwater/Johnson was at 74-19. It ended up 61-39. Obviously the fresh new face performed better, but then again, how could he have done worse.
• 1972: Nixon/McGovern was at 42-31. It ended up 60-37. Chalk one up for the established product. Of course, its hard to draw too much from this, since the initial poll tested Geo. Wallace (who polled at 19 percent, but didn't end up on the ballot). This probably cancels Goldwater/Johnson out as an outlier.
• 1976: Ford/Carter was at 28-49. It ended up 48-50. Breaks heavily for established product.
• 1988: Bush/Dukakis was at 41-47. It ended up 53-46. Established product.
• 1992: Bush/Clinton/Perot was at 32-31-28. Ended up 43-37-19. It is hard to say how this one went, but counting Clinton/Perot as fresh new faces both, you end up with 32-59 going to 43-56, a win for established product.
• 2000: Bush/Gore was at 45-36. Ended up 48-48. Established product.
• 2004: Bush/Kerry was at 44-46. Ended up 51-48. Established product.

So let's count this up. Of the seven races that had clear established products versus fresh new faces, the voters broke for the fresh new face in five only two of them. Of those two, one was Goldwater-Johnson, where Goldwater hardly could have performed worse than his 1964 polling; the other was a half-century ago in a race where both candidates could arguably be the candidate of change.

In other words, the fresh-faced candidate of change can never be comfortable when he is polling in the high forties six months before the election. Those undecideds (and a chunk of his support) historically have not supported the fresh-faced candidate. Have we ever seen this before with Obama? Hmmm, I wonder.

Add in the fact that Obama has already spent a quarter of a billion dollars on a national, 50-state campaign (in the primaries), and one wonders how much more he can really do to move the dial in his direction . . .

(Cross posted at race42008.com)