That’s really good. I realize this will not be much of a diary. (I dislike when other Kossacks do this.) But here goes. I have been watching Friedrich Drumpf’s grandson’s approval ratings for a long time. It has dipped to 42. This is where he started at the beginning of this year. But his approval rating has remained fairly steadily at 44-45% for much of the year.
Any incumbent with a 45% and above approval rating is likely to retain office. Momentum gathers in favor of the incumbent from June to October when they are at this threshold. Approval rating plummets if they are below this threshold. Generically speaking.
See:
Job approval ratings for incumbent U.S. presidents seeking re-election from 1964 to 2012
And you certainly can’t win with an approval rating in the 30s. Gerald Ford could not win with a 32% approval rating. Jimmy Carter could not with a 32%. GHW Bush could not with a 33%.
Back in 2008, I remember Obama saying that he needed a 10-point lead for the win in order to counter any fraudulent vote tampering. (He did not use those exact words, but that was the gist of it.) That always struck me as a rather vague but realistic gauge of winning the whole shebang.
You’ve got the electoral college as a major factor, and you’ve got your GOTV as a major factor (which has to be spot on against an incumbent), and you’ve got your group identity politics where one identifies with a like-minded voting bloc (whether real or imagined), and then you’ve got the approval rating of the incumbent.
A below 45% approval rating for the incumbent means we’ve got a good shot at the win, providing all the other factors listed above fall into place. Below 40% and you’ve got yourself a win no matter how the other qualifiers play out.
IMO.
p.s. Wonder what caused the dip? I’m thinking that abortion stuff. Approval for its legality is still over 50% nationwide under certain circumstances.