Here is RealClearPolitics.com's Sean Trende's analysis answering the widespread opinion that the contenders for the Republican Presidential Nomination are unelectable.
Says he, "So's your Ol 'Bama!"
And he says it persuasively, comparing economic indicators from the presidential elections of the last 50 years. TAO* ranks right in there with the re-election losers Ford, Carter, and Bush 41 by these measures. Of course, those indicators are averaged over Q1-Q3 of election year in those cases whereas TAO's numbers are the most recent quarter available, Q3 of the year before the election in most cases.
Trende also compares recent opinion surveys with those from this point in 2010, showing that there has been little improvement in TAO's standing with the public since the worst mid-term election performance by Democrats in half a century.
He thumps TAO's chances soundly, but he misses the swing-state survey by Gallup I discussed here.
He also misses the very encouraging correlation between the last three presidential elections and their preceding mid-terms identified by Michael Barone here. I thought I had called your attention to that last summer, but of mention of it I can find neither hide nor hair. It's really more than a correlation since the two-party vote splits for president in the last three presidential elections, 2000, 2004, and 2008, were almost exactly predicted by the two-party vote splits in House total vote in the immediately preceding midterm elections, 1998, 2002, and 2006.
Let's see, the two-party split in the total vote for the House in 2010 was... what? Really? 53.5% Republican to 46.5% Democrat? That bad for TAO, huh?
Two years ago yesterday, I wrote this. I don't want you to believe everything I have to say on this subject, but, as the saying goes, I'm just sayin'....
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*The Awesome One
