Quick, now. Try to name big segments of the electorate, or even prominent individuals, who opposed Barack Obama in 2008 but have joined his campaign for re-election. Difficulty in answering that question caused even the president, in a fleeting moment of candor, to suggest that he could easily lose the White House.
On May 10, Obama soured the mood of enthusiastic donors at a Seattle fundraiser by telling them that “this election is actually going to be even closer than the last.” In other words, he knows that he has lost supporters, rather than gaining them, during his three-and-a-half years of leadership.
A “closer election” means that one of the few iron rules of U.S. politics indicates he’ll lose his bid for a second term. History offers not one example of a chief executive whose popular appeal declined during his first term of office but nonetheless managed to eke out a re-election victory, as Obama proposes to do. Among the 24 elected presidents who sought second terms, all 15 who earned back-to-back victories drew more support in bids for re-election than they did in their previous campaigns.
In the past century, this base-broadening for re-elected presidents hasn’t been modest or subtle. When Woodrow Wilson campaigned for re-election in 1916 (without Teddy Roosevelt as a third party competitor), his percentage of the popular vote soared by 7 points. Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 enhanced his already formidable popularity by 4 percentage points, and Dwight Eisenhower‘s landslide re-election in 1956 saw his share of the electorate rise from 55% to 57%. Richard Nixon‘s improvement amounted to a staggering 17 points in 1972, while Ronald Reagan‘s re-election percentage went up by 8 points.
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