Not to pick on Goldy since you can see the same sort of stats everywhere. But the No President Since FDR Has Won Reelection with Unemployment Above 7.2 Percent stat has always bugged me. So let’s break it down.
There have only been 3 presidents who lost reelection since FDR. Ford, Carter, and G H W Bush. In all three of those elections the unemployment rate was above 7.2 (in the first Bush’s case it was 7.3, and in the other cases it was lower than it is now, but higher than that, you can get the historical data here). I bet in at least 2 of FDR’s reelection victories, unemployment was well above that. So it’s only 3 for 5.
Really, what people are saying is the last 3 times the unemployment rate was above 7.2, presidents lost their reelection bids. Well, there are plenty of streaks in politics that are larger than 3 that probably don’t mean a whole lot.
Of course there’s an implied corollary: that presidents won when it was below 7.2. All right. That gives us Truman, Ike, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and W Bush. That brings the streak up to a more respectable 9, if you’re willing to read more into what people are saying than they actually say. Still, I can’t imagine going up to too many political scientists and saying you have 9 data points (or actually more than 9, but don’t look back further than that) and having them take you seriously.
A 9 game winning streak doesn’t guarantee a win in the next match. That doesn’t mean the unemployment rate doesn’t matter. People who are unemployed, and people with unemployed friends and family, are going to vote based on that.
It’s not controversial to say high unemployment is probably a hindrance to a presidential reelection bid. But there are way too many other factors to assume that 7.2 is a magic number.
Speaking of small sample sizes:
No Hawaiian-born president has ever won re-election.
Carl is grasping at straws. Obama has increased the National Debt by almost $6 Trillion and has little to show for it other than making some of his cronies wealthy with Stimulus Money.
Obama needs to be pumped up and instead the vicious left daftly decides to start calling Romney a Liar. Idiots. That never works, especially with undecided, independent voters.
Keep grasping at those straws Carl.
BTW, no President with a Muslim name has ever won re-election
Jerry,
“Carl is grasping at straws.”
Somebody is grasping at straws, there, Squirt, but it ain’t Carl!
“Obama has increased the National Debt by almost $6 Trillion and has little to show for it other than making some of his cronies wealthy with Stimulus Money.”
Ummm…little to show for it, except months and months of job growth, an economy that didn’t slip into a depression, and auto industry that has come back from the dead (remember, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”). And health care for all Americans.
I know it sucks for you selfish, anti-American teabagging assholes when things actually go right, but without question, Obama saved America from the the utter catastrophe brought upon us by the Bush administration. Bush left America with two unfunded wars (one that was built on the fictional existence of “weapons of mass destruction”) and a fiscal policy of massive tax breaks that started this deep budget deficit trend, and continues to this day because the anti-American Republican assholes won’t engage in anything resembling fiscal responsibility.
“Obama needs to be pumped up and instead the vicious left daftly decides to start calling Romney a Liar.”
Romney is called a Liar because HE FUCKING LIES HIS ASS OFF. Have you seen the NUMEROUS articles challenging and debunking the lies Romney told during the debate?
Even considering that he is a politician, Romney borders on being a pathological liar—a fucking SOCIOPATH!
“That never works, especially with undecided, independent voters.”
I wish I could agree that lying never works. It does sometimes, but it shouldn’t. We’ll see soon enough if the lies do more damage than the style can overcome.
“BTW, no President with a Muslim name has ever won re-election”
Sure, but no Mormon has ever been elected either. So there.
and no member of the LDS has ever won the presidency!
1, funny.
2, not funny.
Stop making sense, Carl.
…. oh I don’t know about that … there is that small matter of keeping the Great Recession from turning into a Great Depression, avoiding the kind of problems we’ve seen caused by austerity programs in Europe …
Debt relative to GDP peaked in 1945 at the end of WWII.
Written by leftists for leftists… For example…
Talk about untruths and lies… Yep that’s the Obummer campaign 2012!
Here is an even smaller sample size!