Referendum on the Incumbent, Part 1

From veteran political journalist, and Ole Miss associate professor Curtis Wilkie, we hear the first theory.

Wilkie serves as Kelly Gene Cook Sr. chair for the journalism
department. Wilkie has covered the past eight presidential elections,
with the 2004 election being the first he will not cover in over 30
years.

Wilkie compared this year’s election with the election of 1980 when
President Jimmy Carter was soundly defeated by Ronald Reagan, in what
Wilkie viewed as a “referendum on the incumbent.”

According to Wilkie, there are many parallels connecting the two
elections, such as a deficient economy and a volatile global situation.
He also said that in the 1980 election the initial polls were very
close, much like they are now. He said that when it came down to the
actual voting, the American people could not vote for a president that
had so many misses.

Among the problems listed by Wilkie are the deteriorating situation in
Iraq, the loss of American jobs, Bush’s miscues involving the
environment and the national deficit brought on by Bush’s tax cuts.

(Source)

Referendum on the Incumbent, Part 2, or How To REALLY Interpret The Polls


Leading Pollster Guy Molyneux Explains Why the Media Is Overestimating Bush's Lead


Guy Molyneux is a highly respected analyst and pollster who serves as a
Senior Vice President and Partner of Peter Hart Research Associates. In
an article now available on the American Prospect's website
he presents an extremely important analysis of why the media is
overestimating Bush's lead and underestimating how close the race
actually is.  Excerpts follow.

“Media analysis [of the 2004 election] is marred by a failure to take
account of a phenomenon well-known to all political pollsters, the
“incumbent 50-percent rule.”

Almost all poll reporting focuses on the “spread,” that is, the
difference in the percentage supporting Bush and John Kerry….
However, in incumbent elections, the incumbent’s percentage of the vote
is a far better indicator of the state of the race than the spread. In
fact, the percentage of the vote an incumbent president receives in
surveys is an extraordinarily accurate predictor of the percentage he
will receive on election day – even though the survey results also
include a pool of undecided voters.

[The reason is that] elections are fundamentally a referendum on the
incumbent. The first step in voters’ decision-making process is to
answer the question “does he deserve re-[s]election?” Undecided voters
have basically answered that question in the negative, and their
undecided status reflects the fact that they don’t know enough about
the challenger (yet) to feel comfortable stating a public preference.

Think of it this way: The percentage that Bush receives in polls
represents his ceiling of support; he may get a little less, but won’t
get more. In contrast, Kerry’s percentage represents his floor, and he
will almost certainly do better on election day.