Will Obama be the one again?

A week is a long time in politics. The wordly-wise Barack Obama would ordinarily dismiss this as a cliché, except that it was only too true this past week as far as his campaign to retain the American presidency is concerned.

As the whole world witnessed, Mr Obama fumbled badly in the first presidential debate on October 4. All observers and polls said that this would give a boost to Republican candidate Mitt Romney, who had been trailing in polls. The Pew Research Centre of Washington DC, a respected professional polling agency I had referred to in my previous column, is the latest to confirm this, putting Mr Romney four percentage points ahead of the US President in the share of popular votes in its poll of October 8. That is the largest Romney gain reported by any poll.
Of course, that does not mean that the President will not be re-elected. More than three weeks of campaign still remain, which will see two more debates. Mr Obama’s famed oratory may yet be in evidence. Senator John Kerry, the Democratic candidate in 2004, had similarly prevailed over President George W. Bush after the first debate, but ended up losing the election.
The American presidential election is decided on the basis of 538 electoral votes, distributed among the states. A state’s votes equal the number of members it sends to the House of Representatives plus its two senators. This tilts the base in favour of smaller states. It also makes some larger states — for example, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Indiana, among others — act as “swing” states, since the winner of the popular vote in the state even by the slimmest of margins takes all its electoral votes. This occasionally leads to an anomalous situation, as in 2000, when vice-president Albert Gore, the winner of the popular vote nationwide, lost to Mr Bush on the basis of electoral votes. In 1960, President John F. Kennedy led Richard Nixon by only 113,000 votes (0.16 per cent of the total) but collected 303 electoral votes as against Mr Nixon’s 219.
This makes predicting the outcome of presidential elections in the US both more complicated and interesting. All parties and candidates employ pollsters not only to tell them how the people will vote, but, more importantly, to take the public pulse on issues which concern the voters and decide on the message that would appeal. Major print and electronic media also engage in polling. The exercise is carried on long before election campaigns are under way. Almost all incumbents of public offices also seek approval ratings on their general performance as well as specific areas, such as economic or foreign policies.
The polling industry generates an enormous amount of data. Not all of it is as divergent as it is in India, but it does require to be sifted and tracked to make sense. Nate Silver runs a most perceptive blog called 538 (fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com) — an obvious reference to the presidential electoral college — in the New York Times. He tracks all leading polls, analyses changes, smoothes them for events such as the debates and detects trends. His finding as of October 9 is that President Obama is still on course to win, despite the debate setback, but his position is now somewhat weaker than it was at the start of the month. The depth and richness of Mr Silver’s analysis would be of interest not just to psephologists but students of American politics as well. That should include all of us, in this globalised world.
Ordinarily, presidential fortunes in the US are thought to be determined by domestic, rather than international, issues. The three earlier elections in this century brought to the fore the global dimension as well, in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the 2008 recession worldwide. In 2012, the US economy is the dominant concern and especially the employment situation at that, to the virtual exclusion of everything else. This is why the September 2012 unemployment figure falling to 7.8 per cent — the first time it has been lower than eight per cent in 44 months — is so important. This came out immediately after the debate, and some Republicans smelt a conspiracy, because it could and did undo some damage done to the President’s standing by the debate. The October data will come out just before the November 6 election and would be crucial to the outcome.
Since Franklin D. Roosevelt, no incumbent President has been reelected when unemployment was higher than 7.5 per cent, except for Ronald Regan in 1984. Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George H.W. Bush in 1992 lost their re-election bids when prevailing unemployment rates were as high. The question now is whether Mr Obama would emulate Mr Regan. Incidentally, many observers had likened Mr Obama to Mr Regan on the basis of their communication ability.
The debate, unfortunately, showed that Candidate Obama of 2008, the transformative leader in the making and symbol of aspirations of a world tired of terror attacks, unending wars and unlimited greed, was replaced by a President Obama of 2012, weary and wary of the frustrating burdens on him, hounded by a relentless domestic Opposition questioning his every move. Mr Romney was your reasonably assured corporate type, whose repeated assertion that he wanted to create jobs seemed to overcome the many contradictions in his positions strangely not pursued by his opponent. It mattered little which of the debaters had a more accurate narrative; carrying conviction through the candidate’s demeanour, body language and tone was all. Mr Obama was not that person on October 4.
We might yet see the re-emergence of the One (as Mr Obama was referred to in 2008). His soaring, erudite rhetoric in ringing tones embellished with personal experiences had then aroused grand expectations. He appealed not just to those who voted for him but also to a near universal circle of admirers. On that slender hope hangs the fate of the world’s most powerful office, likely to be decided by as slender a margin.

The writer taught at IIM Ahmedabad and helped set up the Institute of Rural Management, Anand. He writes on economic and policy issues.