People Like Obama
For reasons I don’t quite understand, winning an election tends to make the winner more popular than he was before. Thus, Barack Obama now has a sky-high seventy percent approval rating and folks are optimistic that he’ll do a good job:
This is, of course, something that could be a problem for a would-be opposition party and, in particular, a source of leverage vis-à-vis Senators (Collins, Snowe, Gregg, Specter, Voinovich, Martinez, Burr, Lugar, Grassley, and possibly Coleman) representing states Obama carried.
But it’s also a reminder of an unusual aspect of the 2008 election, namely that it pitted two very popular candidates against each other. The losing candidate had a favorable rating that hovered around 60 percent all year and the winning candidate hovered around 65 percent. These “up with people” sentiments wound up a bit underrepresented in the political press because a lot of conservative leaders were cool to McCain and because outpourings of enthusiasm for Obama from unusual corners of the landscape were so widespread that sophisticated progressive analysts have all spent months distancing themselves from an atmosphere of hero worship. But actually, people really like Obama and like McCain a lot, too.
32 Responses to “People Like Obama”
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November 11th, 2008 at 11:58 am
For reasons I don’t quite understand
Amurka loves them a winner! That’s it.
November 11th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Part of it is that some of the people who don’t support the winner still think they might be a “good president.” People are more in favor of politicians when they aren’t necessarily directly comparing them. “Will Obama be a good President?” is a different question than “Will Obama be a better President than McCain?”
November 11th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
You forgot Ensign as a Senator from a state Obama won.
November 11th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
It can only go down from there. And approval numbers are overrated, anyway. It’s what you do that counts.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Isn’t this likely the bandwagon effect in action?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fad
For some reason, we heard endless discussion of alleged Bradley Effect in this election, but little or no discussion of the Bandwagon/social proof idea, which is much better documented, and obviously applicable in an election in which the leading candidate was hugely popular.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
it’s the “vote mccain not hussein” folks realizing Obama’s not really going lefty terrorist gay muslim socialist on them and isn’t moving the US capital to mombasa at least for a while yet.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
A five percent jump is realy that big, and could be explained by people confusing “approve of” with “going to vote for” in the polling during the campaign.
That being said, I do think that Barack has already looked pretty impressively presidential in the last week. And those pictures of him next to Bush would have helped.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Oops. A five percent jump is not really that big…
November 11th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
There’s also the idea that if you’re anti-Obama because you don’t think his brand of politics and policy is what America wants, and then you have an election that demonstrates that it is what America wants, that may change your mind. I know, that doesn’t exactly sound coherent, but it seemed to at least be what was inside Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s head when she expressed enthusiasm for Obama the day after the election.
November 11th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
“For reasons I don’t quite understand, winning an election tends to make the winner more popular than he was before.”
This is standard psychology – it’s called choice-supportive bias: after making a decision people upgrade the advantages of the choice they’ve made (spouse, car, computer..) and vice versa. This minimises cognitive stress. No regrets!
Thie process also accounts for the “gelling” of electoral preferences. After the second debate, McCain was toast. It would have taken an earthquake (war with Iran, capture of Bin Laden, videotape of Obama having sex with goat) to change the settled preferences of almost all voters.
November 11th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
In discussions of the high approval ratings of both candidates (60 for McCain, 65 for Obama), one number I never heard reported was the percentage of voters who disapproved of both. When one sees those two numbers, the general assumption is that the breakdown is something close to:
40% approve of Obama and disapprove of McCain (read:Dems)
35% approve of McCain and disapprove of Obama (read:Repubs)
25% approve of both candidates (read:Independents)
0% disapprove of both candidates (read:Bushies and PUMAs)
But my assumption is that there is a sizable number of Republican voters who disapprove of both and would fit into that latter category. Presumably, those would be ones that would be left behind if the GOP did end up moving towards the centre in response to their current state in the wilderness. Does anyone know those numbers?
November 11th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
But didn’t McCain’s approval numbers tank in the last phase of the elections?
November 11th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
The helpful suggestions of all the commenters above are noted and appreciated, but you’re all wrong! wrong, wrong, wrong, dammit!
Okay, it must be conceded: No one knows for sure what causes the so-called “honeymoon” phase in the early days of a new president’s term, and an awful lot of speculation has taken place in the scholarship—or more than’s been proved, at least. But I will note the following: More Americans say that they remembered to vote in the last election than actually can be shown to have voted (imagine that). Furthermore, more Americans approve of the new president when he takes the oath of office than did when the election was held. Finally, the difference between those Americans who approved of the winning candidate just before he was elected subtracted from those who approved of him at inauguration very closely (and quite curiously) tracks the difference of those Americans who actually voted subtracted from those who said they voted.
So, without staking any actual cred on what the real answer is, I’d simply note that you could say, if you wanted to, that the phenomenon of rising candidate approval following his election is due to a non-trivial number of Americans not wanting to admit that they neglected to vote, and although being willing to pretend that they voted nevertheless not wanting to pretend that they voted for the losing candidate.
December 1st, 2008 at 3:13 am
ST. PAUL — Al Franken’s campaign warns a Minnesota board may violate state law and the Constitution if it ignores hundreds of absentee ballots claimed improperly rejected. Norm Coleman’s campaign retorts that Franken’s efforts are
December 7th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
The Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell, like NRO’s John Derbyshire , is probably someone I should ignore now that it’s finally morning in America, for the rest of us. But Bozell’s latest outburst is useful in pointing up the complete
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