September: When The Rubber Starts To Meet The Road In Election 2012

by John Hawkins | August 7, 2012 4:02 pm

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You hear liberal pundits beating their chests about how Obama is going to beat Romney, conservative pundits proclaiming that Mitt is on pace to win, the polls are all over the place – when do we start to get a better idea of what’s going on?

It should be September.

For example, if you look back to the Obama vs. McCain race, that’s: when the race started to firm up[2]. Granted, Obama was ahead of McCain most of the time from May onward. But, the first time Obama had 3 straight polls that put him over that magic 50% mark was right at the beginning of September. Meanwhile, McCain polled at 45% and below in all three of those polls. That probably would have been all she wrote for Johnny Mac, but he received a really big bounce from his selection of Sarah Palin. Afterwards, the financial crisis broke, McCain’s numbers started to plunge, and it was as good as over after that. After 9/25/2008, McCain didn’t beat Obama in a single poll.

In 2004, it: broke down a little differently[3]. Bush and Kerry were essentially tied in August, Bush blew it open in September and then Kerry started to close. The most significant thing there was that Bush’s numbers didn’t change very much from the start of September all the way until the election.

My guess is that when September comes, Obama is going to be stuck somewhere around roughly 47%. If that’s the case, he’s going to be in a lot of trouble. Of course, if he’s hanging in there at 50% or higher, Romney will be the one in over his head. Either way, very soon we’ll start to have a much better idea of how this race is ultimately going to turn out.