A Dead Heat

Examining the Republican TicketA recent analysis, George W. Bush’s Overall Job Approval Matches ARG Low (American Research Group), sounds pretty good, on the surface. People think Bush is doing a poor job; McCain wants to be Bush, so McCain’s plummeting, right?

Right?

Things are rarely that simple. Two excellent election resources are Five Thirty Eight.com and the vaunted Electoral-Vote.com (EV)[1]. Whereas both sites currently have Obama in the lead (with FTE giving Obama a 75%—oops, today, it’s 73%—chance of winning), the Republicans are not getting hammered as hard as they should by all rights be getting hammered. The popular vote, in particular, is almost a statistical dead heat.

It’s possible that enough people in America have realized that the Democrats aren’t much better, but then why say that you’re voting Republican?[2] Perhaps it’s “the devil you know” logic at work. There must be more at work, though, because if you scroll down a bit on the cited survey, you’ll see that, although only “19% of Americans say that they approve of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president”, that number jumps to a gob-smacking 48% when you ask only Republicans. When asked only about the economy, the numbers are 17% and 46%, respectively. They even managed to find 18% of America that thinks the economy is “excellent, very good, or good”. Those that like Bush, it’s 51%.

Talk about circling the wagons! It looks like Republicans are defending Bush’s job as president simply because he’s Republican. They are not making an evaluation based on any information or reasoning, simply answering from the gut that they still like him. They feel bad that he’s being made to shoulder all the blame for the America’s current situation, which could have happened to anybody.