If you look past all the polls and turnout model, there is one advantage that Obama has that Romney doesn’t: he’s the incumbent.
Ever since George Washington took office in 1789, among the 31 sitting Presidents that took part in national elections, 21 of them have assumed office for a second term – a winning percentage of .677 that baseball fans will appreciate.
There are several reasons why the incumbent has the advantage – maybe it’s because of his ability to divert federal dollars or manage the news cycle but mostly because voters might not want to ‘switch horses in midstream’.
But it gets better when you take into account how sitting Presidents have fared in both the 20th and 21st centuries where 14 Presidents out of 19 looking for a second term managed to do so – a batting average of .737.
As for the last eight decades, only four sitting Presidents have lost such as Herbert Hoover, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson and Gerald Ford also taking into account Presidents that have been in office due to a President’s death or resignation.
However, this is not to say that we can safely predict that Obama will be the winner of the Presidential elections, come November 2012. It wouldn’t be fair to forget that in just the past four decades sitting incumbents have lost three times and that is something that Romney can find reassuring. In fact his aides are modeling the race on Presidential race in 1980 where a late surge helped Reagan win the elections over Carter.
Yet history continues to show us that it’s difficult to beat an incumbent president time and time again.