Mickey Kaus was talking about the "incumbent rule" which is basically that undecideds tend to break against the incumbent. Lots of nice analysis at the second link.
But something struck me about Mystery Pollster's table, so I sorted the table by the difference between Gallup's final projection and the actual result:
Incumbent | Final Gallup Projection | Actual Result | Difference | Party | |
1992 | Bush | 37% | 37.70% | -0.70% | R |
1984 | Reagan | 59% | 59.20% | -0.20% | R |
1972 | Nixon | 62% | 61.80% | 0.20% | R |
1976 | Ford | 49% | 48.10% | 0.90% | R |
1956 | Eisenhower | 59.50% | 57.80% | 1.70% | R |
1964 | Johnson | 64% | 61.30% | 2.70% | D |
1996 | Clinton | 52% | 49.20% | 2.80% | D |
1980 | Carter | 44% | 41.00% | 3.00% | D |
Gallup overpredicts an average of 2.8% for a Democratic incumbent but only 0.4% for a Republican incumbent. So is Bush actually hurt by the "incumbent rule"? Or is the "incumbent rule" only applicable to Democratic incumbents?
Best reason to vote I've heard in a while, for those of us living in a sewn-up state (such as California or Texas) -- your vote helps your guy with the overall popular vote count. Although this doesn't affect the actual election result, it might help prevent the premature aging of thousands of TV reporters' foreheads, since they won't have to add "..but lost the popular vote" for the next four years.
So maybe it's not a very good reason after all.
What I'm drinking lately:
Here's a review and here's some background.