Why They Said Obama Would Not Win a Second Term — and Why They Were Wrong

Editor's note: this is a retrospective on the conventional wisdom of late 2011, when many analysts predicted a one-term Obama presidency. He won re-election in November 2012 with 332 electoral votes.

The case against Barack Obama's re-election in 2012 rested on economics—specifically, the stubbornly slow pace of recovery from the 2008 financial crisis and the perception among significant portions of the electorate that his policies had failed to produce the growth his 2008 campaign had promised.

Unemployment, which peaked at 10 percent in October 2009, had declined slowly and unevenly by mid-2012, sitting at 8.2 percent—still historically high and concentrated disproportionately among working-class voters without college degrees who had formed part of Obama's 2008 coalition. The president's approval ratings on economic management lagged behind his personal favorability numbers, an ominous sign for incumbents historically.

The historical record was not encouraging. No president since Franklin Roosevelt had won re-election with unemployment above 7.2 percent on election day. The structural argument was straightforward: voters in difficult economic conditions tend to fire the incumbent regardless of whether the incumbent caused the difficulty.

Republicans also pointed to healthcare reform—the Affordable Care Act, passed over unified Republican opposition—as electoral liability. Polls showed the law consistently underwater on favorability, with opposition concentrated among independent voters whose support Obama needed.

The counterargument, which ultimately proved more persuasive to voters, was that Obama had inherited the worst economic crisis since the Depression and had prevented a complete collapse. The trajectory was positive if slow. And the Republican alternative, Mitt Romney, carried his own vulnerabilities.

Obama won re-election with 332 electoral votes. The economic pessimists were wrong—though not by as large a margin as Obama's supporters hoped.