While We're At It, the Gingrich Handicap

See the original post on the Romney handicap. The Gingrich handicap is exactly the same idea, just for Newt Gingrich instead of Mitt Romney. Well, what do we find when we look at the Gingrich handicap? It's a lot bigger than the Romney Handicap. The recent PPP national poll found Gingrich polling three points worse than Romney, for a 12-point handicap. That's about the smallest gap anywhere. In the state surveys I classify as "recent," in which Romney displays about a 10-point handicap on average, Gingrich is spotting Obama a 17-point edge. That's enormous. Honestly, a 10-point handicap candidate is pretty awful to begin with, and should make us reconsider the idea that Romney's a strong candidate. But -17 is just abysmal. Note that Lyndon Johnson's approval rating around the 1964 election was probably well above the record 61% of the popular vote he received, i.e. Mr. Catastrophically Weak Candidate Barry Goldwater actually posted a negative handicap, by this metric, relative to President Johnson.

Getting back to Newt, there's a pretty broad band of states, both in recent surveys and in older ones dating back to last winter, where his handicap is in the realm of 17 to 23 points. Then there's a handful with a dramatically smaller handicap. Among recent surveys, that's Nevada (12), North Carolina (also 12), and Mississippi (7). Nevada and North Carolina are swing states, and pretty good places to be relatively strong (although there's the caveat that Romney's handicap in that NC survey was also anomalously low, and I suspect that may be random variation rather than anything else). But this is some serious unelectability. If we assume zero undecideds, then Obama's approval rating would need to be 41.5% in order for Gingrich to tie him nationally, under these numbers. If we assume as many undecideds as we see in the latest pollster.com trendlines, we'd need to see an Obama approval of 39% before Gingrich could start thinking about winning. I'm pretty sure the Obama people are counting on an approval rating greater than 39% on election day (not that they might not get it, but that if they don't it won't be surprising when he loses). If they nominate Newt, they're throwing this election away, unless something massively changes over the next year. Go for it, guys! It worked so well in the 2010 Senate races, after all.