Why Another Democrat Wouldn’t Do Better Than Obama in 2012

By NATE SILVER
NYT

You know that a president is having a rough time when you start to see speculation that his party would be better off if it replaced him on the ticket.

There has been more of this recently: the political scientist Matthew Dickinson argued that Democrats would improve their chances if Hillary Clinton defeated Barack Obama in a primary challenge. The astute Ed Morrissey of the blog Hot Air wondered if Democrats might benefit if Mr. Obama simply declined to run for a second term.

President Obama’s re-election bid is in quite a lot of trouble, with falling approval numbers and sour economic forecasts. But it’s probably mistaken to assume that those problems would just go away if Democrats replaced him with another candidate.

The evidence, if anything, points in the opposite direction: Mr. Obama is more popular than his policies, and probably gives the Democrats a better chance of maintaining the White House than another Democrat would. Three pieces of data to consider:

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