Politics / Eliot Pollak / 09 June 2011 / Leave a comment Bet Now View Market

He's [1.52] to win a second term and many Republicans just aren't up for the fight but Obama is no certainty and Eliot Pollak has outlined five reasons to oppose the current POTUS at next year's election.

Such is the fear-factor surrounding Barack Obama right now, many potential Republican Presidential candidates are thinking of sitting out 2012, and waiting for 2016. Nobody wants a heavy electoral thumping on their CV, when they run for the Presidency.

However, whilst the Republicans themselves seemingly don't fancy it, the bettors are in dispute. A victory for the Grand Old Party next Fall, is a pretty narrow [2.84]. So what exactly are the punters thinking? Here are five reasons why Obama can be beaten to a second term.

'It's the economy stupid'
Bill Clinton's famous maxim applies perhaps in even greater force today, than it did back in the 1990s. It was announced last week that US economic growth had slumped to an annualised rate of just 1.8% in the first quarter of this year. Writing in the Guardian, Larry Sabato, Head of the University of Virginia's Centre for Politics, commented, "That's miserable...I don't care how good a president he looks a year-and-a-half out, if you have a growth rate that is well below 3%, that president is probably going to lose as long as the opposition party nominates a respectable candidate."
Only four Presidents in the 20th Century lost a re-election campaign, and three of those (Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter and George Bush Sr), all suffered from lean economic times. The precedent for the incumbent President (ahem) is clear.

Jon M.Huntsman
Amidst the various losers, boozers and Jacuzzi users the Republican party seem keen to inflict on the electorate, one man stands above the rabble. A fiscal conservative and social moderate, Jon Huntsman has been serving as US Ambassador to China for the past couple of years. However, having been originally nominated for that role by Obama, his association with the current President could be anathema to a fiercely anti-Obama Republican base. If he does sneak the nomination, expect election debates to be of a far chummier nature, than if Palin for example won. This could disarm Obama of his greatest weapon - articulacy - and surely makes Huntsman the Republican's best bet. Jon Huntsman is [7.8] to be the Republican nominee and [19.0] to be the next POTUS.

Terrorist Attack
Even before the days of Dubya's War on Terror, the Republicans were, rather like their Conservative cousins in the UK, the party most trusted to keep the country safe. If al-Qaeda strike successfully on US soil, possibly in retaliation for the assassination of OBL, the Republicans spring into the box seat.

Reapportioning
The US constitution dictates that the Census is responsible for the allocation of electoral votes for each state. The 2010 results are set to favour the Republicans in states such as Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Scandal - The great unknown
Despite an entire Dead Sea's worth of mud being hurled at Obama during both the original Democratic Primary, and the contest with John McCain, none of it stuck. Even the tiresome attempts by Donald Trump to prove Obama wasn't born in the US, backfired. The President produced his birth certificate, whilst Trump was publicly humiliated for the buffoon he is. Could there be something yet to emerge from the Obama closet?