Beware when the media declare a critical campaign disaster or triumph. In fact, such incidents often don't count for much
Did you know that a girlfriend in President Obama's book Dreams from My Father was a composite character? Did you know that Mitt Romney handed pizzas he was carrying to a New York Fire Department house off to an aide, believing he was out of sight of the cameras?
Most of us understand that these types of insignificant events provide fodder to the press's appetite for news bites, but little else. I doubt many swing voters have actually or will be reading Dreams from My Father; and the pizza incident was so minor that most news reports didn't even cover it in their wrap-up of the fire department event.
But what about those campaign events that many think made all the difference in the world – but which, in the end, didn't really have the impact ascribed to them? The moments in the campaign that journalists like to say were "turning points", but actually weren't.
Here are five such incidents from the past 25 years.
1988: Democratic VP candidate Lloyd Bentsen puts Republican Dan Quayle in his place with "You're no Jack Kennedy"
We all know this famous zinger from the 1988 vice-presidential debate. Quayle was trying to calm fears that he did not have experience for the presidency compares his years in office to President Kennedy's. The end result from this "catastrophe"?
Republican presidential nominee George Bush's lead went from 2 percentage points to 5 percentage points in the CBS/New York Times poll. Quayle's net favorable rating (favorable–unfavorable) budged slightly from -4% to -5% according to an NBC poll from the Roper archives. The percentage of likely voters who thought the choice of Quayle by Bush was a bad decision also barely moved, from 32% to 31%.
So, Bush wasn't hurt by the moment, and Quayle was viewed as poorly as he was before.
1988: Democrat Michael Dukakis shows no emotion when answering CNN's Bernard Shaw's question about Kitty Dukakis in the second presidential debate
Dukakis ruined his campaign chances when he did not reflect anger and sadness about the question involving rape, the death penalty, and his wife. The moment was supposedly "so bad" that Politico's Roger Simon devoted an entire column to the presumed gaffe, titled "Questions that kill candidates' careers".
What analyses such as these miss is that Dukakis was already trailing the frontrunner Bush, and Bush had momentum. A Gallup poll taken before the debate put Bush's lead at 6 percentage points, while a CBS/New York Times poll obtained from the Roper archives pegged the lead at 5 percentage points.
Dukakis did end up losing by a slightly larger 7.7 point margin. That difference is well within the margin of error for both polls, and the lead could have widened because of many events on the campaign trail. Either way, Bush was winning before the debate and kept that lead after it.
1992: Ross Perot's re-entry into the presidential race cost President George HW Bush re-election
I'm not sure there's a greater myth than Perot costing Bush the election. Exit poll analysis demonstrates that Perot voters would have split evenly between Bush and Bill Clinton. For those who don't remember, Perot initially dropped out of the race on 16 July 1992, but re-entered on 1 October 1992. What were the polls before his re-entry?
Clinton led by 16 points in the final Gallup poll taken before Perot was put back on the Gallup questionnaire, and he led by 16 points in the first survey done after Perot was asked again. Perot climbed from 14% in early October, to 20% in mid-October, but Clinton's lead remained in the low double digits.
Perot was a character, but he didn't sink Bush.
2004: John Kerry rebounds in the first presidential debate
John Kerry was way down in the polls after a summer of "Swift boat" ads and a successful Republican national convention. He supposedly needed a strong debate performance to have any chance against George W Bush.
There is little doubt that Kerry was viewed as the winner of the debate, but did it really impact the polling data? Much of the belief that Kerry made a comeback was fueled by Gallup coming back into line with other pollsters. Gallup had given Bush a lead that matched no other pollster, and it was even the subject of a MoveOn.org advertisement.
A detailed look at the five pollsters that surveyed Americans before and after debate finds that two of them gave Kerry post debate a large bounce, one of them showed a minor tightening, one showed no change at all, and one actually found Bush gaining a point. The pollsters that didn't move already had Kerry close to Bush.
Overall, the debate might have made a slight difference, but it's not easily apparent in the aggregate of polling data.
2008: John McCain needed a game-changer, and he got one by picking Sarah Palin
I'm still not quite sure why McCain felt the need to pick Palin. Yes, he was down by mid-single digits after Obama wrapped up the nomination in early June, but that lead had been cut to a mere 1.7 percentage points by 24 August. Any number of factors could have put McCain over the top from a deficit that small.
Obama would receive the median 5 percentage point convention bounce to take a 6.8 percentage point lead on 2 September. Once that abated, McCain received his own convention bounce to take a 2.9 percentage point lead on 8 September, which, given the starting point of a 1.7 deficit, is equal to the 5 point convention bounce we'd normally expect. Even before Palin's disastrous Katie Couric interview on 24 September, Obama's lead had rebounded to 2.3 percentage points, or about where it was pre-Palin and conventions.
Conclusion
These are just five examples exaggerated campaign moments. There are others out there. That's not to say moments can't make or break a campaign. The final debate in 1980 allowed Ronald Reagan to capitalize on the weak economy, for example. But before any reporter tries to sell you the story that a specific event or action made all the difference, it might be wise to cast a wary eye over it.