http://www.leinsdorf.com/perot.htm

Its an old HTML-based page. The author does a good job of breaking down the data for Perot. At maximum, Perot cost Bush 500,000 votes which was not enough to swing the election. Alternatively, if Perot had not dropped out of the race, he would have either won or Bush would have won (in June of the election year, Perot was polling at 40%, Bush at 30% and Clinton at 20% - if that doesn't tell you Perot was stealing Dem votes, then I don't know what would).

Obama will win the election not because people want him in office, but because the republican party lacks any true candidate.

well im not to sure.
Republicans have nobody to run against Obama, but it just seems to unlikely that Obama would win.

The above statement saids it all its just like gore/kerry when you have generic candidates you cannot beat a solid candidate that has a lot of money and well organized base which is why bush managed to get elected/reelected (not the only reason admitingly). Below is a quick synopsis of the current republican candidates and their chances in my opinion.

Mitt Romney solid candidate good fundraiser liked by big business unfortunately the religious right of the party will not vote for a Mormon that's a fact, and the tea party will not support him because romney care is the blueprint for obama care which romney's republican opponents have already started to point out, and without the religious right and tea party wings of the party you have no chance to win.

Mike Huckabee was the best all around candidate however he is not gonna put his hat in the race so it doesn't matter although in my opinion he would have given obama the best fight because he was the most well liked and well rounded of the opponents.

Herman Cain has a solid pedigree as a businessman/right wing talk show host, and would be well liked by both the big business, and religious right wings of the party.  That being said he is a black man running on the republican ticket, and you cant win a primary without the southern block and like with romney the party in my opinion is just not ready to vote for a black guy or a mormon.

Tim pawlenty is not a good enough fundraiser and does not have the awareness of other more well known candidates like romney palin gingrich etc etc. However he is definitely my dark horse candidate as he has the prototypical look of a republican candidate, and if he could only find away to break threw the media's obsession with covering the palin's and romney's of the race he might do better than projected but honestly he is to vanilla of a candidate (pun intended)  and would not beat obama in a general election regardless.

Ron Paul is a solid fundraiser and is one of the few candidates that has an obama style grassroots support movement second to none in the republican race however unfortunately he is not willing to play ball with the religious right or the party when it comes to wedge/social issues in fact he is to the left of obama on issues concerning gay marriage legalization of pot etc etc etc. In an age of republicans who want to be like reagen ron paul is more like an old style republican like a barry goldwater conservative/libertarian so the powers that be within the party will simply minimize him as they have done in previous presidential elections.

Now on to the candidates who i believe could win a primary but get crushed in a general election running against obama.

Newt gengrich came to prominence as speaker during bill clinton's time as president serving as the speaker of the house and utilizing what is referred to as contract for a new america which was a list of republican fiscal/social legislative promises that he used to take back the house from the democrats.  However once in power as is typical of most political promises those who came in under this idea mostly abandoned their principles and during the george w bush presidency grew the government and debt to its largest at the time leading to the democrats taking back the house and senate in 06. The most damming revelation about gingrich was the discovery that while attacking clinton for the monica lewinsky matter he was in fact having multiple affairs himself (big suprise). He could win the primary on name recognition and fund raising abilities, but thats only if palin does not run and like palin his success as a primary candidate would not translate to general election success.    

SARAH PALIN If obama could pick one person to run against that he would absolutely be guaranteed to beat it would be palin this candidate has a history of being the laziest most undisciplined and most universally despised of any candidate since reagan beat carter and i think obama could possibly top that election beat down as alaska which is palin's own state has her poll numbers lower than obamas are in that state and if you can't even win your own state you have no chance.  Even among her party only half believe she is qualified to be president in the first place.  That being said i am sure she could win the primary because like ron paul she has a very fervent and loyal base as well as the ability to pull big money, but once in an actual general election her large as high as 65% disapproval ratings and her inability to not put her foot in her mouth will insure that obama will win big.

There are more candidates including rick santorum, gary johnson,roy moore but frankly these candidates are so far below the more popular candidates that they will likely drop out/have not committed to running so i will not waste your time.

That's a great post and I agree with all of it my feeble mind could understand. I posted not because I am well versed in politics, but rather because no candidate stuck out to me like Obama does.

Thanks homer basically all elections boil down to is money the size and diversity of your base and a message obama has all 3 in spades and all the people running against him don't have enough of those traits to beat him plus an incumbent president is always hard to beat do to experience as president that the other candidates wont have.

I really don't know who will win the primary, and I think it is a very open field at this point in time; and until the primary is decided I can't really say who will win the election.

If I was giving advice to the Republicans I would tell them to choose someone with very strong economic credentials and was socially conservative enough not to offend the religious right; but to not worry too much beyond that because voters won't care.

With the way things are going the unemployment rate on election day will at least be 8% (probably closer to 9%) with U6 unemployment around 15%, oil will be $125 to $175 per barrel, the deficit will be well over $1 Trillion and total federal debt will be around $16 Trillion. This is (essentially) an environment where everyone will be focused on the economy and Obama's weakest position will be the economy; and, as long as the Republican candidate can stay on message, Obama will lose.

The incumbent has an advantage in good economic times, not so much in poor economic times:

No president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won re-election when the unemployment rate was higher than 7.2 percent.

Many of the swing states that voted for Obama after supporting Bush are also the states that have suffered the most economically under the Obama presidency. They have already voted for Obama to "fix" their economy once and he failed to do so, and it wasn't even really a focus for Obama, and this provides excellent grounds for a (strong) Republican candidate to spread discontent with Obama leading upto the election.

I was only pointing out incumbence is a factor but not the main factor the reason obama will most likely retain irrelevantly of what unemployment is the caliber of opponent which is not always the most qualified, but the most popular candidate with the most money  which in conservative/republican circles is palin, and if that is the case obama will crush her and your unemployment number estimate wont matter.

If that link plus your short list (though he never voted against the Civil Rights act since that was before his time in office) is why he's considered batshit insance, perhaps that's why we've let our country fail so hard.