I think Baraq can come close to that. With a 3rd party candidate funded by Sorosbucks and adored by the MSM (Crist?) he's got a shot at a Clintonian plurality win in 2012.
And Carter likely would have done a few pts better without Anderson in the race. Also he was on track to do better before the debate in the last week and the final failure oto release the hostages finished him off.
It will very difficult for Obama to drop much below 45% as long as he has huge support among blacks, and to a lesser degree hispanics. His #s among whites are close to as low as they can get, as bad as Bush’s were in his 2nd term.
The difference is Obama has 90% support among blacks where Bush had close to 0. This gives Obama and extra 10 pts or so on top of where Bush would be. A slightly lesser margin among hispanics.
Basically, Obama’s race-based support among blacks and hispanics gives him at least a 12 pt bump from where any other white President would be in a similar situation. But no one will ever bring it up. You can bet that if Bush had 90% support among whites propping him up the media would be all over it.
I also think his staunch support by the media is worth hat least 3-5 pts, probably more. If the media went after him and his administration like they did Bush(or even Clinton for that matter)he’d be at least a few points lower.
But as long blacks and hispanics keep supporting him(and if they still do now there’s no reason to think they’re going to stop), he won’t sink any lower than the low 40s, barring some major event like a market crash or some other huge scandal/blunder/natl security failure, etc... The #s simply aren’t there.