Does this model include Ralph Nader's current percentage of 6% --
according to the latest CNN poll? Or is Reuters blacking him out like
the American media?
Dan Scanlan
On Aug 1, 2008, at 5:17 PM, Marvin Gandall wrote:
Economic models predict clear Obama win in November
Fri Aug 1, 2008 4:54pm EDT
By Alister Bull
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It really is the economy, stupid! Economic
models
that have correctly predicted the winner of almost all post-war U.S.
presidential elections say recession fears will secure a victory for
Barack
Obama in November.
Three separate studies showed the Democratic presidential hopeful
winning
between 52 and 55 percent of the popular vote on November 4, based on
current gloomy economic estimates.
Any further darkening in the economic outlook -- many analysts think
things
will get worse between now and November -- would reinforce that
election
outcome.
"The economy is certainly not going to be a positive for the
Republicans,"
said Ray Fair, an economics professor at Yale university who built the
earliest of the models in 1978.
His model, which assumed tepid U.S. economic growth of 1.5 percent
and a 3
percent rate of inflation, predicted the Republican candidate John
McCain's
share of the vote would be 47.8 percent, handing Obama 52.2 percent.
"It is a decent margin but it is not a landslide," said Fair, who
ran the
numbers in April. "It would have been much larger if there had been a
recession in 2008."
U.S. economic activity doubled in the second quarter to a 1.9 percent
annualized pace. But previous data was revised lower to show output
contracted 0.2 percent in the final three months of last year, the
weakest
performance since 2001, and expanded only slightly at the start of
2008.
"It's the economy, stupid!" was a phrase extensively used during Bill
Clinton's successful 1992 presidential campaign against George H.W.
Bush to
remind voters that a recession occurred during Bush's administration.
Fair's model, and a version built by St. Louis-based forecasting firm
Macroeconomic Advisers, blend political factors with economics to
scientifically nail down the view that voters care first and
foremost about
their own wallets.
Indeed, opinion polls consistently find that the economy is the most
important issue for U.S. voters.
HEADWINDS
Macroeconomic Advisers' model incorporates whether the candidate is
from the
incumbent party, approval ratings and the length of time the
incumbent party
has held the White House to capture the extent voters may have tired
of
them.
Adding in its own estimates for U.S. economic growth, the
unemployment rate
and the change in energy prices, it finds that McCain will get just 45
percent of the vote.
"This model has correctly predicted the winning party 12 out of 14
times,"
Macroeconomic Advisers said.
"The weak current state of the economy, and the sharp rise in energy
prices
pose a significant headwind to the McCain campaign, if voters weigh
these
factors similarly to how they have in the past," they said in a note
to
clients.
The third work is a "Bread and Peace" model devised by Douglas
Hibbs, a
retired economics professor from the University of Goteborg in
Sweden, who
remains a senior fellow at the Center for Public Sector Research
there.
He finds that U.S. presidential elections are well-predicted by just
two
fundamental forces: the weighted average per capita growth of real
disposable income and the number of U.S. military deaths in foreign
combat.
"Average per capita real income growth probably will be only around
0.75
percent at Election Day. Moreover, cumulative U.S. military
fatalities in
Iraq will reach 4,300 or more," he said in a June update of his model.
"Given those fundamental conditions, the Bread and Peace model
predicts a
Republican two-party vote share centered on 48.2 percent."
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