By: Onica Matsika
The ability to predict a presidential election is a skill most coveted by political scientists. To the public eye, forecasting who will win the next election falls under the category of scam artist voodoo magic of the Miss. Cleo variety. However, predictions can be made and statistical models are incredibly popular in making these predictions. The politics/baseball connection has already been made (most recently, here). But this girl knows nothing about baseball, so in figuring out who will win the 2012 presidential election, I’m turning to Alan Abramowitz.
A Georgia favorite, Abramowitz has been at this election prediction thing for quite some time now. His “Time for Change” model is reliable, early, and the few factors in prediction made it easy to comprehend. James Carville stressed to us during the Clinton campaign that “it’s the economy, stupid” and the phrase has gained more notoriety than the man himself. While it is definitely the economy, the economy is not the only variable in a presidential win.
There are other factors of incumbency, parties, issues, nature of the times and candidates that must be considered. In 2012, Obama will be a first term incumbent seeking reelection…and first term incumbents usually win. Of the past ten elections, first term incumbents have won nine of those elections (1980 was not a good year for Jimmy Carter). I should note that by incumbent, I mean the party, not the person. The longer you or your party are in power, the tougher it is to get re-elected, even if everything is going well. In 1992, the Democrats thought popular George H.W. Bush was going to be a tough fight. And Bush was very popular…until the Gulf War happened. Bill Clinton basically took one for the team in running, intending for 1992 to be a practice and 1996 to be the time to really take the cake. Bush would go on to lose the election with 37% of the vote, the lowest percentage of an incumbent since Taft in1912.
Now we look to candidates. To be frank, the current 2012 Republican candidate options make Obama look like an adult. Of the twelve candidates we have a candidate for the most boring person on earth, a birther, a man outraged about the high levels of rent, a third time presidential candidate, a man whose staff all recently quit, “the most intellectually dishonest human being in the history of politics”, and a woman whose brain is “a raging electrical storm of divine visions and paranoid delusions.” A recent Bloomberg News Poll revealed that 66% of those polled believe that the nation is on the wrong track, 51% believe nothing is really happening with the economy but 40% believe President Obama has a better economic plan for the future compared to the 37% who think that Republicans have a better plan.
The answer to “Who is the GOP front runner?” seems to change from person to person and day to day as more candidates step into the ring. Given Obama’s incumbency, the current field of candidates and assuming his current approval ratings remain constant for the next 16 months, I’m predicting the re-election of Barack Obama in 2012.
