Hillary Clinton is making her case to the superdelegates claiming that she would be "a stronger candidate," and cites recent poll in which McCain has a narrow lead over Obama.
The problem with such horserace polls, however, is that they are not very accurate predictors of the actual election results. Polls in the spring of 1988 showed Michael Dukakis with a comfortable lead over George H.W. Bush and polls in June of 1992 showed Bill Clinton running third behind both Bush and H. Ross Perot. So recent polls showing a close race between McCain and Obama may not tell us much about what to expect in November.
Instead of using polls, political scientists rely on measures of the national political climate because it can be measured long before the election and it has a powerful influence on the eventual results. As we wrote in several occasions, in 2008 all forecasts point to the Democrats.
Three indicators of the national political climate have accurately predicted the outcomes of presidential elections since the end of World War II: the incumbent president's approval rating at mid-year, the growth rate of the economy during the second quarter of the election year, and the length of time the president's party has held the White House.
The higher the president's approval rating and the stronger the growth rate of the economy, the more likely it is that the president's party will be victorious. However, if the president's party has controlled the White House for two terms or longer it is less likely to be successful. Time-for-change sentiment seems to increase after eight years regardless of the president's popularity or the state of the economy.
These three factors can be combined to produce an Electoral Barometer score that measures the overall national political climate. The formula for computing this score is simply the president's net approval rating (approval minus disapproval) in the Gallup Poll plus five times the annual growth rate of real GDP minus 25 if the president's party has held the White House for two terms or longer.
The problem with such horserace polls, however, is that they are not very accurate predictors of the actual election results. Polls in the spring of 1988 showed Michael Dukakis with a comfortable lead over George H.W. Bush and polls in June of 1992 showed Bill Clinton running third behind both Bush and H. Ross Perot. So recent polls showing a close race between McCain and Obama may not tell us much about what to expect in November.
Instead of using polls, political scientists rely on measures of the national political climate because it can be measured long before the election and it has a powerful influence on the eventual results. As we wrote in several occasions, in 2008 all forecasts point to the Democrats.
Three indicators of the national political climate have accurately predicted the outcomes of presidential elections since the end of World War II: the incumbent president's approval rating at mid-year, the growth rate of the economy during the second quarter of the election year, and the length of time the president's party has held the White House.
The higher the president's approval rating and the stronger the growth rate of the economy, the more likely it is that the president's party will be victorious. However, if the president's party has controlled the White House for two terms or longer it is less likely to be successful. Time-for-change sentiment seems to increase after eight years regardless of the president's popularity or the state of the economy.
These three factors can be combined to produce an Electoral Barometer score that measures the overall national political climate. The formula for computing this score is simply the president's net approval rating (approval minus disapproval) in the Gallup Poll plus five times the annual growth rate of real GDP minus 25 if the president's party has held the White House for two terms or longer.
This would give a 2008 castastrophic forecast for the Republican party, based on President Bush's net approval rating in the most recent Gallup Poll (-39), the annual growth rate of the economy during the first quarter of 2008 (+0.6 percent), and the fact that the Republican Party has controlled the White House for the past eight years. The current Electoral Barometer reading would be a dismal -63.
This number translates into a decisive defeat for the Republican presidential candidate. The only election since World War II with a score in this range was 1980. In that election, a combination of economic troubles and personal unpopularity provoked the defeat of Jimmy Carter, the worst one for an incumbent president since Herbert Hoover in 1932. The second lowest score, -50, occurred in 1952. That was the last election in which neither the incumbent president, Democrat Harry Truman, nor the incumbent vice-president appeared on the ballot. Nevertheless, the candidate trying to succeed Truman, Democrat Adlai Stevenson, lost in a landslide to general Eisenhower.
It is possible that factors like deep-seated streams of racism against Barack Obama, and the split in the Democratic camp, would work at the margins, limiting the dimensions of the Republican Waterloo. The final result, however, should not be in doubt.
