Posted by: McQ on Monday, July 21, 2008 Except in this case the "Ronald Reagan" of the election would be Barack Obama. Wandering around the net and reading various articles, I stumbled across Clive Crook's examination of exactly the phenomenon Michael Barone addresses in the post below. Crook, however, has a completely different analysis based on the work of Emory University professor Alan Abramowitz and his electoral barometer. The point to be made about the good professor's electoral barometer is it that has a good track record, much better than the polls. And, as Crook succinctly sums up Abramowitz's findings about this election, "McCain is toast". Essentially the message Crook and Abramowitz give is that the polls that show the candidates in a very tight race don't really matter because they're polling the wrong things. Abramowitz's electoral barometer weighs together the approval rating of the incumbent president, the economy’s economic growth rate and whether the president’s party has controlled the White House for two terms (the “time for a change” factor). That's it. That's all. And he weights them as his research indicates these factors should be weighted. Result? It has predicted the popular vote winner 14 out of 15 times in post-war elections (it missed on Humphrey in '68 which isn't particularly surprising given the convention and the era). And this election in particular? The Electoral Barometer, a measure of national political conditions that combines these three factors, currently yields a reading of -62, which is similar to that received by Jimmy Carter prior to his decisive loss to Ronald Reagan.Yes folks, unlike the Barone analysis which finds conditions analogous to the 1976 Carter/Ford race, Abramowitz finds it much closer to the 1980 Carter/Reagan race - except in this particular case, it is Obama who is the "Reagan" of the race, not the Republican. Crook comes up with perhaps the most interesting point about this method of prediction: The unsettling thing about this way of predicting the outcome, of course, is that it does not matter whether the Democratic candidate is Mr Obama or Hillary Clinton – or Joe Biden or Dennis Kucinich, for that matter. The Republicans’ choice of Mr McCain was equally beside the point. On the merits, one candidate may be much better than another – a separate and endlessly interesting question. When it comes to predicting the result, the barometer says that as long as the incumbent is not running, it makes no difference.Tuck that in the back of your mind and compare it with the results in November. What Crook is arguing is that it really doesn't matter who is running for which party - if the three conditions are in a certain alignment, a blue dog could run and win. Or a red one. However, all that being said, there is an "X" factor in this particular race that has never been present before: Are there special factors that could throw the calculation off? No doubt, and this year one above all cries out. Mr Obama would be the first black president, a possibility the barometer has not yet had to contemplate. Who knows what difference his colour will make, whether it will help him on balance or hurt him.And, of course, we'll certainly see how that effects the outcome if at all. But think about this theory that says that the choice of candidates, their strengths and weaknesses and the way they fight their campaigns (unless they really step on it) has less to do with the outcome than the weighted alignment of three political factors and the seeming inevitability of the outcome they bring to the election. That's a bit terrifying in reality. But it does offer a reasonable, if not particularly desirable explanation for Carter and Clinton and, perhaps, Obama. |
|||||||||||||||||||
| TrackBacks | |||||||||||||||||||
| Return to Main Blog Page | |||||||||||||||||||
| Comments For This Post | |||||||||||||||||||
Previous Comments to this Post |
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||
| Add Your Comment | |||||||||||||||||||
|
|
| Vicious Capitalism |
Buy Dale's Book!
|
