New Yale Economic Model Predicts Narrow Romney Victory

Wall Street Journal ^ | Justin Lahart

[StopDemocratsDotCom]

An economic model aimed at predicting presidential elections suggests that Gov. Mitt Romney has a narrowly better chance than President Barack Obama of carrying the race. Yale University economist Ray Fair has analyzed economic data from every presidential election since 1916. The model he developed has, after the fact, named the winners of all but two races — the 1960 election, when Richard Nixon lost to John Kennedy, and the 1992 election, when George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton. With Friday’s gross domestic product report, the three economic variables that Mr. Fair has found are best at predicting elections are now in hand. They are: –The per capita growth rate of gross domestic product in the three quarters before the elections. (Voters seem to remember recent economic history more than they do over the span of the quarter). For the first three quarters of this year, GDP per capita grew at a 1.01% annual rate. –Inflation over the course of the entire presidential term, as measured by the GDP price index. The annual rate of inflation by this measure was 1.58%. –The number of quarters during the presidential term that GDP per capita growth exceeded 3.2%. There has been only one such “good news” quarter — the fourth quarter of last year, when GDP per capita grew 3.3%. Plug those figures into Mr. Fair’s model and it shows that President Obama will receive 49% of the two-party vote. The good news for the president is that there’s enough wiggle room in the model that he could come out on top — actual vote shares are within about 2.5 percentage points of what the model predicts. Moreover several polling models currently suggest the Mr. Obama will narrowly capture the popular vote.

[Names Ash Housewares]

I was wondering if he would update in time for the election. Bottomline Obama worse then his last update.

[Steely Tom]

I've run the Yale model's results through my special Steely Tom model, which mathematically compensates for the expected degree of wishful thinking and reality distortion that liberals build into everything they do... the STM indicates that Romney will stomp the living crappola out of Obama in a landslide of near-historic proportions.

By the way, it took my model about 500 microseconds to come up with this result.

[Morris70]

What’s the deviation go idalogue ?
People nowadays vote party no matter what.
only about %14 are undecideds .

[stanne]

Genius

[Sarah Barracuda]

All of these people predicting a “Narrow” Romney win, please, its not going to be “Narrow” Romney will win by a significant margin..the media when they have to declare Romney the winner will have this shocked look on their face like “WTF just happened”

[RitaOK]

Great news! I just feel the Marxist flop sweat by now! Scary time as this better beat the fraud being mounted against us. Pray God.

[Balding_Eagle]

“An update to an election forecasting model announced by two University of Colorado professors in August continues to project that Mitt Romney will win the 2012 presidential election.”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2941706/posts#1

[ProtectOurFreedom]

...the annual rate of inflation by this measure was 1.58%

Ha! It's running 10% to 20% per year now. Where does he pluck this number from?

[Nuc 1.1]

Nixon won that election. Vote fraud in Chicago gave the election to Kennedy. Nixon did not challenge the results b/c of what it would do to the country.

[LS]

JFK may not have won-—it might have Ben stolen-— and in 1992
Perot completely messed up any normal model.

[LS]

JFK may not have won-—it might have been stolen-— and in 1992
Perot completely messed up any normal model.

[carlo3b]

Wait Steely, it appears that you haven't calcluated the staggering drop in the unemployment numbers to an all time low of 1% in Sept-Oct, bringing the average to a new low of 4%..

Ops.. sorry that report doesn't come out until the THURSDAY BEFORE THE ELECTION! .. :)

[SampleMan]

I’m throwing a BS flag.

What kind of economic “model” would be predicting anything except a landslide for the challenger? Seriously, they are just trying to save their model from looking totally stupid.

I wonder how many adjustment points they had to spot Obama to get Romney into the “just a squeaker” territory.

[carlo3b]

JFK may not have won-—it might have been stolen-

LOLOLOLOOLLROTFLOLOLOLOLLLLHAHAGA.. Oh, thats rude... LOLOLOLOLOLLLHAJHHAH...sorry.. couldn't help it.. :).

[Know et al]

I've run the Yale model's results through my special Steely Tom model, which mathematically compensates for the expected degree of wishful thinking and reality distortion that liberals build into everything they do... the STM indicates that Romney will stomp the living crappola out of Obama in a landslide of near-historic proportions.

Thanks ST. I love scientific explanations. That's good enough for me. LOL

[GOPJ]

...which mathematically compensates for the expected degree of wishful thinking and reality distortion that liberals build into everything they do... the STM indicates that Romney will stomp the living crappola out of Obama in a landslide of near-historic proportions.

LOL = You had me going there for a second ...

[Tamzee]

Bill Clinton won in 1992 because of third-party politics... exactly what the third party lunatics are trying to accomplish to keep Obama in office this time. All they need to do is chisel away 1-2% in a few swing states and all the economic models go out the window.

... and Obama is a marxist king of the world for 4 years with no restraints.