Thread: Professors Who Predicted Right Result Since 1980 Foresee Romney Victory

Professors Who Predicted Right Result Since 1980 Foresee Romney Victory


Bob Adelmann
The New American
October 15, 2012
The forecast of the 2012 Presidential Election by Michael Berry and Kenneth Bicker, political science professors at the University of Colorado, that was released in August has been updated with more current economic information, and the result is the same: a Romney win as the economy continues to falter.

It takes 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidency, and Berry and Bicker are projecting that Governor Mitt Romney will win 330 of the 538 votes up for grabs in November, while President Obama will receive just 208, down from the 213 they predicted in August.
It’s the economy. The model developed by the two professors has an uncanny track record, correctly predicting each presidential election since 1980, often with startling accuracy. In their paper originally published in August by the American Political Science Association [APSA] along with 12 other studies, it differed in its predictive “model” by looking at two essential pieces of the economic puzzle: changes in real per capita income
— that is, net, after-tax, spendable income — and unemployment rates. But their model doesn’t just rely on the national numbers provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has been heavily criticized recently for its inexplicable drop in the unemployment rate while real jobs in the economy aren’t even reaching maintenance levels. It relies also on state-by-state analyses of those same factors, which appear to be more reliable. As the professors note:

In contrast to these other Electoral College models [published by the APSA], our model includes measures of change in real per capita income, as well as national and state unemployment figures.

Accounting for both changes in personal income and unemployment provides a more robust approximation of state economic well-being and, thus, serves to model the impact of retrospective evaluations of the incumbent party’s stewardship of the economy…

The data incorporated in our model are regularly released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) in the US Department of Commerce and the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the US Department of Labor. This gives us high-quality, predictably available data to use as the feedstock for our model.

This is how politically correct political science professors cover themselves: just in the case the national data gets a little dicey, the numbers from the states are more predictive:


The heart of our forecast centers on the third set of independent variables. We use two basic measures of economic conditions: unemployment levels and change in real income per capita. Unemployment is measured in two capacities. First is the national unemployment rate. The second is the corresponding unemployment rate in each state…

Our third measure of economic well-being taps the extent to which people have more or less real disposable income at their discretion during the current incumbent’s presidential term. The measure included in our model is the percentage change in each state in real per capita non-farm income from the fourth quarter of the prior presidential election year to the first quarter of the current election year.

The unstated but important underlying assumption by the professors is almost an iron law of politics: people will vote their pocketbooks. People are hurting, and that’s hurting Obama:

Putting these pieces together, clearly President Obama is in electoral trouble. To be sure, he enjoys some advantages. First, Obama’s successful campaign in 2008 gives him a substantial leg up. He can lose some states that he carried four years ago without losing the election. Second, a prominent second-term incumbency advantage should prove advantageous. Still, the big issue is the fragile economy. With an unemployment rate in excess of 8%, Obama is about two-and-a-half points beyond the break-even point for a Democrat running as the in-party candidate…

The states we predict President Obama will carry include a substantially reduced set than those he carried in 2008. This is supported by the fact that no states won by McCain are predicted to flip to Obama.

What is striking about our state-level economic indicator forecast is the expectation that Obama will lose almost all of the states currently considered as swing states, including North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida. Three other states that might be viewed as swing states — Michigan, New Mexico, and Nevada — are predicted to stay in Obama’s column. Our forecast is that the president will receive 208 Electoral College votes, putting him well short of the 270 needed to win reelection.

The economy is having an impact on other presidential predictions, moving the election towards Romney as well. USA Today said on Sunday that Obama’s perceived lead in Electoral College votes, 265 to 191 for Romney, as recently as two weeks ago has now dropped precipitously to just 201 to 191 currently, with 11 states considered to be “toss-ups” with 146 votes at stake there.

Scott Rasmussen noted that as of Monday, “Romney has had a slight lead or been tied on nine of the past 10 days. Before that, Obama had been ahead or tied for 16 consecutive days.” Rasmussen is still calling it a close race, but “in a close race, even a small change can have a big impact.”

Intrade, the online betting site, has also seen a precipitous drop in support for Obama, moving from an apparently invincible high approaching 80 percent to just over 60 percent as of this writing.

If the college professors are right, and voters vote their pocketbooks, and the data they are using to make their predictions are anywhere close to being accurate, Romney should win in November. As the economy continues its decline, so do Obama’s chances at reelection. Perhaps that’s why he’s looking at buying a retirement mansion in Hawaii.




http://www.prisonplanet.com/politica...y-victory.html

WND EXCLUSIVE

Secret retirement plans: Does Obama expect to lose?

Insider reveals internal polls, luxury Hawaii estate ready for January

Published: 09/19/2012 at 8:22 PM by Jerome R. CorsiEmail | Archive Jerome R. Corsi, a Harvard Ph.D., is a WND senior staff reporter. He has authored many books, including No. 1 N.Y. Times best-sellers "The Obama Nation" and "Unfit

$35 million Hawaii estate regarded as possible Obama retirement home

Are Obama insiders secretly making retirement plans for the Obamas with the expectation the president will lose his bid for re-election in November?


Very quietly, Obama’s chief financier, Penny Pritzker, has entered the Hawaii housing market to buy a retirement home for the president and his family that will be available not in 2016, but in January 2013, according to a confidential source within Pritzker’s Chicago organization

Pritzker, a wealthy Chicago business executive and heiress to the Hyatt Hotels fortune, served as national finance chairman for Obama’s 2008 campaign and is the co-chairman of his 2012 effort.
The source told WND that highly confidential internal polls conducted by the Obama campaign indicate Obama cannot win re-election, despite public surveys that show him in the lead.
“The public polls are mostly political,” the source argued. “Obama radicals want Romney supporters to feel discouraged and give up. Truth is that Romney’s winning.”

Fed up with Obama? Get your personally autographed copy of the New York Times bestseller “Fool Me Twice” exclusively from WND!
The source further told WND that Pritzker is experiencing frustration in her fundraising efforts, as wealthy donors who contributed generously to Obama in 2008 are not even returning her phone calls.
The source said Pritzker is “reminding everyone how generous to their supporters the Clintons were when they left office.”
“Everything is for sale. Ambassadorships, government grants, stimulus money – you name it,” the source told WND.

“There’s nearly three months between the Nov. 6 election and the Jan. 20 inauguration – plenty of time to hand out goodies to friends from the Oval Office.”

Aloha
Pritzker is telling potential donors that the Obamas have no intention of returning to Chicago when they leave the White House, according to the source.

She is also raising money for the Obama presidential library and museum, which also are slated for Hawaii.
Pritzker’s search for a developed property, suitable for occupancy four months from now, instead of property where a custom-designed estate might be built, is further indication that insiders believe Obama will not be re-elected.

Kevin DuJan, founder and editor of HillBuzz.org, first reported Pritzker was acting as a proxy to purchase a $35 million oceanfront estate in Kailua, the “Beverly Hills of Hawaii,” on the northeast shore of the island of Oahu.

DuJan reported billionaire Pritzker herself may contribute up to half the $35 million purchase price of the future Obama residence.

Hawaii Five-O
The property that appears to fit the description is an estate seen in a recent episode of the popular television show “Hawaii Five-O.”
As featured recently in Honolulu Magazine, the property consists of a main residence and a guest home located on 1.5 acres in an area called “Beachfront,” just before the Lanikai neighborhood in Kailua on Oahu’s Windward Coast.

Jeff Kerr of Kerr Michaels Design told Honolulu Magazine he designed the estate to replicate properties constructed in Hawaii in the early 1900s.
Ocean view from living room of possible Obama retirement home

The interior of the house is 8,419 square feet, with another 5,359 square feet of lanai area. The main house has five bedrooms, five baths, two powder rooms, a professional media room and a cabana adjacent to the pool and spa.


A panoramic tour of the world-class, beachfront property can be taken on the Internet, allowing the viewer to “walk through” the home and see its expansive views of the Pacific Ocean.
Signals Obama will leave Chicago behind

In recent months, various members of the Obama family have been indicating that the family does not intend to return to Chicago when the Obama presidency ends.

On Sept. 14, the Weekly Standard reported Michelle Obama was asked by a school child during a visit to a Virginia YMCA where the Obamas would live if President Obama loses.

The first lady said the family would figure that out later, according to the pool report.

In an interview with USA Today in May, Michelle Obama de-emphasized the importance of returning to Chicago.

“So this is home in many ways,” she said, speaking about Chicago. “I mean, we have a house that has stuff in it back in Chicago. We have friends that we love who we invite here all the time.
Inside $35 million Hawaii estate

“But the truth is,” she said, “is that if you plucked us up and put us anywhere right now, what we’d know with this change is that we’re always a family when we’re together. And in the end, that’s what really matters.”

DuJan at HillBuzz.org has been reporting that Michelle Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson, who is currently living with the Obama family in the White House, has been bragging about moving to Hawaii.

“It was fun while it lasted,” HillBuzz.org quotes Robinson as saying, “but wait until you see the place they’re buying for Michelle and Barack!”


Secret retirement plans: Does Obama expect to lose?