The “It’s the Economy, Stupid” model of presidential selection

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Let’s hope they’re right, not just from the Denver Post via The Right Sphere:

Two University of Colorado professors have devised a model to predict who will win the presidential election under current economic circumstances. The victor, they say, will be Republican Mitt Romney.

The model uses economic indicators from all 50 states to predict the race’s outcome. The forecast calls for Romney to win 320 electoral votes out of 538. It says Romney will also win virtually every state currently considered a swing state, including Colorado.

The professors who created the model, Ken Bickers from CU-Boulder and Michael Berry from CU-Denver, say it correctly forecast every winner of the electoral since 1980.

The Right Sphere adds:

What isn’t surprising is the explanation screams “It’s still the economy, stupid!” to me.

Of course it’s the economy. 42 months of 8.3% unemployment, a $16T debt, trillion dollar deficits, and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in failed ‘green energy initiatives tend to have that affect on people.

Business Insider passes on this from Barclays:

This table from Barclays says it all:

economic indicators presidential election

All of the numbers this year are closer to the average year when an incumbent is defeated than when he is re-elected. Six of the eight numbers are worse than the what is typical in the average defeat.

In my voting lifetime, I don’t think there’s been a non-“It’s still the economy, stupid!” election other than 2004. So the Nov. 6 election should be about the economy. And with barely two months to go, the economy’s not going to look much better by Nov. 6.

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