Accurate University Study Predicts Romney Win

A University of Colorado analysis of state-by-state factors leading to the Electoral College selection of every U.S. president since 1980 forecasts that the 2012 winner will be Mitt Romney.

The key is the economy, say political science professors Kenneth Bickers of CU-Boulder and Michael Berry of CU Denver. Their prediction model stresses economic data from the 50 states and the District of Columbia, including both state and national unemployment figures as well as changes in real per capita income, among other factors.

“Based on our forecasting model, it becomes clear that the president is in electoral trouble,” said Bickers, also director of the CU in DC Internship Program.

According to their analysis, President Barack Obama will win 218 votes in the Electoral College, short of the 270 he needs. And though they chiefly focus on the Electoral College, the political scientists predict Romney will win 52.9 percent of the popular vote to Obama’s 47.1 percent, when considering only the two major political parties.

“For the last eight presidential elections, this model has correctly predicted the winner,” said Berry. “The economy has seen some improvement since President Obama took office. What remains to be seen is whether voters will consider the economy in relative or absolute terms. If it’s the former, the president may receive credit for the economy’s trajectory and win a second term. In the latter case, Romney should pick up a number of states Obama won in 2008.”

Their model correctly predicted all elections since 1980, including two years when independent candidates ran strongly, 1980 and 1992. It also correctly predicted the outcome in 2000, when Al Gore received the most popular vote but George W. Bush won the election.

The study will be published this month in PS: Political Science & Politics, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Political Science Association. It will be among about a dozen election prediction models, but one of only two to focus on the Electoral College.

While many forecast models are based on the popular vote, the Electoral College model developed by Bickers and Berry is the only one of its type to include more than one state-level measure of economic conditions.

In addition to state and national unemployment rates, the authors looked at per capita income, which indicates the extent to which people have more or less disposable income. Research shows that these two factors affect the major parties differently: Voters hold Democrats more responsible for unemployment rates while Republicans are held more responsible for per capita income.

Accordingly -- and depending largely on which party is in the White House at the time -- each factor can either help or hurt the major parties disproportionately.

Their results show that “the apparent advantage of being a Democratic candidate and holding the White House disappears when the national unemployment rate hits 5.6 percent,” Berry said. The results indicate, according to Bickers, “that the incumbency advantage enjoyed by President Obama, though statistically significant, is not great enough to offset high rates of unemployment currently experienced in many of the states.”

In an examination of other factors, the authors found that none of the following had any statistically significant effect on whether a state ultimately went for a particular candidate: The location of a party’s national convention; the home state of the vice president; or the partisanship of state governors.

In 2012, “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,” Bickers said.

In Colorado, which went for Obama in 2008, the model predicts that Romney will receive 51.9 percent of the vote to Obama’s 48.1 percent, again with only the two major parties considered.

http://www.colorado.edu/news/releas...nts-romney-win-university-colorado-study-says

Kenneth Bickers, 303-492-2363
bickers@colorado.edu
Michael Berry, 303-556-6244
michael.berry@ucdenver.edu
Peter Caughey, CU-Boulder media relations, 303-492-4007
David Kelly, CU Denver media relations, 303-315-6374

 

Colorado is a second-rate school. Obama went to Harvard. Therefore Obama wins. Irrefutable logic.

 

He also went to Accidental - opps, Occidental.

 

Nice, when do we get to see the transcripts?

 

When someone puts up a million dollar reward for copies of Obama's transcripts they will miraculously show up.

I sent an email to Trump suggesting this strategy. No reply so far.

 

That is statistically very unlikely PSPR.

Obama has a pretty solid 221 right now and that is assuming that Romney will win every single toss-up state. There are a couple toss-ups that seem very unlikely for Romney. OH, NH, and MI.

Romney could still win without those states though. I just think this election will be decided by less than 10 votes.

 

What should really worry Obama right now is that he's dramatically outspent Romney and pretty much fired every bullet than he's got, only to watch the race get tighter over the past three months.

Four months ago RCP had the electoral college at 280 for Obama and 170 for Romney. The current tally is 221 for Obama and 190 for Romney. That shift happened while Romney was being outspent more than 2:1 and getting attacked pretty ruthlessly.

All of that is old news now, and Romney currently has both a fundraising advantage and cash on hand advantage. Barring horrible debate performances it is hard to see how Obama will be able to tear Romney down any harder than he already has.

 

with my grades i'd need to be black to have any shot at harvard.

http://www.oap.harvard.edu/affirmative-action/


the asian race (yellow?) gets super screwed out of top schools. if they admitted on merit half the school students would be asian. ahh, the world we live in...

 

I'm not so sure. OH is certainly a Key state and O has a legitimate lead. But most polling has been biased and the swing is going Romney's way.

The debates will tell the tail of which way the September swing goes and Obama can't use his teleprompter. I expect him to come off somewhat as a pompous ass if he gets in trouble.

Then there is the October surprise. Israel attack on Iran, Obama military action somewhere, Obama push at civil disobedience, polling intimidation, etc. I don't know what, but if Obama is behind Romney in Ocotober he is going to do something shocking.

 

When I went to UC Berkeley back in the 1980s, Asians were about 10% of California's population and almost 50% of the Berkeley students. In my science and math classes it wasn't unusual for 70% of the class to be Asian.