If there’s one thing most political scientists and pundits can agree on for the 2012 presidential elections it’s that the race will be a close call.
But what statistical model does a professor chose from: his own research that has President Obama losing his job in November to Republican challenger Mitt Romney, or the one that has the incumbent remaining in the White House for another four years?
Lewis-Beck
This happened for Michael Lewis-Beck, professor emeritus and the F. Wendell Miller Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa, with his elections research involving the ”Jobs Model” and “Proxy Model.”
Lewis-Beck will visit U-M for two events involving the elections. A panel discussion on what to expect in the presidential election is slated for noon Thursday in the Michigan League’s Michigan Room. He also will lecture about economics and the elections at 11:30 a.m. Friday in Eldersveld Room, 5670 Haven Hall.
His visit is part of Rackham’s Centennial Alumni Lectures, involving more than 60 graduate programs hosting alumni this month. All events are free and open to the public.
Lewis-Beck received his U-M doctorate in 1973. His interests are comparative elections, election forecasting, political economy and quantitative methodology. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 articles and books, including “Economics and Elections,” “The American Voter Revisited,” “French Presidential Elections,” “Forecasting Elections,” “The French Voter” and “Applied Regression.”
In his recent forecast, co-authored with Charles Tien (Hunter College), he looked at the Jobs Model, which is based on economic growth, jobs creation, presidential popularity and incumbency. After the numbers were crunched, the research predicted Obama will likely lose the popular vote to Romney, garnering 48.2 percent.
The Proxy Model, which is based only on Consumer Confidence, suggested Obama would win the popular vote, with 52.7 percent.
“The fact that the two models differ suggests, for one thing, that the race will be very close,” he says.
In choosing between the two models, Lewis-Beck says science favors the Jobs Model based on several factors, including a large sample of elections and the negative cost of race that President Obama appears destined to pay.
The latter point, which Lewis-Beck analyzes with other researchers in another study, suggests that the President will lose at least three percentage points in the popular vote due to racial prejudice. In 2008, prejudice denied Obama a landslide victory, he says.
“Racial prejudices will not dampen, but rather exacerbate, the impact of negative economic perceptions, which makes Obama’s reelection more problematic,” Lewis-Beck says.
