Early 2012 Forecasting

My favorite site now by far for election forecasting is the NY Times 538 blog, which looks at politics through polling and statistics. They have had some good posts recently about the 2012 elections, so let's have a look. They are handicapping the Republican field in an interesting way and looking at Obama's chances given our economic situation.

First, the Republicans. The 538 blog feels that early polling can be a pretty good predictor of who will win the nomination. But in this case, they combine polling with name recognition to get an adjusted score. The theory here is that if a candidate polls well among the people who know him or her, then they have a good chance of winning. Looking back, this method fits the outcomes pretty well. So what do we see?

When the post was written, the two front-runners were Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee - who has since declined to run. Depending on the exact model, Tim Pawlenty looks good, too. After that, Palin, Trump (also not running - big surprise), Bachmann, etc don't look as good. In future posts, the blog says that Herman Cain actually looks pretty good - good support among people who know him but also little election experience - so something to keep an eye on.

Now for Obama. The blog tells us that there is no clear relationship between unemployment and presidential election outcomes. However, the overall state of the economy will be a factor. Obama's current ratings are better than the state of the economy would suggest but this tends to change as we get closer to the election.

Of course it is going to come down to whether the economy is seen as improving slightly and whether voters blame Republicans for the economy or think Obama has had enough time to make improvements and therefore is responsible. My personal feeling is that Obama has a tough case to make. He asked for one stimulus and said that would be enough. It clearly wasn't. He didn't ask for another one, even though good economic analysis clearly showed the need for it.

He probably could not have gotten it, but because he didn't ask, he can't blame the anemic growth and lack of improvement in jobs on obstructionist Republicans. Instead, it looks like fiscal stimulus failed. He went weak and he might pay for it. In some situations, it doesn't pay to be moderate.

All might not be lost, since his foreign policy looks pretty strong. Things are improving in Afghanistan and troops are coming home from Iraq. Also, Bin Laden has been killed, and he looks pretty good on Egypt and Libya.

The 538 blog (and Intrade) thinks Obama is still the favorite. I feel that the Republican field is pretty weak - Romney is a hypocrite, Pawlenty is both boring and his plans are laughable*, and the rest of the field is crazy. That being said, the economy is not looking good and I feel that if he loses because of the economy, it's Obama's own fault.

*In the original version of this post, I called Pawlenty a liar. That isn't what I meant, but was tired and left it in there. I was meaning to refer to his laughable prediction that he could get 5 percent growth over 10 years. It isn't exactly lying, but he is a fool or purposely exaggerating what he can achieve.