Make your predictions here. Incumbency helps Obama. The soft economy hurts him. These effects can be measured: Ray Fair has done such an exercise. By the summer of 2013, the final GDP figures will be in and we’ll know how well a generic incumbent would do under such circumstances. As of July 2012 preliminary estimates of the economy suggest that Obama would get 49.5% of the popular vote. If he does better than the final estimate, we can say something about the relative quality of the two campaigns, candidates and the popularity of their respective policies. Of course that’s a pretty big collection of factors.
As of tonight Nate Silver at 538 predicts that Obama will win 51.1% of the popular vote. Subtracting, we see that Obama currently beats the fundamentals by 1.6 percentage points. That’s pretty close to how he did against McCain/Palin in 2008 - 1.5 percentage points.
Allowing for some reversion to the mean, I’ll give Obama 1.1 points above the fundamentals. That’s respectable, but hardly spectacular given the weakness of his opponents. It doesn’t come close to the 3.4 point trouncing of Nixon over McGovern or GHW Bush over Dukkakis. Clinton’s adjusted score against Dole was 4.3 points, which set new records. Of course, the Romney campaign could also completely unravel, judging from the behavior of the Republican establishment. Ok, make it 1.4 points.
Here’s the data. The 3rd column gives the conventional spread, while the last column adjusts for the economy.
year Winner Dem vs Repub Dem vs Model
1916 Wilson 1.7 1.9
1920 Harding -13.9 -3.0
1924 Coolidge -8.2 -0.3
1928 Hoover -8.8 -1.7
1932 FDR 9.2 -2.1
1936 FDR 12.5 -1.5
1940 FDR 5 -0.8
1944 FDR 3.8 1.5
1948 Truman 2.4 1.4
1952 Eisenhower -5.4 -0.6
1956 Eisenhower -7.8 -1.4
1960 Kennedy 0.1 1.0
1964 Johnson 11.3 0.1
1968 Nixon -0.4 -0.5
1972 Nixon -11.8 -3.4
1976 Carter 1.1 0.6
1980 Reagan -5.3 -1.0
1984 Reagan -9.2 2.9
1988 GHWBush -3.9 -3.4
1992 Clinton 3.5 4.3
1996 Clinton 4.7 1.8
2000 GWBush 0.3 0.6
2004 GWBush -1.2 3.4
2008 Obama 3.4 1.5
Mean Absolute: 5.62 1.70
Median Absolute: 4.85 1.50
Standard Deviation: 7.07 2.08
Obama beat McCain/Palin by a fairly typical margin.
The model weights election year GDP growth very strongly. But maybe the level of unemployment will matter more. If that’s the case, it would favor Romney. Also, Super-pac money and voter suppression, whatever their effects, are not part of the historic record and would also tend to favor Romney. Nate Silver tends to be sanguine about the effects of voter suppression though- they are measurable but not enormous. Mitt’s a strong debater though: he could narrow the gap.