Barack Obama is set to win on Nov. 4, according to an economic model created by two University professors.
Stephen Haynes and Joe Stone have been developing voting models together for 15 years, working to uncover to the extent of the economy’s impact on election results.
How it works
| How it works The professors divided up the states into 10 categories, and, based on the population’s average income level, observed how they were voting. They used disaggregate state-level data for the U.S. from 1916 through 2008 and analyzed it using economics theories. |
“There’s a sense at the beginning of an election that things are malleable, that anything could happen, but there are fundamental forces that drive how people vote,” Stone said. “Others have looked at how the economy affects voting in presidential elections. What we wondered was if any of that information differed by income level.”
What the two found was surprising, not in its unlikeliness but that it holds true to current polls: Higher income states lean toward Obama while lower income states are more likely to vote for Senator John McCain. The reasoning behind this? Higher income voters pay the most attention to the Dow Jones stock market, number of consecutive terms a party has held office, and inflation. Lower-income voters are more concerned with job growth.
“What’s novel about these results is that they’re divided upon income level,” Haynes said. “Many things influence why a person votes the way he/she does and some reasons simply can’t be picked up in a study. This work, however, shows to what extent that person’s income level is likely to dictate and determine their vote.”
Taking into account past election data and their own findings, Haynes and Stone are predicting an Obama win by a 52 to 48 margin. With the Dow Jones fluctuating, the professors updated their conclusion from their initial Sept. 16 50/50 prediction. Their paper, “A disaggregate approach to economic models of voting in U.S. presidential elections: forecasts of the 2008 election,” details the work that was recently published in the electronic Economics Bulletin.
Recalling past elections defined by the economy, Stone mentioned 1992 and Bill Clinton’s unexpected win against incumbent George H. W. Bush. A tagline of that year, Democratic consultant James Carville’s “It’s the economy, stupid,” refers to the economic recession that helped propel Clinton into the White House. Once again in 2008, the economy finds its way back to the forefronts of voters’ minds.
Though college students may not seem to fit within the definitions of Haynes and Stone’s study, the role they play this year will carry results far into the future. Fellow University
economics professor Mark Thoma, who posted the article on his blog Economist’s View, explains, “For college students, the economy might not matter as much as the economic policies of a candidate and how those will affect the future. It’s in five, 10, 15 years when students are in need of a solid job that the economic policies of this year’s winner will matter.”
Priscilla Southwell, University political science professor, agrees with this view of how the economy should affect student voting.
“Students will be, or are already, part of the job force, so they realistically should be aware of economic issues,” Southwell said. “Taxes, unemployment, etc., also have an effect on other (student) needs such as education and health care.”
Such factors will decide the next president. With only a handful of days left until the election, both Haynes and Stone look forward to following up on their results, and, depending on who wins and by how much, finding out “what we did wrong.”
Until the final count is in, however, Stone cautions “these are statistical estimates, with lots of room for error. This isn’t a poll – we didn’t ask people’s opinions. It’s all based on the economy.”
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