I have some tips for keeping track of who is most likely to win a presidential election. You all know about the prediction markets, here are a few other mental categories which I find useful. There is real evidence for them, but I can’t pretend they all command a consensus in the political science literature. I do, however, think they are true, in part because they are consistent with my underlying views of human behavior:
1. People tend to overreact to the news of the moment in predicting a winner, don’t make this mistake. Ultimately election outcomes are determined by the fundamentals of the comparison. For instance if you wish to argue that Hillary Clinton will still be the Democratic nominee, just ponder all those Latinos and blue collar workers out there. They’re not responding to most of the cues analyzed by the net roots bloggers. For any forecast you make, imagine yourself telling it to the guy sitting next to you at the West Virginia K-Mart, and see if it passes his laugh test.
2. Party disunity predicts an electoral loss; if you are a Democrat you should worry about this. It remains to be seen how deep the Republican squabbles will run. Read the work on Martin P. Wattenberg on this question, of course party disunity can either be a cause of loss or a symptom of other problems. The state of the party (just like market prices) also aggregates information.
3. The swing voters in the American citizenry don’t really trust the Democrats with foreign policy and won’t anytime soon, whether this is rational or not. Signs that the election will center around the economy help the Democrats. Signs that the economy will focus on foreign policy help the Republicans.
4. When a woman or an African-American or a former first Lady is running for President, that is a huge issue in the minds of voters, whether anyone admits it or not.
There is reasonable though not decisive academic evidence for points #2 and #3. #4 is of course a wildcard, and #1 I have never seen tested; a study might find mean-reversion in the betting markets, I do not know. Based on this list, I am still thinking that most people are underestimating the chances of a Republican President (the ascendancy of John McCain is starting to reverse this tendency), noting that #2 and #4 are working for my view, but #3 is working against it, at least at the moment.
Dear Tyler,
You know I gain from your insights and links to interesting stuff. Here’s my pet peeve. I’m trying to teach my students to be good writers as well as thinkers. I like to point them to this web site. I would point them to it with even more enthusiasm if you didn’t almost consistently make the grammatic mistake of using commas when colons or semi-colons are required. Commas DO NOT separate clauses. Check out your second sentence of your first paragraph and the first sentence of your first bullet.
Best,
David
With all due respect, it seems that your Hilary-Electable post falls into the same trap of Mistake #1.
josh and David,
I noticed the comma problem too.
What is noteworthy about David Henderson’s point is that, instead of being merely a stylistic quibble, he is actually right that Tyler’s comma usage violates the rules of English grammar — not French, though, I believe.
In point 1 appears:
“For instance if you wish to argue that Hillary Clinton will still be the Democratic nominee, just ponder all those Latinos and blue collar workers out there.”
I assume you give those votes to Edwards rather than Obama or Kucinic.
As to latinos, there is great tension in various states between the latino community and the black community which militates against a large percentage of latinos going for Obama. On the other hand, I think latinos in general are less populist than Edwards which may count against voting at all or voting for Clinton.
As to blue collar workers, I don’t think the majority of them who vote Democrat are ready for a black president. They are likely to eat up Edwards’s populist drivel.
The Republicans seem far more disunified than the Democrats. The Dem candidates seem to be putting forward the same program, with just different faces. All the Republican candidates seem to upset at least one important segment of the Republican coalition (except Thompson, who is just lazy).
“The Republicans seem far more disunified than the Democrats. ”
That’s true in terms of policy and substance, as you note.
However, game theory suggests that having multiple contenders can actually be less damaging than having just two.
Attacking an opponent is beneficial in a 2 person race even if it hurts your own favorability ratings, as long as it hurts your opponent more. In contrast, when their are many opponents, attacking one of them (at your own expense) is likely to be a losing strategy.
Thus, if the Democratic race boils down to 2 candidates while 3 or more fight it out in the GOP, game theory would predict more negative and personal attacks between the Democratic candidates.
Of course, one or both may choose not to pursue this for some reason, but that’s how the incentives would direct them. In turn, the winner would likely be more wounded going into the general election, even if there were no serious intra-party policy differences.
#1 – I’d be surprised if this wasn’t the case, given that overrating recent information it’s a classic mistake. Particularly so with the media, looking for things that are new and interesting. As a corollary, does anyone think the effects of recent ‘real world’ (as opposed to campaign) events are more important when candidates are not currently in office?
#2 – From a British perspective where divided Conservative party has been in trouble for a decade and a half, I instinctively agree with this. I often think the US caucuses are risky because of the damage they can do to candidates and parties – especially negative campaigning. However I do wonder if a disunited party is less of a problem if you follow the Clinton (1) strategy of deliberately distancing yourself from your party.
#3 & #4 I can’t comment on so much, but #4 reminds me of a daily show report that black votes are actually only worth 2/3 of a white one, because every three black votes scares off one white voter…
ps. I found myself changing a separating comma to a semi-colon in an email I wrote just this morning.
#3 has been true for a while, but it hasn’t always been true. It remains to be seen if the Bush disaster was enough to get movement on this point. I believe that is at least part of the reason for optimism among Dems.
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