Everyday, my mailbox gets inundated with reports from strategists and economists. Two years ago, most were predicting a fairly rosy scenario for the global economy - and to be fair, so was I. Today, most are predicting a dire future of negative growth and economies mired in a deep and intractable recession. The predictions of the past were mostly wrong; there is little reason to believe that today's forecasts will be much better.
Waiting until the night before the election is too easy. Making predictions in July is just plain stupid. Making predictions two weeks out is just right. So let's see what you've got.
Michael Barone wrote a piece this week where he suggested that Clinton could still win the popular vote. I took this as a challenge: how would I predict the popular vote contest, and what margin would Clinton require in order to take the popular vote lead.
Before I begin my analysis, I want to make clear that I think this is the wrong standard to apply. In my review of past close primary fights (1976 GOP, 1980 and 1984 Democratic) the standard has always been pledged delegates. This makes sense: if popular vote were the standard no state would ever choose to elect delegates by caucus. In fact, applying the popular vote standard is tantamount to disenfranchising caucus states, some of which are true swing states (Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado).
Having said this, let's start by trying to predict the popular vote outcome. The hardest part is predicting turnout. Barone used the Kerry turnout in 2004. However, if you bother to examine the turnout to date, you find this reasoning fundamentally flawed. To try and predict the turnout in the remaining 10 contests, I began by examining the turnout in the primary contests to date. This allowed me to arrive at a turnout prediction for each of the remaining states. I then used an average of recent polling (data from realclearpolitics.com and pollster.com) to predict the results.
As this table shows, Clinton would need a 14 point average margin in the remaining states to overtake Obama (9% if you include Florida).
How did I get these numbers? This table shows predicted turnout, and the results (based on the most recent polling data). Note that I could not find recent polling in Oregon. More on the flip..
Every New Year's Day, political pundits make predictions for what lies ahead in the next 12 months - and 2008 is no exception. But with the top 3 Democrats running neck-and-neck in Iowa, the only certainty is that the outcome tomorrow will be very close -- and nobody is bold enough to predict what will happen. I am ready, however, to say that Barack Obama will finish first, making him the front-runner for the presidential nomination. While various polls make the result just about anybody's guess, the Des Moines Register's final poll (which accurately predicted the outcome four years ago) has him ahead by seven points. Obama got a further boost yesterday when Dennis Kucinich formally asked his supporters to pick him as their second choice, and Joe Biden hinted that he might do the same. Pundits have long said that Obama would benefit the most from a very high turnout - and with the race so close, the field campaign so intense and the outcome so critical, voters will be coming out in droves.
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