JUSIPER

 
Political scientists: The election is over

Posted by Sini

Allan Lichtman and Alan Abramowitz's models lead them to the same conclusion.

Not once since 1860 has the party in control of the White House been able to survive if six of Lichtman's 13 keys have gone against it. Right now, seven are against McCain's party, with two others leaning against it.

Those keys measure incumbency, the state of the economy, social unrest, foreign developments such as war, the charisma of the candidates, interparty contests, scandals and third-party challenges.

Lichtman said the two keys still uncertain involve whether the economy falls into recession during the year and whether Obama can be fairly called a particularly charismatic challenger.

Those two would make it nine of the 13 keys against McCain. Lichtman does call the 2008 election “the sternest test” of his keys because the always-volatile issue of race has been injected with Obama, who will be the first black presidential nominee from a major political party. Even with that added factor, Lichtman stands by his contention that the campaign itself is unimportant, a conclusion vigorously challenged by politicians.

The unbroken correlation of his formula to who wins the presidency led to an invitation to the Reagan White House in 1982. It also was influential in Bill Clinton's 1991 decision to run for president even though incumbent President George H.W. Bush's popularity was at a record 91 percent and bigger-name Democrats, such as Mario Cuomo, were shying from what almost everybody but Lichtman saw as an unwinnable challenge.

The news for Obama is similarly positive from another political scientist who specializes in studying the patterns of presidential elections. Alan Abramowitz, a professor at Emory University, has three factors that he looks at: the incumbent's approval rating midyear, economic growth in the second quarter of the election year and the length of time a party has been in the White House.

This gives Abramowitz what he calls the “Electoral Barometer,” which can range from minus 100 to plus 100. Since World War II, one candidate with a plus barometer has lost. That was Democratic Vice President Hubert Humphrey in 1968, where the rating for the incumbent party was barely above zero. Republican Richard Nixon narrowly defeated Humphrey.

McCain's current barometer rating is what Abramowitz calls a “dismal” minus 63, the second-worst rating since World War II and eclipsed only by Jimmy Carter in 1980.

9:19 AM |