Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-rvxtl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-18T00:07:52.829Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Economic Expectations and Election Outcomes: The Presidency and theHouse in 2012

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2012

Brad Lockerbie
Brad Lockerbie*
Affiliation:
East Carolina University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Do our models of political behavior bear any resemblance to reality? Forecastingelections is one opportunity to assess whether our models of voting behavior areaccurate. Over the past few decades, political scientists have been willing to putthemselves out there to forecast elections. Explaining a past event allows us theability to retrofit our models before we make them available to the broadercommunity. In short, forecasting elections provides us the opportunity to develophumility. The forecasting community has done a reasonable job over the past fewelections. Aside from 2000, forecasters have been largely accurate. Even in 2000,the forecasting community can claim a modest victory. The community was right aboutthe popular vote winner; it just happened that the popular vote winner lost theelection that counts—the Electoral College.

Type
Symposium: Forecasting the 2012 American National Elections
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , October 2012 , pp. 644 - 647
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2012 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Abramowitz, Alan I. 2000. “Bill and Al's Excellent Adventure: Forecasting the 1996 Presidential Election.” In Before the Vote: Forecasting American National Elections, ed. Campbell, James E. and Garand, James C.. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Alford, John R., and Hibbing, John R.. 1981. “Increased Incumbency Advantage in the House.” Journal of Politics 43: 1042–61.Google Scholar
Campbell, James E., and Garand, James C.. 2000. Before the Vote: Forecasting American National Elections. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Collie, Melissa P. 1981. “Incumbency, Electoral Safety, and Turnover in the House of Representatives, 1952–1976.” American Political Science Review 75: 119–31.Google Scholar
Erikson, Robert S. 1972. “Malapportionment, Gerrymandering, and Party Fortunes in Congressional Elections.” American Political Science Review 66: 1234–45.Google Scholar
Ferejohn, John A. 1977. “On the Decline of Competition in Congressional Elections.” American Political Science Review 71: 166–76.Google Scholar
Fiorina, Morris P. 1977. Congress: Keystone of the Washington Establishment. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Fiorina, Morris P. 1981. Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Key, V. O. 1966. The Responsible Electorate. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kramer, Gerald H. 1983. “The Ecological Fallacy Revisited: Aggregate- versus Individual-Level Findings on Economics and Elections and Sociotropic Voting.” American Political Science Review 75: 436–47.Google Scholar
Lewis-Beck, Michael S. 1988. Economics and Elections: The Major Western Democracies. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Lockerbie, Brad. 1992. “Prospective Voting in Presidential Elections.” American Politics Quarterly 20: 308–25.Google Scholar
Lockerbie, Brad. 2008. Do Voters Look to the Future: Economics and Elections. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Mueller, John E. 1973. War, Presidents and Public Opinion. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar