Incumbency, National Conditions, and the 2012 PresidentialElection

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Although research at other levels of elected office has shown that incumbency has apowerful, additive effect on votes (Hogan 2004; Jacobson 2009; Krebs 1998), these effects largely have been ignoredin presidential forecasting models (but see Abramowitz 2008). Instead, some scholars speculate about the conditionaleffects of incumbency; specifically, the decreased applicability of theretrospective model when the president is not on the ticket leaving thesomewhat-harder-to-blame-or-reward vice president to represent the administration.The difficult-to-predict 2000 presidential election generated some discussion onthis point. Although I and others argued (Campbell 2001; Holbrook 2001;Wlezien 2001) that part of the explanationfor the forecasting error in 2000 lies with Al Gore's failure to embrace the BillClinton-Al Gore record and reinforce retrospective voting, others indicate that theretrospective cue may generally be weaker when the president is not on the ticket(Campbell 2001; Lewis-Beck and Tien 2001; Nadeau and Lewis-Beck 2001). Indeed, Campbell (2001; 2008) arguesin favor of only giving half weight to presidential performance variables when thevice president, rather than president, is representing the incumbent administration.The logic here is simple: absent the president on the ticket, it is more difficultto frame the election as a referendum, leading voters to attach less weight toincumbency-oriented considerations. This is not to say that factors such aspresidential approval and economic performance are unimportant when incumbents donot run, only that these factors might matter less.