Time for a Change? Donald Trump Will Test a Forecasting Model
15th August 2016
The Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz highlights this factor in his “time for a change” forecasting model of presidential election outcomes. “When a party has held the White House for two or more terms,” he writes, “voters will be more likely to feel that it is time to give the opposing party an opportunity to govern than when a party has held the White House for only one term.”
Mr. Abramowitz finds that the party in power performs approximately five percentage points worse in the popular vote after two or more terms in office in a model that controls for the current president’s approval rating and the state of the economy. The sample size of post-World War II elections is very small, but Mr. Abramowitz’s model dominates the field in its forecasting accuracy.Both Mr. Abramowitz’s model and a similar one from the political scientists John Sides, Michael Tesler and Lynn Vavreck (an Upshot contributor) would characterize Republicans as the favorite in this election with an estimated probability of winning of approximately 60 percent. As Mr. Sides notes, the G.O.P. edge is due in large part “to the White House’s greater tendency to change hands the longer the incumbent party has been there.”
But of course Trump is the new Hitler so obviously this model won’t work this time and we’re all safe. Phew!