Comments on: Obama, Huckabee, Romney in Dead Heat for 2012 – Or Maybe Not http://sites.middlebury.edu/presidentialpower/2011/04/01/obama-huckabee-romney-in-dead-heat-for-2012-or-maybe-not/ A NonPartisan Analysis of Presidential Politics Wed, 21 Nov 2012 15:45:52 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Matthew Dickinson http://sites.middlebury.edu/presidentialpower/2011/04/01/obama-huckabee-romney-in-dead-heat-for-2012-or-maybe-not/comment-page-1/#comment-19002 Matthew Dickinson Fri, 01 Apr 2011 19:11:18 +0000 http://sites.middlebury.edu/presidentialpower/?p=9061#comment-19002 Hi Tarsi – In addition to some measure of economic growth, election forecasters often include some measure for the distribution of partisanship (Republican, Democrat or independent) in the electorate and an indicator for how long the incumbent president’s party has held the White House. This might be what you have in mind. But there are variations on this – some models include a measure of presidential approval as well.

]]> By: Tarsi http://sites.middlebury.edu/presidentialpower/2011/04/01/obama-huckabee-romney-in-dead-heat-for-2012-or-maybe-not/comment-page-1/#comment-19001 Tarsi Fri, 01 Apr 2011 17:35:25 +0000 http://sites.middlebury.edu/presidentialpower/?p=9061#comment-19001 Polling data is baaccck!! I’ve been skimming over these and remembering with (significant) glee the discussions of polling results and the numerous ways in which they are misleading, if Obama hovers around 47% approval give or take as a general job approval rating – how does that compare in significance to when he is directly polled against against a hypothetical Republican challenger?

Elsewhere in the prediction universe (it wasn’t a poll as far as I recall) someone was basically saying if “three things” happen/don’t happen before September 2012, Obama is in good shape for re-election. They included no major economic back-tracking, generally positive international engagement, and one other….which made me think back to the three predictors of a presidential (general election) outcome that we talked about in PSCI101. One was the rate of economic growth in the 3/4 quarter yes? guilty look – what were the other two?

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