Gekko

AS it’s time for finger pointing and recriminations, I thought I would take a look at how Ray Fair’s econometric model for elections worked out this year. Fair, a professor of economics at Yale, incorporates growth, inflation, and unemployment rates, along with another variable he calls the “feel-good” factor, to come up with a model for predicting presidential elections. You might recall—though I tried to forget—that in March of this year, this model was telling us that a Republican would get about 51 per cent of the two-party vote. Guess not.

Frankly, I was so depressed by the Dole performance by the early summer that I couldn’t face looking at another run of the model. In early August, based on more recent data, Fair recalculated and came up with a narrow (51 per cent) victory for Clinton. In the event, of course, Clinton got 54.6 per cent of the two-party vote. What had changed in the world?

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AS it’s time for finger pointing and recriminations, I thought I would take a look at how Ray Fair’s econometric model for elections worked out this year. Fair, a professor of economics at Yale, incorporates growth, inflation, and unemployment rates, along with another variable he calls the “feel-good” factor, to come up with a model for predicting presidential elections. You might recall—though I tried to forget—that in March of this year, this model was telling us that a Republican would get about 51 per cent of the two-party vote. Guess not.

Frankly, I was so depressed by the Dole performance by the early summer that I couldn’t face looking at another run of the model. In early August, based on more recent data, Fair recalculated and came up with a narrow (51 per cent) victory for Clinton. In the event, of course, Clinton got 54.6 per cent of the two-party vote. What had changed in the world?