Now while I am a long way off from being ready to begin popping any champagne bottles, there is a University of Colorado study that says that an updated election forecasting model, still points to a Romney win. But we need to keep in mind here that there are still two more debates, and, as we have seen with the recent jobs report, Barry will use every trick at his disposal in his attempt to hoodwink the American people just long enough to eek out a win on November 6. And of course, he'll be getting lots of help from what is an army of propagandists disguised as journalists who are now at their posts out there in the state-controlled media. But having said all that, there has been an update to an election forecasting model originally announced by two University of Colorado professors back in August. And that model continues to project that Mitt Romney will win the 2012 presidential election. Now according to their updated analysis, Romney is projected to receive 330 of the total 538 Electoral College votes. Our "Dear Beloved Leader", Barry "Almighty" is expected to receive 208 votes -- down five votes from their initial prediction -- and far short of the 270 needed to win.
The new forecast by political science professors Kenneth Bickers of CU-Boulder and Michael Berry of CU Denver is based on more recent economic data than was their original Aug. 22 prediction. The model itself did not change. "We continue to show that the economic conditions favor Romney even though many polls show the president in the lead," Bickers said. "Other published models point to the same result, but they looked at the national popular vote, while we stress state-level economic data." While many election forecast models are based on the popular vote, the model developed by Bickers and Berry is based on the Electoral College and is the only one of its type to include more than one state-level measure of economic conditions. They included economic data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Their original prediction model was one of 13 published in August in PS: Political Science & Politics, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Political Science Association. The journal has published collections of presidential election models every four years since 1996, but this year the models showed the widest split in outcomes, Berry said. Five predicted a Barry win, five forecast a Romney win, and three rated the 2012 race as a toss-up.
The Bickers and Berry model includes both state and national unemployment figures as well as changes in real per capita income, among other factors. The new analysis includes unemployment rates from August rather than May, and changes in per capita income from the end of June rather than March. It is the last update they will release before the election. Of the 13 battleground states identified in the model, the only one to change in the update was New Mexico -- now seen as a narrow victory for Romney. The model foresees Romney carrying New Mexico, North Carolina, Virginia, Iowa, New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida. Obama is predicted to win Michigan and Nevada. In Colorado, which Obama won in 2008, the model predicts that Romney will receive 53.3 percent of the vote to Obama’s 46.7 percent, with only the two major parties considered. While national polls continue to show the president in the lead, "the president seems to be reaching a ceiling at or below 50 percent in many of these states," Bickers said. "Polls typically tighten up in October as people start paying attention and there are fewer undecided voters." The state-by-state economic data used in their model have been available since 1980.
When these data were applied retroactively to each election year, the model correctly classifies all presidential election winners, including the two years when independent candidates ran strongly: 1980 and 1992. It also correctly estimates the outcome in 2000, when Al Gore won the popular vote but George W. Bush won the election through the Electoral College. In addition to state and national unemployment rates, the authors analyzed changes in personal income from the time of the prior presidential election. Research shows that these two factors affect the major parties differently: Voters hold Democrats more responsible for unemployment rates, while Republicans are held more responsible for fluctuations in personal income. Accordingly -- and depending largely on which party is in the White House at the time -- each factor can either help or hurt the major parties disproportionately. In an examination of other factors, the authors found that none of the following had a statistically significant effect on whether a state ultimately went for a particular candidate: The location of a party’s national convention, the home state of the vice president or the partisanship of state governors.
The authors also provided some caveats. Their model had an average error rate of five states and 28 Electoral College votes. Factors they said may affect their prediction include the timeframe of the economic data used in the study and that states very close to a 50-50 split may fall in an unexpected direction due to factors not included in the model. "As scholars and pundits well know, each election has unique elements that could lead one or more states to behave in ways in a particular election that the model is unable to correctly predict," they wrote. Now while I pray every single day that these guys are right, I don't suppose there is anything that makes the prediction of these two guys any more accurate than those made by anyone else. And the reason I hope these guys are is because, I gotta tell ya, I just don't think this country can survive another four years of this guy. And anyone who thinks it can, is either a complete moron or cares more about that monthly check than they do the future of their children. If Barry does win, I think it very safe to say that we're done. We will have made our bed and will then have to lie in it. And it is not going to be very comfortable. I just don't think enough people fully realize what’s at stake here.
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