Metrics
8 File views/ downloads
257 Record Views
Conference paper
Fiscal policy as an explanatory and forecasting factor in American presidential elections
American Political Science Association Conference (Philadelphia, PA, 2006)
2006
Abstract
Alone among presidential elections models, the fiscal model includes a measure of federal spending policy as one of its predictor variables. The model, the first version of which was published more than two decades ago (Cuzán and Heggen 1984), made its debut as a tool of real time (i.e., ex ante) forecasting in 2004, its August forecast coming within 0.1% of the actual share of the two-party vote going to the incumbents. That was one of the best showings that year (Campbell, 2005; Cuzán and Bundrick 2004, 2005).
In this paper we do three things. First, we present a theoretical justification for the fiscal model and address three common objections to the reasoning behind it. To avoid interrupting the presentation, however, we place the objections and our replies in Appendix I. Second, we compare the structure and performance of the fiscal model with those of three better known presidential elections forecasting models, to wit: Abramowitz’s time-for-change model, Campbell’s trial-heat model, and Fair’s presidential vote equation. We show that the fiscal model performs as well or better than those three and, furthermore, that fiscal policy appears to be an implicit factor in both Abramowitz’s and Campbell’s models. Finally, we conclude with a tentative forecast of the Republican share of the two-party vote in the next presidential election.
Details
- Title
- Fiscal policy as an explanatory and forecasting factor in American presidential elections
- Resource Type
- Conference paper
- Conference
- American Political Science Association Conference (Philadelphia, PA, 2006)
- Format
- 1 file
- Copyright
- Permission granted to the University of West Florida Libraries by the author to digitize and/or display this information for non-profit research and educational purposes. Any reuse of this item in excess of fair use or other copyright exemptions requires the permission of the copyright holder.
- Identifiers
- 99380090355206600
- Academic Unit
- Reubin O'D. Askew Department of Government ; College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities
- Language
- English