Predictions for Election 2012
I haven't posted here since Christmas last year? A shame. I'll have to do something about that. Well, with the election mere hours away, and Dixville Notch already reporting its outcome, there's no time to spare. Without further ado, here are my predictions for the election to come. Maybe if I do a good job here, I can get to be this year's Nate Silver. Here's hoping.
1) People who predicted a Romney/Obama win will gloat over those who predicted an Obama/Romney win, deriding them as partisans, and contend that it should have been obvious that Romney/Obama would win all along.
2) Despite the fact that the election will probably be decided by a very tiny margin, the victors will claim that this outcome is a sign that The American People have turned a corner, decisively rejecting, once and for all, the failed, bankrupt ideology of the Other Party.
3) If Romney wins, Democrats will cry foul, alleging that his victory was only made possible because of voter suppression. Cooler heads will claim their loss was due to a poor candidate on their side, and a failure to get their message out. Some will claim the failure was Obama's, who was insufficiently liberal.
4) If Obama wins, Republicans will cry foul, alleging that his victory was only made possible because of voter fraud. Cooler heads will claim their loss was due to a poor candidate on their side, and a failure to get their message out. Some will claim the failure was Romney's, who was insufficiently conservative.
5) The victor will give a speech thanking the American people for their trust, thanking his opponent for a spirited campaign, and will pledge to work with the other party for the common good. (Any actual cooperation is unlikely to happen.) The loser will thank his supporters for all their hard work, but urge conciliation and cooperation with the victor. (Any actual cooperation is unlikely to happen.) Both the winner and loser will describe the other as a fine family man, an honest, decent fellow, and a patriot, despite all the nasty things they were saying about each other only 24 hours previously.
6) It would not be a surprise if the victor is unknown by the time people wake up Wednesday morning. If Pennsylvania, Ohio, or Wisconsin go for Romney, Romney will almost certainly win the election. If all three go for Obama, Obama will almost certainly win the election. Given that Ohio may take some considerable amount of time to sort out, if we want this godawful nightmare over, we'll have to count on Pennsylvania or Wisconsin going for Romney. That would make Ohio's quagmire superfluous to the outcome.
7) If the economy improves by Christmas, and unemployment figures improve, the victor will personally take credit, and say that this only proves the superiority of his ideology. (This also applies to Romney, who will not have been sworn in by that point. There is a precedent; in 1992, improved economic figures came out after the election, but before Bill Clinton's inauguration. Nonetheless, the incoming Clinton team took credit, claiming that it was a sign that the economy was responding favorably to the prospect of a Clinton presidency, even though most of the activity that the numbers reflected took place before the election.)
8) The economy will, in fact, improve over the next year or so, whomever wins. (This is on the assumption that, if Obama wins, he'll still be paralyzed by a Republican House from enacting any new economic programs, or that if Romney wins, he won't engage in the same.)
9) The victor's supporters will find ample opportunity for disappointment over the next four years. The loser's opponents will eventually sport, “Don't blame me, I vote for The Loser” bumper stickers.
10) Despite that disappointment, the victor's supporters will largely support Romney/the Democrat Nominee in 2016, at which time we'll learn that 2016 is the most important election of our lives, and that whatever fault we may have found during the previous term, it will be vital to prevent the Democrat Nominee/the Republican Nominee from claiming the White House. 2016, we'll learn, simply isn't the year to consider a third party candidate; too much will be at stake.
11) In 2013, the reelected President Obama or the new elected President Romney will kill people abroad with flying robots of death, many of them having no connection to terrorism or the Taliban. Americans will see their civil liberties violated.
12) But who will win? I've danced around that question here. In part, this is because I think it's folly to predict an outcome when the available data is so ambiguous. Indeed, such data will support a wide spectrum of predictions, and wherever the outcome lands, the predictions that happen to be closest to that outcome can be touted as wise prognosticators, when in reality, I don't think anyone can do much better here than make guesses. The data is simply too fuzzy for anyone who gets it right to claim any particular credit from the prediction. That said... I have been predicting a Romney win for months. One reason is the rule that undecideds break for the challenger, and Obama hasn't been able to break 50%, a scary prospect for any incumbent. However, I've also seen that this rule has been challenged; but the reality is, even if we had a large sample of similar Presidential races, and we don't, I'm not sure we should be justified in assuming that people function so mechanistically as voters. Still, as Michael Barone has argued, there are certain fundamentals in place that favor Romney, not just in the popular vote, which many Obama fans are now granting, but even in the Electoral College, where Nate Silver and others have insisted strongly favors Obama. I'm not sure how to measure voter enthusiasm and GOTV efforts in advance, though what little we have seems to suggest the edge is Romney's. If I'm right about this, it may validate my long-held suspicion, that with certain exceptions (Obama 2008 would be one of them), people largely vote against someone or something, and only secondarily for someone or something. As I've previously written:
[Michael] Barone's analysis closely matches my own amateur read, so of course, this must mean he's right. I'm a little more skeptical about Pennsylvania, but it's certainly in play. He writes: "[J]ust about every indicator suggests that Republicans are more enthusiastic about voting -- and about their candidate -- than they were in 2008, and Democrats are less so." My thought: this is probably true. But I don't think it's because Romney's a better candidate than McCain; they're both awful. Rather, it's easier to be against an incumbent who's actually implemented policies you may not like, than it is it be enthusiastic against a fresh, unvarnished face at the end of a Presidency that even you didn't like all that much at the end. In other words, two things won in 2008: NotBush, and the fresh start you could project your own political beliefs onto. NotObama didn't have much of a chance. But in 2012, Obama doesn't have either, much as he's attempted to resurrect both. This makes NotObama more viable as a source of enthusiasm, perhaps even inevitable, given that whatever policies he pushed would certainly wipe out much of the clean slate he originally represented.
We'll see. But as I've said before, I think everyone is just guessing, and no one really has enough data to reliably predict how this will turn out.
1) People who predicted a Romney/Obama win will gloat over those who predicted an Obama/Romney win, deriding them as partisans, and contend that it should have been obvious that Romney/Obama would win all along.
2) Despite the fact that the election will probably be decided by a very tiny margin, the victors will claim that this outcome is a sign that The American People have turned a corner, decisively rejecting, once and for all, the failed, bankrupt ideology of the Other Party.
3) If Romney wins, Democrats will cry foul, alleging that his victory was only made possible because of voter suppression. Cooler heads will claim their loss was due to a poor candidate on their side, and a failure to get their message out. Some will claim the failure was Obama's, who was insufficiently liberal.
4) If Obama wins, Republicans will cry foul, alleging that his victory was only made possible because of voter fraud. Cooler heads will claim their loss was due to a poor candidate on their side, and a failure to get their message out. Some will claim the failure was Romney's, who was insufficiently conservative.
5) The victor will give a speech thanking the American people for their trust, thanking his opponent for a spirited campaign, and will pledge to work with the other party for the common good. (Any actual cooperation is unlikely to happen.) The loser will thank his supporters for all their hard work, but urge conciliation and cooperation with the victor. (Any actual cooperation is unlikely to happen.) Both the winner and loser will describe the other as a fine family man, an honest, decent fellow, and a patriot, despite all the nasty things they were saying about each other only 24 hours previously.
6) It would not be a surprise if the victor is unknown by the time people wake up Wednesday morning. If Pennsylvania, Ohio, or Wisconsin go for Romney, Romney will almost certainly win the election. If all three go for Obama, Obama will almost certainly win the election. Given that Ohio may take some considerable amount of time to sort out, if we want this godawful nightmare over, we'll have to count on Pennsylvania or Wisconsin going for Romney. That would make Ohio's quagmire superfluous to the outcome.
7) If the economy improves by Christmas, and unemployment figures improve, the victor will personally take credit, and say that this only proves the superiority of his ideology. (This also applies to Romney, who will not have been sworn in by that point. There is a precedent; in 1992, improved economic figures came out after the election, but before Bill Clinton's inauguration. Nonetheless, the incoming Clinton team took credit, claiming that it was a sign that the economy was responding favorably to the prospect of a Clinton presidency, even though most of the activity that the numbers reflected took place before the election.)
8) The economy will, in fact, improve over the next year or so, whomever wins. (This is on the assumption that, if Obama wins, he'll still be paralyzed by a Republican House from enacting any new economic programs, or that if Romney wins, he won't engage in the same.)
9) The victor's supporters will find ample opportunity for disappointment over the next four years. The loser's opponents will eventually sport, “Don't blame me, I vote for The Loser” bumper stickers.
10) Despite that disappointment, the victor's supporters will largely support Romney/the Democrat Nominee in 2016, at which time we'll learn that 2016 is the most important election of our lives, and that whatever fault we may have found during the previous term, it will be vital to prevent the Democrat Nominee/the Republican Nominee from claiming the White House. 2016, we'll learn, simply isn't the year to consider a third party candidate; too much will be at stake.
11) In 2013, the reelected President Obama or the new elected President Romney will kill people abroad with flying robots of death, many of them having no connection to terrorism or the Taliban. Americans will see their civil liberties violated.
12) But who will win? I've danced around that question here. In part, this is because I think it's folly to predict an outcome when the available data is so ambiguous. Indeed, such data will support a wide spectrum of predictions, and wherever the outcome lands, the predictions that happen to be closest to that outcome can be touted as wise prognosticators, when in reality, I don't think anyone can do much better here than make guesses. The data is simply too fuzzy for anyone who gets it right to claim any particular credit from the prediction. That said... I have been predicting a Romney win for months. One reason is the rule that undecideds break for the challenger, and Obama hasn't been able to break 50%, a scary prospect for any incumbent. However, I've also seen that this rule has been challenged; but the reality is, even if we had a large sample of similar Presidential races, and we don't, I'm not sure we should be justified in assuming that people function so mechanistically as voters. Still, as Michael Barone has argued, there are certain fundamentals in place that favor Romney, not just in the popular vote, which many Obama fans are now granting, but even in the Electoral College, where Nate Silver and others have insisted strongly favors Obama. I'm not sure how to measure voter enthusiasm and GOTV efforts in advance, though what little we have seems to suggest the edge is Romney's. If I'm right about this, it may validate my long-held suspicion, that with certain exceptions (Obama 2008 would be one of them), people largely vote against someone or something, and only secondarily for someone or something. As I've previously written:
[Michael] Barone's analysis closely matches my own amateur read, so of course, this must mean he's right. I'm a little more skeptical about Pennsylvania, but it's certainly in play. He writes: "[J]ust about every indicator suggests that Republicans are more enthusiastic about voting -- and about their candidate -- than they were in 2008, and Democrats are less so." My thought: this is probably true. But I don't think it's because Romney's a better candidate than McCain; they're both awful. Rather, it's easier to be against an incumbent who's actually implemented policies you may not like, than it is it be enthusiastic against a fresh, unvarnished face at the end of a Presidency that even you didn't like all that much at the end. In other words, two things won in 2008: NotBush, and the fresh start you could project your own political beliefs onto. NotObama didn't have much of a chance. But in 2012, Obama doesn't have either, much as he's attempted to resurrect both. This makes NotObama more viable as a source of enthusiasm, perhaps even inevitable, given that whatever policies he pushed would certainly wipe out much of the clean slate he originally represented.
We'll see. But as I've said before, I think everyone is just guessing, and no one really has enough data to reliably predict how this will turn out.