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History and Primary: The Obama Reelection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2012

Helmut Norpoth  and
Michael Bednarczuk
Helmut Norpoth
Affiliation:
Stony Brook University
Michael Bednarczuk
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
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Extract

Democrat Barack Obama is going to defeat Republican Mitt Romney by a comfortable margin in the 2012 presidential election. This forecast comes from a statistical model that uses the primary performance of the candidates and a cycle in presidential elections to predict the presidential vote. In plain English, Obama has history on his side as well as the fact that he was unchallenged in the primaries. The model, called The Primary Model because of its heavy reliance on primaries, covers elections from 1912, the beginning of presidential primaries. Since 1952, however, only the New Hampshire Primary is used; we justify the choice of New Hampshire at some length.

Type
Symposium: Forecasting the 2012 American National Elections
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , October 2012 , pp. 614 - 617
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2012 

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