Suchergebnisse

The October 2008 issue of PS published a symposium
of presidential and congressional forecasts made in the summer
leading up to the election. This article is an assessment of the
accuracy of their models.The Incumbency and National Conditions Model predicted that John
McCain would receive 44.3% of the two-party presidential vote; he
ended up with 46.6% (at this writing, November 13, 2008), yielding a
prediction error of 2.4 points. This error is slightly smaller than
the mean absolute value of the out-of-sample forecasts from 1952 to
2004 (2.68), so the 2008 election result is not anomalous in the
context of this model. The addition to the model of the 2008 outcome
does not generate many important changes to the coefficients, except
that the significance of incumbency interaction went from 0.08 to
0.02 and the standard error and adjusted R2 of the model
both indicate a slight improvement in fit.

In 'Altered States', Thomas Holbrook looks at electoral change in presidential elections since 1972, documenting the magnitude, direction and consequences of changes in party support in the states. He finds that the Democrats do not have a 'lock' on the Electoral College, but that their position has improved dramatically over the past forty years in a number of formerly competitive or Republican-leaning states in the Northeast, Southeast, and Southwest

A thorough examination of the impact of campaign politics on presidential elections in the United States is presented in this book. Using actual election results and empirical evidence, the author also incorporates data on additional factors such as media coverage, the impact of nominating conventions on public opinion, presidential debates, and other events such as staff shake-ups, endorsements and scandals. In so doing, Holbrook develops a model for testing campaigns and proves how campaigns play a key role in shaping public opinion and, ultimately, influencing outcomes

Combining actual election results and empirical evidence with data on additional factors such as media coverage, Thomas M. Holbrook develops a model for testing campaigns, and proves how campaigns play a key role in shaping public opinion.