Early Forecast: Obama will win re-election in 2012

Curious as to why so many potential Republican candidates for president seem to be prepared to sit out the 2012 election.  Maybe it is because, as things stand now, Obama has a pretty good chance of winning regardless of the Republican nominee.

If the presidential election were held today, Barack Obama would win re-election with 53.5% of the popular vote.  That’s the consensus of six  different forecast models including the “Keys to the White House” model.  The Keys Model has correctly predicted the winner in every presidential election since 1984, usually a year or more in advance of the election with a margin of error of less than 2%.  The Keys Model predicts Obama will win by an even wider margin than the consensus prediction, garnering 55.3% of the popular votes as things stand now.

The Keys Model uses 13 Keys list below with the 2012 coding as of January 2011.

NOTE: True statements are favorable to the party in control of the White House retaining control.  False statements suggest the opposition party will win.  The formula for calculating the likely popular vote of the INCUMBENT party is as follows:

Incumbent % = 36.6 + (1.8 x # True Codes).  Thus:  Obama %=37.3+ (1.8 x 10) = 55.3%

The 13 Keys to the White House and their codings for the 2012 election as of 5/14 2011
Key	Topic	Threshold condition	2012 coding
1	Party Mandate	After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than it did after the previous midterm elections.	False
2	Contest	There is no serious contest for the incumbent-party nomination.	True
3	Incumbency	The incumbent-party candidate is the sitting president.	True
4	Third party	There is no significant third party or independent campaign.	True
5	Short-term economy	The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.	True
6	Long-term economy	Real per-capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.	False
7	Policy change	The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.	True
8	Social unrest	There is no sustained social unrest during the term.	True
9	Scandal	The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.	True
10	Foreign/ military failure	The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.	True
11	Foreign/ military success	The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.	True
12	Incumbent charisma	The incumbent-party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.	False
13	Challenger charisma	The challenging-party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.	True

Source: http://pollyvote.forecastingprinciples.com/index.php/pollyvote-2012/models/lichtmans-keys.html

Note that I changed Key #11 from False to True as a result of the successful operation against bin Laden.  Note also that most of the favorable/True statements are NOT LIKELY to change for Obama.  The few areas that might include #5 (the economy slips back into a recession) or #10 (a major military or foreign policy failure such as, for example, a successful terrorist attack).

For more on the Keys Model see: http://uwf.edu/govt/documents/FS0206ArmstrongCuzan.pdf

See also: http://pollyvote.forecastingprinciples.com/index.php/pollyvote-2012.html