Selected fiscal and economic effects on presidential elections

In a previous article published in Presidential Studies Quarterly, the effects of fiscal expansion and fiscal cut-back on presidential elections were examined. This article carries the analysis a step further, controlling for certain economic effects. When inflation and economic growth are taken into account, fiscal policy is the single best predictor of whether the incumbent party elects its candidate to the White House. However, inflation/ deflation is the best predictor of the share of the popular vote going to the incumbent party.Final article publishedJournal Articl

Fiscal policy as a forecasting factor in presidential elections

This research note presents a model in which fiscal policy, measured by changes in the ratio of federal outlays to gross national product between election years, is a factor in explaining and forecasting the outcome of the past 30 presidential elections. Compared with six forecasting models assembled in a special issue of this journal in the fall of 1996, the model performs satisfactorily. The model implies that to win reelection or extend his party's tenure in the White House, a president should reject a policy of fiscal expansion. It is hoped that this article will stimulate students of presidential elections to add policy variables to their forecasting models.PublishedJournal Articl

Fiscal policy in American presidential elections: A simulation

In this paper a simulation technique borrowed from civil engineering is applied to American presidential elections to explore the key relationship between federal spending and incumbent reelection, represented by the fiscal model. On the one hand, as Machiavelli would have understood, an expansionary fiscal policy militates against incumbent reelection but a cutback policy facilitates it. That is the ‘demand’ side of the model. There is also a ‘supply’ side: the longer the incumbents have occupied the White House, the more likely they are to implement fiscal expansion. We simulated 1,000 elections under conditions that replicated the values of the predictor variables of the fiscal model over the 1880–2004 and 1932–2004 periods of American history. The latter period deserves attention in its own right, because starting with the 1932 election, the federal share of gross domestic product broke out of the 2–3% range for the first time since World War One. This marked a qualitative change in the role of government in the United States of America. The simulated series allow patterns that are weakly detected in the historical data to emerge more clearly for observation and analysis. The results of the simulations not only confirm the empirical findings from the historical data, but suggest that the American political system is stable, maintaining alternation between political parties in the White House, a characteristic of democracies, and keeping fiscal policy within bounds of what the majority of the voters will support.PublishedJournal Articl