It is well known that elections are determined by certain fundamental variables: internal factors that reflect voters’ long-term political predispositions and external factors that are unique to each campaign. Robert S. Erikson and Christopher Wlezien examine how one external factor, the state of the economy, compares to how voters’ internal factors evolve over the final 200 days of presidential campaigns. They find that while noneconomic factors dominate at the outset of the campaign, the economic component increases in salience as Election Day draws nearer and offers greater electoral predictability overall

Erikson, Robert S.

Wlezien, Christopher

LSE Research Online

blogs.lse.ac.ukhttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2014/04/21/early-campaign-economic-perceptions-can-help-to-predict-the-national-verdict-on-election-day/Early campaign economic perceptions can help to predict thenational verdict on Election DayIt is well known that elections are determined by certain fundamental variables: internal factorsthat reflect voters’ long-term political predispositions and external factors that are unique to eachcampaign. Robert S. Erikson and Christopher Wlezien examine how one external factor, thestate of the economy, compares to how voters’ internal factors evolve over the final 200 days ofpresidential campaigns. They find that while noneconomic factors dominate at the outset of thecampaign, the economic component increases in salience as Election Day draws nearer andoffers greater electoral predictability overall.This article is part of a collaboration with the PS: Political Science and Politics symposium on USPresidential Election Forecasting.  Click here to read other posts in this series.It commonly is said that elections are determined less by the quality of electoral campaigns thanby fundamental forces that astute observers can see coming in advance. We offer a system inwhich electoral fundamentals come in two varieties: internal and external. Internal fundamentalsare part of the voter’s long-term political predispositions: party identification, ideologicalproclivities, and demographically-based partisan orientations. External fundamentals are short-term forces uniqueto the campaign, such as, but not limited to, the state of the economy. Both types impact the evolution of electoralpreferences in different ways. The internal ones operate as centripetal forces pushing the electorate toward 50-50(a party line vote) and the external ones work as centrifugal forces pushing voters outward toward some uniqueoutcome specific to the issues of the day.From available poll data, we estimate the presidential preferences of the electorate on a daily basis over the final200 days of each of the 15 elections from 1956 to 2012. We also do the same for economic perceptions,specifically, about current economic growth, as measured by the Survey of Consumers at the University ofMichigan. Using these two resources, we divide daily presidential preferences in different election years into twocomponents—the share that is predictable from economic perceptions on that date and the residual portion that isunrelated to those perceptions.As a rough approximation, the section of the “vote” predictable from economicperceptions serves as a proxy for the external fundamentals. The remaining residual portion proxies the internalfundamentals. We ask: how do the two sources of voter preference (predictable versus not predictable fromeconomic perceptions) evolve over the final 200 days of presidential campaigns?The Growing Effect of the Economy over the CampaignWe start with the early stages of the campaign, 200 days before the election (April of election year). At that time,economic perceptions barely register as a predictor of the trial-heat polls (which pit possible presidentialcontenders against each other in hypothetical general election matchups). See the left panel of Figure 1, whichplots the incumbent party candidate’s poll share and economic perceptions in April of the election year. Thecorrelation between economic perceptions and the polls at that time is negligible. By Election Day, however, voterpreferences are clearly responsive to perceptions of economic progress. This trend can be seen in the right panelof Figure 1, which displays the incumbent party candidate’s vote share and economic perceptions at the end ofthe cycle.Figure 1: Predicting the Polls in April and the Vote in November from EconomicPerceptions at Each Point in TimeNext, we divide the daily trial-heat polls into the portion predicted from current economic perceptions and theportion that is not. We want to observe how the spread of the daily predictions changes over the timeline, whichtells us how economic forces and other issues come to matter to voters. For this exercise, Figure 2 illustrates thevariance of the daily readings of the predicted values (economy) and the residuals (other factors) by day, for thefinal 200 days of the election cycle—the point at which we have polls including the two final candidates in the 15election years.Figure 2:  Variances of from the Two Components of Daily Polls: The Parts Predicted by EconomicPerceptions and Other Sources.In Figure 2 noneconomic factors dominate at the outset of the campaign, but then decline over time. Meanwhile,the economic variance—the portion of trial-heat polls explained by economic perceptions—is small at thebeginning of the campaign but grows over time. It almost catches up with the noneconomic variance by the end ofthe timeline.How do we interpret this pattern?  Early in the election year, survey respondents are not paying much attention tothe economy when they answer pollsters’ questions about how they will vote. But they take into account otherthings, such as their views of the current administration and early perceptions of the eventual presidentialcandidates. As the campaign proceeds, noneconomic considerations become less important in voters’ minds,especially partisanship. Meanwhile, the economic cue increases in salience and matters more in the aggregate.Predicting the Vote from the Economy over the Campaign TimelineSo far, we have daily poll readings and we can account for the portion determined due by economic perceptionsand the remainder due to other factors, but which is more important in terms of predicting the Election Day vote?To see, we analyze the actual presidential party vote on the daily economy-based poll prediction and the residualportion of the polls. Figure 3 traces the portion of the Election Day variance in the vote that can be explained byeach component over the campaign timeline.Figure 3: Proportion of the Variance in the Election Day Vote Explained by Daily Readings of the Economic and Noneconomic Components of Trial-Heat PollsFigure 3 shows that both components of the trial-heat polls explain an increasing portion of the variance in thevote. The later in the campaign, the more you can predict from current preferences. Note that the portion of thepolls that reflects the economy is the better predictor of the Election Day vote. This is true from the beginning ofthe campaign until the end. In other words, if one could determine how much the trial-heat polls were influencedby economic perceptions, that portion would be far more helpful for an Election Day prediction than the portionpredicted by other factors.Let us summarize. Early in presidential campaigns, voters are not incorporating economic evaluations into theirelectoral preferences; the economy has little impact on presidential polls of the moment. But early-campaigneconomic perceptions are predictive of the national verdict on Election Day. At the same time, we see that theportion of voter preferences that is not due to the economy has its impact, too.Suppose you want to predict a US presidential election at various points along the campaign timeline. Over time,trial-heat polls offer increasing forecasting power, as they increasingly reflect both the economic andnoneconomic fundamentals. But for forecasting purposes, it is helpful to consider the trial-heat polls as well aswhat people are thinking at that moment about the national economy. This is especially true well before ElectionDay. It also is true on Election Eve, as final pre-election polls do not fully reflect the state of the economy (or other,noneconomic fundamentals).This article is based on the paper “Forecasting US Presidential Elections Using Economic and NoneconomicFundamentals”  appearing in the PS: Political Science and Politics symposium on US Presidential ElectionForecasting. Click here to read the other posts in this series.Featured image – Credit: diamondduste (Creative Commons: BY-NC-ND 2.0)Please read our comments policy before commenting.Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USApp– American Politics and Policy, norof the London School of Economics. Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/1i0rH65_________________________________________About the authorsRobert S. Erikson- Columbia UniversityRobert S. Erikson is Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. He is co-author of TheTimeline of Presidential Elections (University of Chicago Press), The Macro Polity (CambridgeUniversity Press), and American Public Opinion (Pearson). Christopher Wlezien- University of Texas, AustinChristopher Wlezien is Hogg Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. He iscoauthor of Degrees of Democracy (Cambridge University Press) and The Timeline ofPresidential Elections, and currently is Associate Editor of Public Opinion Quarterly.CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 2014 LSE USAPP

Early campaign economic perceptions can help to predict the national verdict on Election Day

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