Will President Obama lose votes in 2012 because of racial prejudice? For 2008, weestimated, via a carefully controlled, national survey-based study, that on balancehe lost about five percentage points in popular vote share due to intolerance forhis race on the part of some voters. What about 2012? There are at least threepossibilities: (1) the presidency has become postracial, and the vote will registerno racial cost; (2) intolerance has increased, and the vote will register anincreased racial cost; and (3) intolerance has decreased, and the vote will registera decreased racial cost. Our evidence, drawn from an analysis comparable to thatcarried out for 2008, suggests Obama will pay a racial cost of three percentagepoints in popular vote share. In other words, his candidacy will experience adecrease in racial cost, if a small one. In 2008, this racial cost denied Obama alandslide victory. In the context of a closer election in 2012, this persistentracial cost, even smaller in size, could perhaps cost him his reelection.

How relatively good or bad were the economic performances of our past presidents?The answers to this question remain unclear. Most evaluations of presidentialperformance cloud the issue with partisan bias and subjective judgments or mixeconomics together with other policy areas. To address these shortcomings, thisarticle uses new data from the Measuring Worth Project to calculate the relativeeconomic rankings of the United States presidents who served from 1789 until 2009.It analyzes up to 220 years of data on economic growth, unemployment, inflation,government debt, balance of payments, income inequality, currency strength, interestrates, and stock market returns to estimate an economic grade point average for eachpresident. Then, these estimates are used to test for correlations with othervariables to generate hypotheses regarding the conditions for superior and inferioreconomic performance.

In this article results are presented from a conditional logit model of vicepresidential selection that correctly predicts Mitt Romney selecting Paul Ryan ashis vice presidential running mate in 2012. The model, which correctly predicts 14of the 20 contested major party vice presidential nominations from 1960 through2008, suggests that media exposure, political experience, having served in themilitary, age, and gender/racial/ethnic diversity are significant factors inselecting a vice presidential candidate in the modern era.

This symposium presents 13 articles forecasting the 2012 US national elections.Included in this collection are the eight national and one state presidential voteforecasting models published in PS: Political Science &Politics during the 2008 elections along with three additional forecastsand one article offering a composite of the forecasts. Although the focus remains onthe presidential contest, as in past years, several articles extend their scope tocover the congressional elections as well.

Democrat Barack Obama is going to defeat Republican Mitt Romney by a comfortablemargin in the 2012 presidential election. This forecast comes from a statisticalmodel that uses the primary performance of the candidates and a cycle inpresidential elections to predict the presidential vote. In plain English, Obama hashistory 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 NewHampshire at some length.

The 2012 presidential campaign takes place at a time of deep political division inthe United States. Democrats and Republicans differ sharply over Barack Obama'sperformance in office as well as a wide range of issues ranging from governmentspending and health care to immigration and gay marriage. These divisions areshaping the strategies of the candidates and the outlook for November. Overwhelmingmajorities of Democrats and Republicans, including overwhelming majorities ofindependents who lean toward a party, can be expected to support their own party'snominee. As a result, the outcome will depend on which party does a better job ofmobilizing its supporters and appealing to a small group of swing voters in 10 or 12battleground states.

The importance of the economy in US presidential elections is well established.Voters reward or punish incumbent party candidates based on the state of theeconomy. The electorate focuses particularly on economic change, not the level ofthe economy per se, and pays more attention to late-arriving change than earlierchange. On these points there is a good amount of scholarly agreement (see e.g.,Erikson and Wlezien 1996; Hibbs 1987). There is less agreement, however, on whatspecific indicators matter to voters. Some scholars rely on income growth, others onGDP growth, and yet others on subjective perceptions (see Abramowitz 2008; Campbell2008; Holbrook 1996b; also see Campbell and Garand 2000). In our work, we have usedthe index of leading economic indicators, a composite of ten variables, includingthe University of Michigan's index of consumer expectations, stock prices, and eightother objective indicators.

Election forecasters face increasing turbulence in their relevant environments,making predictions more uncertain, or at least apparently so. For US presidentialcontests, economic performance and candidate profiles are central variables in moststatistical models. These variables have exhibited large swings recently. Before the2008 US presidential election, the economy fell into a Great Recession, and thecandidate of one of the two major parties was, for the first time, a black man.These unprecedented conditions were trumpeted in the media, with heightened frenzyover the “horse race” question of who was going to win the White House. In thepress, many forecasts appeared, taking different forms—polls, models, markets,pundits, to name some—offering a broader range of possible outcomes than everbefore. Just looking at the predictions of the statistical modelers alone, we findthat for 2008 many teams offered estimates of the incumbent (Republican) vote,ranging over an 11 percentage point spread. At one extreme, Lockerbie (2008) forecast 41.8% while at the otherextreme Campbell (2008) forecast 52.7%. Ofcourse, other methodologists offered their own, different, forecasts. The media, inits various forms, added to the hyperbole, aggressively reporting differentforecasts on an almost daily basis.

This article presents forecasts of the 2012 presidential and US House ofRepresentatives elections. The presidential forecasts are of the national two-partypresidential vote percentage for the in-party candidate and are based on thetrial-heat and economy forecasting equation and its companion convention-bumpequation. The House election forecast is of the net seat change for the DemocraticParty from 2010 to 2012. This forecast is produced from two versions of aseats-in-trouble forecasting equation.

According to the Bread and Peace Model postwar, American presidential electionsshould be interpreted as a sequence of referendums on the incumbent party's recordduring its four-year mandate period. In fact postwar aggregate votes for presidentare well explained by just two objectively measured fundamental determinants: (1)weighted-average growth of per capita real disposable personal income over the term,and (2) cumulative US military fatalities due to unprovoked, hostile deployments ofAmerican armed forces in foreign wars. No other outside variable systematicallyaffects postwar aggregate votes for president.

Although research at other levels of elected office has shown that incumbency has apowerful, additive effect on votes (Hogan 2004; Jacobson 2009; Krebs 1998), these effects largely have been ignoredin presidential forecasting models (but see Abramowitz 2008). Instead, some scholars speculate about the conditionaleffects of incumbency; specifically, the decreased applicability of theretrospective model when the president is not on the ticket leaving thesomewhat-harder-to-blame-or-reward vice president to represent the administration.The difficult-to-predict 2000 presidential election generated some discussion onthis point. Although I and others argued (Campbell 2001; Holbrook 2001;Wlezien 2001) that part of the explanationfor the forecasting error in 2000 lies with Al Gore's failure to embrace the BillClinton-Al Gore record and reinforce retrospective voting, others indicate that theretrospective cue may generally be weaker when the president is not on the ticket(Campbell 2001; Lewis-Beck and Tien 2001; Nadeau and Lewis-Beck 2001). Indeed, Campbell (2001; 2008) arguesin favor of only giving half weight to presidential performance variables when thevice president, rather than president, is representing the incumbent administration.The logic here is simple: absent the president on the ticket, it is more difficultto frame the election as a referendum, leading voters to attach less weight toincumbency-oriented considerations. This is not to say that factors such aspresidential approval and economic performance are unimportant when incumbents donot run, only that these factors might matter less.

Do our models of political behavior bear any resemblance to reality? Forecastingelections is one opportunity to assess whether our models of voting behavior areaccurate. Over the past few decades, political scientists have been willing to putthemselves out there to forecast elections. Explaining a past event allows us theability to retrofit our models before we make them available to the broadercommunity. In short, forecasting elections provides us the opportunity to develophumility. The forecasting community has done a reasonable job over the past fewelections. Aside from 2000, forecasters have been largely accurate. Even in 2000,the forecasting community can claim a modest victory. The community was right aboutthe popular vote winner; it just happened that the popular vote winner lost theelection that counts—the Electoral College.

In March 2009, at a time when President Obama was basking in the glow of thehoneymoon with the public every new president enjoys, I asked, “Will Barack Obama bea one-term president?” What prompted me to pose so impertinent a question at sohopeful a time was that the Office of Management and Budget was projecting that thatyear the federal government would spend 28% of gross domestic product (GDP). Thisamounted to a 7% point increase compared to the previous year, the largest peacetimeone-year jump since 1930. The most recent estimate for 2012 is that federal outlayswill take up 24.3% of GDP, up 3.5% points since 2008. This is the second-largestpeacetime increase from one election year to the next since 1880, edged out only byFranklin D. Roosevelt's first-term surge of 3.6% points.

For more than two decades, political scientists have created statistical modelsaimed at generating out-of-sample predictions of presidential elections. In 2004 and2008, PS: Political Science and Politics published symposia of thevarious forecasting models prior to Election Day. This exercise serves to validatemodels based on accuracy by garnering additional support for those that mostaccurately foretell the ultimate election outcome. Implicitly, these symposia assertthat accurate models best capture the essential contexts and determinants ofelections. In part, therefore, this exercise aims to develop the “best” model of theunderlying data generating process. Scholars comparatively evaluate their models bysetting their predictions against electoral results while also giving some attentionto the models' inherent plausibility, parsimony, and beauty.

The election forecasts presented in this article indicate that control of the WhiteHouse after the 2012 election is a tossup, that control of the US House will likelyremain in Republican hands, and that although closely fought, the Republicans havethe edge for control of the US Senate. These forecasts were made on July 15, 2012.Obama was predicted to receive 51.3% of the two-party popular vote, 301 electoralvotes, and to have a 57.1% chance of winning the Electoral College. The year 2012was forecast to be one of stasis for the US House, with almost no change in thenumber of seats controlled by the Republicans: they were forecast to pick up twoseats, and to have a 75.6% chance of maintaining their majority. Lastly, theRepublicans were predicted to pick up five seats in the US Senate and have about a61.6% chance of attaining majority control.

Since 2008, the economic fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis has led to thedefeat of a number of incumbents in the world's major democracies. For instance, inthe former EU-15, eight countries (including France) have ousted their incumbents infavor of new leaders. The United States is no exception, and the 2012 USpresidential election will see Barack Obama running for a second term duringdifficult economic times. After hitting a high of 10% in October 2009, the nation'sunemployment rate decreased to 8.2% in May 2012. Nonetheless, this is still 0.7percentage point higher than what Ronald Reagan faced in 1984 or what confrontedGeorge H.W. Bush in 1992 as they ran for their second terms. Looking at measures ofpresidential popularity for the month of May since 1980, Barack Obama's approvalrating is at 46% in the Gallup polls, which is the third-worst rating after GeorgeW. Bush (30% in 2008) and George H.W. Bush (39.4% in 1992). Given Barack Obama'sapproval rating and the current national unemployment level, must we conclude thatBarack Obama is irremediably on the ropes against Mitt Romney in 2012?

Nearly all forecast models of US presidential elections provide estimates of thenational two-party vote (Campbell 2008).Each of the nine forecasts published in the 2008 forecasting issue of PS:Political Science and Politics made national popular vote totalpredictions for the major party candidates, while only one provided an expectedresult in the Electoral College (Klarner 2008). These national vote models are assumed to be reliable forecasts ofwho is likely to win the general election. In most cases, this assumption isreasonable. It becomes problematic, however, at precisely the point that forecastsare most interesting: when elections are close. In tight elections, nationalforecasts can and have produced a “winner” different from the actual winner.Consider the forecasts and ultimate outcome of the 2000 election. Each of the 2000presidential election forecasts predicted vice president Al Gore to win a majorityof the two-party popular vote, which he did, but none correctly predicted governorGeorge W. Bush to assume the presidency (Campbell 2001). Never in US history have White House residents been determinedthrough a national popular vote. Presidential elections are decided through contestsin the states and the District of Columbia. The forecast model we developedexplicitly models the presidential contest based on factors inherent to these 51jurisdictions. This modeling approach allows us to make a projection of theElectoral College result, which popular vote estimates cannot.

We explicate the precise role that one specific emotion, disgust, plays ingenerating political acrimony. We do this by identifying the link between thedifferent dimensions along which moral judgments are made by those espousingdifferent political ideologies and the different emotions which undergird theseevaluations. These assessments reliably track along liberal and conservativedimensions and are linked to the way values associated with purity and sanctityelicit greater degrees of disgust among conservatives. Here, we review a growingliterature showing how disgust affects the psychology of politics through itsinfluence on the cognitive and emotional processes that govern judgments ofmorality, as well as its direct impact on specific policy preferences. We then applythese findings to the nature and tenor of political discourse and suggest some waysthat disgust might affect the character and function of democratic debate andtolerance. Finally, we discuss what these findings mean for public policy.

In fundraising, potential candidates who do not collect sizable amounts of “earlymoney” may be effectively eliminated even before the start of the Iowa Caucus. Thiswinnowing raises concern about the impact money has on narrowing the field ofcandidates from whom voters can choose. To better grasp patterns of successfulfundraising, we explore where candidates obtain funds during the preprimary andprimary periods. We use individual contributions data from the Federal ElectionCommission during the preprimary and primary periods of the 2008 Republicanpresidential nomination contest. Findings suggest that although California, NewYork, and Texas provide disproportionate amounts of early financing, the ability ofpresidential aspirants to broaden their support is indicative of campaignsuccess.

In the run up to the 2010 midterm elections, pundits and politicos often talked ofan “enthusiasm gap” between Republicans and Democrats. Although conventionaltreatments have typically equated these gaps with changes in turnout and thecomposition of the electorate, we argue that the term better describes theparticipatory patterns of highly engaged voters. Using multiple data sources,including a geocoded, county-wide study that tracked yard sign displays between 2008and 2010, we examine the visible evidence of enthusiasm gaps in voters'neighborhoods. Our findings echo recent narratives, yet suggest that scholars havemissed important dimensions in their examinations of these “wave” elections.