Romney Widens Lead over Obama in Electoral College Votes

According to Michael Berry and Kenneth Bicker, political science professors from the University of Colorado, Romney would win the presidency if the economy continues to deteriorate. I would take 270 Electoral College votes to secure the win and the two professors have predicted that Mitt Romney will get 330 of the 538 votes up for grabs in November. President Barack Obama would get 208, which is down from 213 they previously predicted in August.

Bicker and Berry have an uncanny track record in predicting the results of the presidential election since 1980. In a paper published in August, it looked into two vital factors of the economy, which are changes in real per capita income and the unemployment rates.

Their model doesn’t rely on the national numbers provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which was criticized for its sudden drop in the unemployment rate while real jobs in the economy didn’t match maintenance levels. They base their forecast on state-by-state analysis of the same factors that theysay are more reliable.

They said that in contrast to other Electoral College models, their model included measures of change in real per capita income and national unemployment numbers. With the two factors, their model is more robust forecast of state economic well-being and serves as a basis of the incumbent party’s take on the economy.

The data used in their model were from the Bureau of Economic Analysis in the US Department of Commerce and the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the US Department of Labor. They said that this information gives them high quality data that can be used for their model.

Berry and Bicker have safe data from states when the national data becomes dicey. Their forecast centers have a third set of independent variables. The two basic economic measures are unemployment levels and change in real income per capita. The unemployment number is measured in two capacities, which are national unemployment rate and the unemployment rate in each state. The third one is the disposable income people have at their discretion during the current presidential term.