By Ian McKendry

CHICAGO (MNI) – Incumbent President Barack Obama is likely to
come up short in the 2012 elections according IHS Global
Insight, an economics firm that specializes in forecasting.

Sara Johnson, a senior research director at IHS, said the firm runs
an econometric election model every four years predicting the outcome of
the U.S. presidential elections and has been accurate most times.

“In the past sixteen postwar elections, the model has missed only
twice,” Johnson said speaking at the Allied Social Science Associations
annual meeting in Chicago.

Johnson said the model is based on a two-party system, with the
Democratic and Republican parties combined making up 100%, and uses the
unemployment rate and real per capita disposable income as the key
factors.

She also said if a president is an incumbent and party been in
power longer the model gives them a bit of an advantage.

“This time we are saying President Obama would have gotten 43% of
the election vote,” Johnson said, noting that the 8.5% unemployment rate
they are predicting in the third quarter of 2012 would be the highest
for any post war election.

Johnson said the two times the model would have been off would have
been Hubert Humphries in 1968, and Gerald Ford would have been relected
1976.

The unemployment rate fell to 8.5% already in December, the Labor
Department reported Friday, so any 2012 improvement would be below the
model’s assumption.

** Market News International Washington Bureau: 202-371-2121 **

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