Economic determinants of presidential elections: The fair model

Ray Fair has constructed a model explaining the incumbent share of the two-party presidential popular vote for the elections of 1916-1984. The economic measures of the growth rate of real per capita GNP and the absolute value of the rate of inflation are singled out as important. In addition, a time trend favoring Democrats and whether an incumbent is seeking reelection are included.I argue that the Fair model is misspecified. Including the rate of growth in the Dow Jones Industrial Averages significantly improves the fit of the model, eliminates the trend as significant, reduces the income parameter, and strengthens the inflation parameter. In addition, the model remains stable when including the 1908 and 1912 elections, and up-dating to include the 1988 election strengthens the results.The explanatory power of the model is impressive with only one missed election outcome (1976) between 1908 and 1988, and this miss is easily explained by the impact of Watergate on the Republican candidate, President Ford.     

The nationalization of presidential elections in the Americas

This article examines the nationalization of electoral change in presidential elections. It presents a technique to measure the national electoral swing and the subnational deviation in the electoral swing for each major presidential contender, for each consecutive pair of elections. The national swing indicates the uniform shift across electoral districts, whereas the subnational deviation indicates the extent of new district-level variation for any particular election. In addition, the nationalization score reveals the relative magnitude of the national and subnational components of district-level electoral change, which has the advantage of allowing comparisons across countries, parties, and elections. The article analyzes relative nationalization scores for all major candidates in 74 presidential elections from 14 countries in the Americas, and for electoral change that occurs between first and second round contests in majority run-off presidential elections.     

The 2011 general and presidential elections in Singapore

For the first time in Singapore's history, two elections were held in a year. In 2011, Singaporeans voted in a general election on 7 May and in another competitive presidential election on 27 August. Faced with a stronger opposition force and an emboldened electorate, the ruling People's Action Party won the elections but achieved the worst results since the country's independence.     

Voter turnout in presidential primaries: A cross-sectional examination

Decades of individual and aggregate level research suggest that three sets of factors influence voter turnout: the socioeconomic makeup of the potential voter; legal restrictions on voting; and the political context of each election. In this brief study, we use state-level data to test whether these factors combine to account for variations in turnout rates in the electoral arena of presidential primaries. As expected, high turnout is associated with states which have high median levels of education, lenient legal restrictions on voting, and a history of competitive two-party elections. Also congruent with our expectations, but at odds with research of other electoral arenas, high turnout in presidential primaries is unrelated to high campaign spending or close elections. We contend that spending in presidential primaries may be simply too low to stimulate turnout and that close primaries do not enhance turnout because voters are often unaware that the pending election will be close.The names of the authors appear in alphabetical order and imply that this study is in every way a collaborative enterprise.