http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4271816/Ray Fair doesn't keep a crystal ball in his office. Instead, on his PC, the 61-year-old Yale economist crafts complex statistical models to forecast all sorts of events.
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And nine months before the 2004 election, his model has spoken: Bush will win in a landslide with 58.7 percent of the vote.
Recent polls and pundits predict a very tight race. And Fair's forecasts have been wildly wrong on occasion, leading to trash talk from rival academics. But with voters ranking jobs and the economy among their top priorities, his work explores how pocketbook issues, not cable-TV chatter, drive votes.
According to Fair's formulas, Bush is in great shape on just about every count. As an incumbent representing a party that hasn't held the White House for too long, he starts out with big advantages. Low inflation and an economy that's rebounded from recession and is expected to keep growing through Election Day add more points to his lead.
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Fair, who wrongly called a landslide for the elder Bush in 1992 but came within a half percentage point of the actual vote tally in 2000, shows no anxiety for a guy whose forecast is vastly different than the Gallup poll's. "It is a pretty extreme prediction," Fair says, "so it's a good test of the model." Besides, if the Bush landslide fails to materialize, it won't mean he's wrong. "I'd say it's the equation."
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