And now some good news

[malaise]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080801/pl_nm/usa_politics_economy_dc
<snip>
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It really is the economy, stupid! Economic models that have correctly predicted the winner of almost all post-war U.S. presidential elections say recession fears will secure a victory for Barack Obama in November.
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Three separate studies showed the Democratic presidential hopeful winning between 52 and 55 percent of the popular vote on November 4, based on current gloomy economic estimates.

Any further darkening in the economic outlook -- many analysts think things will get worse between now and November -- would reinforce that election outcome.

"The economy is certainly not going to be a positive for the Republicans," said Ray Fair, an economics professor at Yale university who built the earliest of the models in 1978.

His model, which assumed tepid U.S. economic growth of 1.5 percent and a 3 percent rate of inflation, predicted the Republican candidate John McCain's share of the vote would be 47.8 percent, handing Obama 52.2 percent.

"It is a decent margin but it is not a landslide," said Fair, who ran the numbers in April. "It would have been much larger if there had been a recession in 2008."

[Javaman]

1. "have correctly predicted the winner of almost all post-war U.S. presidential elections"

Hmmm, wonder which ones they missed? perhaps 2000 and 2004? I wonder how that could happen?

[malaise]

2. I had the identical thought

:hi: