Jan. 7, 2012, 9:33 a.m. EST
Obama facing uphill re-election battle: economist
By Greg Robb, MarketWatch
CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — President Barack Obama is facing an uphill re-election battle and on track to receive only 43% of the vote in a two-man race, according to an election model by IHS Global Insight.
Sara Johnson, senior research director at the Lexington, Mass.-based firm, said that the model has been wrong only twice in the past 16 presidential races.
In a presentation Friday at the American Economic Association meeting, Johnson said that the high unemployment rate is the biggest factor hurting Obama’s re-election chances. Another factor is the slow growth in real per-capita disposable income, Johnson said.
The model does not account for a third-party challenger. It measures the percentage of a two-party presidential vote for the incumbent party.
If Obama receives only 43% of the vote in November, it would be the lowest for an incumbent since Jimmy Carter in 1980, Johnson noted.
The model was wrong only when it predicted that Hubert Humphrey would defeat Richard Nixon in 1968 and that Gerald Ford would defeat Carter in 1976.
The latest model was run in December, before the strong December nonfarm payroll data were released.
More: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/obama-facing-uphill-re-election-battle-economist-2012-01-07?link=MW_home_latest_news
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