If I told you that there was one election model which has correctly predicted every Presidential election since 1980, when Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter, would you be willing to bet money on it being correct in 2016? Think about it: 9 straight elections have been forecast by this one set of analytics, and now they’re going for ten in a row.
Moody’s Analytics is forecasting that the Democratic nominee–more than likely Hillary Clinton–will win the presidency in the November general election, beating presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.
If you look closer at what Moody’s uses to make their prediction, you start to see why they’ve been right over the past 36 years. Moody’s uses the approval rating of the sitting President as a main component of its call on which party will reach the Oval Office. And with President Obama’s approval numbers continuing to rise, Democratic fortunes are increasing by the day.
Dan White, a Moody’s economist who oversees the model, commented:
“President Obama’s approval rating has crossed over the important 50 percent threshold for the first time in almost four years.”
White added that they only thing which might cause the model to change in favor of the GOP would be a sudden spike in gas prices or a dramatic drop in the President’s approval rating. And the current high rating for Obama could be due to a number of factors, according to White:
“This sudden surge could be a result of the messy primary season or a relative lull in geopolitical news from overseas.”
Based on the data currently available, Moody’s sees the November election for the White House ending this way: the Democratic nominee would win 332 electoral votes compared to 206 for the Republican nominee. It should also be noted that Democrats are already ahead in polls taken in Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Nevada, all of which are key battleground states critical to victory.
And, given the loose cannon nature of Donald Trump, who is prone to saying some of the most objectionable things at the drop of a hat, the margin of victory for Clinton could increase to a level which would carry her to the largest victory in the Electoral College since 1984.
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