Adrian E. Tschoegl, profesor de economía internacional en Wharton School, Universidad de Pensilvania, ha estado visitando España en los últimos años para asistir a las jornadas de discusión que bajo el título de Saviálogos organiza en Banca Cívica. Recogiendo una invitación mía, envía esta entrada que se relaciona con la experiencia vivida en la última edición de dichas jornadas, que tuvo lugar los días 29 y 30 de septiembre en Pamplona.

About three weeks ago I was in Pamplona at the annual Saviàlogos conference that Grupo Banca Civica sponsors. The most common question I received from participants was, “Who will win the 2012 US Presidential Elections?”

In politics a year is long, long time. Still, my answer right now is that President Obama will win. I base this assessment not wishful thinking (I have my own preferences), but on the data at www.pollyvote.com. Currently, Pres. Obama holds a 51:49 lead over a generic Republican candidate. Among the Republican candidates, Mitt Romney is the leading candidate, followed by Rick Perry and then by Herman Cain.

Pollyvote averages forecasts from a variety of sources: prediction markets, econometric models, polls and index models.Recently, my colleague J.Scott Armstrong (with co-authors), presented a paper at the annual conference of the American Political Science Association that showed that combining disparate forecasts results in a reduction in forecasting error. (See: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1902850)

Pres. Obama’s probability has been trending down since the beginning of the summer but has now stabilized. Barring surprises, I don’t expect the probability to change much until it becomes more certain who the Republican nominee will be. At that time voters will have a clear choice and that will focus their minds on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two candidates. (Although the election of Pres. Obama has demonstrated that experience is not a critical factor for voters, all three Republican candidates have far more impressive resumes than Pres. Obama did.)

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  1. It is very exiting and interesting to follow these events. It intriguing how the election of the second candidate can turn everything around. Sometimes I really feel that this whole process should be done in a different way. The president is in power for only 4 years, this can already influence his decisions on issues that are addressed for the long run. On top of it he has to worry about being reelected, I bet that the whole of 2011 and some part of 2012 will be only about this, leaving the president with limited time to address real issues, regarding the welfare of the country. We still don’t know who will be president, so I guess we will be held in suspense a little longer.

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