Friday, November 13, 2009

Don't argue with a Professor

Seth brings the smarts today,

I've seen no small amount of hand-wringing from Democrats worried about the impact of the current double-digit unemployment on next year's midterm elections. By most estimates, even if there is robust economic growth for the next year, unemployment will still be quite high a year from now, maybe upwards of eight percent.* What kind of effect could this have on the election?

Actually, there's not much evidence unemployment has any effect at all.


I am one of those Democrats and I appreciate someone looking at actual data and getting to the truth. It's something that I try to do but, obviously, I have my own biases and I'm not always objective. From Seth's research it appears that economic growth (as measured by real disposable income) has a statistically significant impact on the presidential incumbents electoral chances. Go check out the full post though, there's some good data in there.

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