I would say nothing can predict this election. Yes, the economy is not great, but we are not in a recession. The unemployment rate is at historic low levels despite an rencet uptick. And we never had a black candidate nominated for either party. Noone knows how this will play out.

The hard ones to explain are 2000 (why did Gore do so poorly relative to income growth?) and 2004 (how did Bush do so well despite an unpopular war?)

You’re missing the point. It’s not about the vote margin since no one knows what the vote margin will be.

The Democratic candidate is typically up by 15% at this point. Why is he only up 3% this time?

Nonsense. Kerry was never up by 15 points, 5 points at the HEIGHT of his convention bounce. Gore never had a significant lead over longer time. You just cite Dukakis, but Obama is no Dukakis and we´re not stuck in 1988.
Obama is certainly not a “generic democrat” either, and it´s just stupid to compare different elections. Why? They are different. They follow different schemes.

That´s it. He´s up by 3-4 points, that may translate into a squeaker or a landslide- personally I think it will be something in between. 310-320 EV or so. That´s what he´d get if the election was hold today (unless he has bad luck with the Toss-Up states Florida, Montana, Nevada and Virginia).

And the most likely thing is that nothing will change. Momentum is a lie, especially in a race with a boring candidate like McCain.

I keep seeeing this thrown around, but it really isn’t true. The week of 29 Jul 04, Kerry was up by 2 pts. Bush beat him by 2%

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_2004/week_by_week_numbers

On July 27, 2000, Bush led Gore by 11 points, Gore beat him by .1% in that popular vote.

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/07/27/cnn.poll/index.html

The only Dem candidate with a massive lead at this point that went on to lose like you suggest is Dukakis, 1 isolated event 20 years ago, not a trend to fall back on.

In June of 1980, Carter was losing to Reagan 40-38.

In June of 1992, Bush was beating Clinton by 1.

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=ED60C36B-3048-5C12-004D1E289E0C84F4

Welcome to the fact based world…

Where does that stand currently, using Hibbs’s method?

they’re some sort of weighted average that favors the last year of the administration (which is why Carter looks so bad in 1980 and Reagan looks so good in 1984

I’m sure you’re right about the trends in those years, but, actually, they pull both Carter and Reagan closer to the average on this graph, not away from it.

There are only 4 outliers on this graph: Clinton ‘96, Gore 2000, Stevenson ‘52, and Humphrey ‘68. Everyone else, including Carter and Reagan, is almost touching a perfect linear trend from lower left to upper right. (In fact, if you superimpose the trend line on the graph and note how far off the outliers are, not from the 50% mark but from their expected performance given the income growth rate at that time, you see that Clinton and Gore fell above and below the trendline, respectively, by about 5% each, while Stevenson and Humphrey got absolutely creamed.)

But if Hibbs’s method makes Carter’s economic performance look unfairly bad, then the “real” figure would place Carter higher on the income growth axis, but no further right on the popular vote axis (which is an historical given); that would put him above and to the left of the trendline, indicating much worse performance than expected, while as it stands he is exactly on that line. Conversely, if economic growth under Reagan was actually less than it appears, that would push him down the economic scale, closer to the trendline (i.e., better, in his case), while as it stands he’s a bit to the left of it.

You will find that in every year other than 1956, when the unemployment rate rose in the second quarter, the incumbent party’s presidential candidate lost. When there was no change, the incumbent party’s candidate lost in a very close election. When the unemployment rate fell in the second quarter, the incumbent party’s candidate won.

The 1956 exception can probably be explained by the fact that the rise in the second quarter that year was slight and was quickly undone later in the year. In other years, rises and falls in the second quarter rate were part of longer trends in the same direction.

Why use the second quarter? On the theory that voters won’t base their behavior on the third quarter because the impact of any change hasn’t had time to sink in.

By the way, the U.S. unemployment rate started the second quarter of 2008 at 5% or 5.1% and ended it at 5.5%. By historical standards, that’s a significant change. Barack Obama is going to be the next president. If the election is close, it will be because he’s black.

Sometimes the polls keep moving even after both conventions, such as in 1976; see here for some historical graphs. Oddly enough, the generic congressional-preference polls don’t do bad in off-year elections; see here.

Bob:

The Democratic candidate is not always up 15 points at this point. Bill Clinton, Mike Dukakis, and Jimmy Carter (in 1976) were, but others weren’t. See the above link.

Jamie:

I don’t really have any particular insight into 2008; my main point was that, from historical evidence, you wouldn’t expect a landslide. I’m certainly willing to believe that Obama might be doing a few percentage points less than he “should” based on fundamentals, and I’m assuming that the efforts of both campaigns will be moving voters toward their fundamental preferences between now and November.

The Democratic candidate is typically up by 15% at this point. Why is he only up 3% this time?