| Obama | McCain |
| 100.0% probability of winning | 0.0% probability of winning |
| Mean of 369 electoral votes | Mean of 169 electoral votes |
Yesterday’s analysis showed Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain by a mean of 369 to 169 electoral votes. Today we get 18 new polls in 14 states to weigh in on the race. But there were really no surprises in the polls—just some tightening up on both sides.
Today, after 100,000 simulated elections (based on 137 “current” state head-to-head surveying 95,785 respondents, mostly in the past seven days), Obama wins all 100,000 times. Obama still receives (on average) 369 to McCain’s 169 electoral votes. Obama would have a near-100.0% probability of winning if the election had been held today.
Detailed results for this analysis are available at Hominid Views.
Methods are described in the FAQ. The most recent version of this analysis can be found on this page.
Given that Obama will get elected one can only wish him the best because if infaltion takes off which it probably will after throwing all this money into the system his future may resemble that of Jimmy Carter’s.
TLG
@1 From stuff I’ve been reading, it appears that real economists (as opposed to amateurs like you) are more worried about deflation than inflation. However, let’s suppose the Bush Inflation accelerates. How would that be Obama’s fault? Oh sure, GOPers will try to blame him, but people are wising up to GOP lies.
The Bush Economy: An American Catastrophe
Since our Libertarian friend has raised the subject, let’s briefly discuss how badly Bush has fucked up the U.S. economy. Executive summary: For the rest of our lives.
About a year ago, Vanity Fair published an article by Joseph Stiglitz, who has a Ph.D. from M.I.T., is a professor of economics at Columbia University, has taught at Yale, Duke, Stanford, Princeton, and Oxford, was a Fulbright Fellow, chaired the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, and won a Nobel Prize. In other words, he knows more about economics than “Libertarian” or any of our other trolls.
“When we look back someday at the catastrophe that was the Bush administration, we will think of many things …. The damage done to the American economy does not make front-page headlines every day [it does now — R.R.], but the repercussions will be felt beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this page. …
“The economic effects of Bush’s presidency are more insidious than those of Hoover, harder to reverse, and likely to be longer-lasting … our grandchildren will still be … struggling with, the economic consequences of Mr. Bush. …
“[His] first major economic initiative … was a massive tax cut for the rich, enacted in June of 2001. … The inequities were compounded by a second tax cut, in 2003, this one skewed even more heavily toward the rich. Together these tax cuts … mean that in 2012 the average reduction for an American in the bottom 20 percent will be a scant $45, while those with incomes of more than $1 million will see their tax bills reduced by an average of $162,000. …
“Inequality is now widening in America … at a rate not seen in three-quarters of a century. A young male in his 30s today has an income, adjusted for inflation, that is 12 percent less than what his father was making 30 years ago. Some 5.3 million more Americans are living in poverty now than … when Bush became president. America’s class structure … [is] heading in the direction of Brazil’s and Mexico’s.
“In breathtaking disregard for the most basic rules of fiscal propriety, the administration continued to cut taxes even as it undertook expensive new spending programs and embarked on a financially ruinous ‘war of choice’ in Iraq. … Agricultural subsidies were doubled between 2002 and 2005. … Tax expenditures — the vast system of subsidies and preferences hidden in the tax code — increased more than a quarter. … Although it railed against entitlement programs for the needy, the administration enacted the largest increase in entitlements in four decades — the poorly designed Medicare prescription-drug benefit, intended as both an election-season bribe and a sop to the pharmaceutical industry. …
“You’ll still hear some … argue … the … tax cuts were meant to stimulate the economy, but this was never true. The bang for the buck — the amount of stimulus per dollar of deficit — was astonishingly low. Therefore, the job of economic stimulation fell to the Federal Reserve Board, which stepped on the accelerator in a historically unprecedented way, driving interest rates down to 1 percent. In real terms, taking inflation into account, interest rates actually dropped to negative 2 percent. The predictable result was a consumer spending spree. Looked at another way, Bush’s own fiscal irresponsibility fostered irresponsibility in everyone else. …
“All of this spending made the economy look better for a while …. The president undoubtedly hoped the reckoning would come sometime after 2008. It arrived 18 months early. …
“The president made a big deal out of the financial problems facing Social Security, but the system could have been repaired for a century with what we have bled into the sands of Iraq. Had even a fraction of that $2 trillion been spent on investments in education and technology, or improving our infrastructure, the country would be in a far better position economically to meet the challenges it faces in the future …. For a sliver of that $2 trillion we could have provided guaranteed access to higher education for all qualified Americans.
“The soaring price of oil is clearly related to the Iraq war. … It seems unbelievable now to recall that Bush-administration officials … suggested not only that Iraq’s oil revenues would pay for the war in its entirety … but also that war was the best way to ensure low oil prices. …
“The continuing reliance on oil, regardless of price, points to one more administration legacy: the failure to diversify America’s energy resources. … [T]he administration has pursued a policy of ‘drain America first’ — that is, take as much oil out of America as possible, and as quickly as possible, … leaving the country even more dependent on foreign oil in the future ….
“America’s budget and trade deficits have grown to record highs under President Bush. … During the past six years, America … has been borrowing to sustain its consumption. Meanwhile, investment in fixed assets — the plants and equipment that help increase our wealth — has been declining.
“What’s the impact of all this down the road? The growth rate in America’s standard of living will almost certainly slow, and there could even be a decline. … As confidence in the American economy has plummeted, so has the value of the dollar …. The disarray in our economic policies at home has parallels in our economic policies abroad. … Not surprisingly, protests over U.S. trade practices erupted … [b]ut America has refused to compromise …. This intransigence led to the collapse of talks designed to open up international markets. As in so many other areas, President Bush worked to undermine multilateralism … and to replace it with an America-dominated system. In the end, he failed to impose American dominance — but did succeed in weakening cooperation. …
“Globalization means that America’s economy and the rest of the world have become increasingly interwoven. Consider those bad American mortgages … billions in bad mortgages were hidden in portfolios in Europe, China, and Australia … global risk premiums soared, and investors pulled money out of … emerging markets, looking for safer havens. It will take years to sort out this mess.
“Meanwhile, we have become dependent on other nations for the financing of our own debt. … Cumulative borrowing from abroad during the six years of the Bush administration amounts to some $5 trillion. … [T]he Bush administration’s fiscal housekeeping has eroded our economic authority. …
“Whoever moves into the White House in January 2009 will face an unenviable set of economic circumstances. … [P]utting America’s economic house in order will be wrenching …. The most immediate challenge will be simply to get the economy’s metabolism back into the normal range. That will mean moving from a savings rate of zero (or less) to a more typical savings rate of, say, 4 percent. … Money saved is money not spent. If people don’t spend money, the economic engine stalls. If households curtail their spending quickly — as they may be forced to do as a result of the meltdown in the mortgage market — this could mean a recession; if done in a more measured way, it would still mean a protracted slowdown. The problems of foreclosure and bankruptcy posed by excessive household debt are likely to get worse …. And the federal government is in a bind: any quick restoration of fiscal sanity will only aggravate both problems.
“And in any case there’s more to be done. What is required is in some ways simple to describe: it amounts to ceasing our current behavior and doing exactly the opposite. It means not spending money that we don’t have, increasing taxes on the rich, reducing corporate welfare, strengthening the safety net for the less well off, and making greater investment in education, technology, and infrastructure.
“When it comes to taxes, we should be trying to shift the burden away from things we view as good, such as labor and savings, to things we view as bad, such as pollution. With respect to the safety net, we need to remember that the more the government does to help workers improve their skills and get affordable health care the more we free up American businesses to compete in the global economy. …
“Some portion of the damage done by the Bush administration could be rectified quickly. A large portion will take decades to fix — and that’s assuming the political will to do so exists …. Think of the interest we are paying, year after year, on the almost $4 trillion of increased debt burden — even at 5 percent, that’s an annual payment of $200 billion, two Iraq wars a year forever. Think of the taxes that future governments will have to levy to repay even a fraction of the debt we have accumulated. And think of the widening divide between rich and poor in America, a phenomenon that goes beyond economics and speaks to the very future of the American Dream.
“In short, there’s a momentum here that will require a generation to reverse. … Will Herbert Hoover still deserve his dubious mantle? I’m guessing that George W. Bush will have earned one more grim superlative.”
(Quoted under fair use)
Yes, that’s a long article, and makes grim reading, but these are things every American needs to know.
The U.S. Economy at Risk for Deflation
In an article datelined Oct. 30, 2008, Business Week’s senior economist discusses deflation:
“The U.S. economy has all the ingredients … for a deflationary cycle, without strong financial markets to cushion the blow
“By James Cooper
“When policymakers at the Federal Reserve voted to slash interest rates at their Oct. 28-29 meeting, it’s a good bet the threat of deflation played a role in the decision. That concern is bound to get more attention in coming months ….
“Deflation is an economic disease caused by a sustained drop in overall demand and falling prices that forces businesses to cut prices ever deeper. It was last seen in the U.S. in the 1930s ….
“Deflation is a nasty situation … especially onerous for borrowers. … [P]eople who … owe money have to pay back loans in dollars [worth more] than the dollars they borrowed. For new loans, it raises the … cost of credit, the opposite of what monetary policy needs to do to combat falling demand. …
“The last threat [of deflation] in the U.S. followed the tech bust and recession in the early 2000s. Back then, … Ben Bernanke said … ‘A healthy, well-capitalized banking system and smoothly functioning financial markets are an important first line of defense against deflationary shocks.’ Without that backstop this time, the U.S. faces a new round of deflationary forces.
“All of the factors that fueled earlier inflation worries have sharply reversed course: Consumers are retrenching. Job and wage growth are weakening at faster rates. The stronger dollar is pushing down import prices. Oil prices have plunged, and … commodity prices have collapsed. … Yearly consumer inflation … is set to fall to close to zero by early next year. …
“Asset-price deflation is especially corrosive. Since their peaks, the Wilshire 5000 stock index has fallen 40% despite the Oct. 28 surge, and the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Home Price index is down 20%. Those declines are part of a broad deleveraging ….
“This forced casting off of debt is fueling the sale of homes, stocks, and other [assets]at fire-sale prices while shutting off new lending in a … spiral that destroys wealth and depresses demand. The virulence of this deleveraging process makes this business cycle even more susceptible to deflation.
“The Fed’s efforts to keep deflation at bay are already massive. Through Oct. 22 it has lent some $700 billion to bank and nonbank institutions. That’s apart from the Treasury’s $250 billion injection of capital into banks and its planned purchases of illiquid mortgage-related securities. Plus, rate cuts, totaling 4.25 percentage points since September 2007 and including the half-point reduction on Oct. 29, have taken the target rate down to the same 1% it hit earlier in the decade.
“The problem: While credit markets are starting to thaw, they are still sufficiently dysfunctional to prevent the demand-boosting effects of rate cuts from reaching the economy. Until they do, deflation will be a threat that could force the Fed into even more unconventional policy efforts in 2009.”
(Quoted under fair use.)
Of course, deflation isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if it corrects for over-inflation and takes place gradually without rapid swings one way or another. But then that presumes that nobody owes money on assets which are deflated. When that happens, disaster occurs, as owners are forced to sell assets (or they are forclosed) which they otherwise could have held onto until their values rose again.
That’s why housing policy and mortgage financing requires such a careful balance and reasonable regulation, a course which Bush apparantly neglected to take in getting his MBA.
@2 RR, who is smarter than anyone else, can’t seem to figure out how Obama will get the blame if inflation heats up to record levels. RR also is a guy who seems to think that Galveston, Texas has hills. Hope his econ knowledge is better than his geography.
Hey RR the ground work for the inflation that Carter got blamed for was started during the Vietnam War, mainly while Nixon was Prez and then run up during Ford’s Adminstartion which came out with the W.I.N. button. That stood for Whip Inflation Now, but that didn’t work. It hit big time during Carter’s go round and he generally gets the blame. But you are the most knowing so have some fun and explain to us all the past history of inflation. I am sure your economic history studies must have been significant.
TLG