David Brady on the 2012 US Election

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🗓️ 23 July 2012

⏱️ 66 minutes

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Summary

David Brady, Professor of Political Science and the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the November elections in the United States. Brady argues that while the economy favors the challenger, Mitt Romney, current polling data gives a slight edge to President Obama in both the popular vote and the electoral college. The data all suggest that House will stay Republican and the Senate will either go slightly Republican or be tied. Brady also discusses why this may change over the next few months, the importance of the independent vote, and Romney's strategy in choosing a running mate.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts
0:13.9	of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org
0:21.2	where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast, and find links to
0:26.5	another information related to today's conversation. Our email address is mailadicontalk.org. We'd
0:33.6	love to hear from you.
0:36.7	Today is July 10th, 2012, and my guest is David Brady. David Brady has many titles. He's
0:45.2	at the Hoover Institution. He's in the Department of Political Science at Stanford and the Graduate
0:49.7	School of Business at Stanford, and if you want us to follow his titles, and how I've made
0:53.5	fun of him in the past, you can listen to past podcasts with Dave. Dave, welcome back to
0:57.1	Econ Talk. Thanks. Our topic today is November 2012. What's going to happen in the election?
1:04.6	And we're going to mainly focus on the presidential election, although I'll be interested in your
1:08.6	thoughts on the Senate and House as well. But let's start with the President. We're
1:12.8	in July. We're at a period where Romney has yet to pick Vice President. So that's where
1:19.0	we are for those you listening, perhaps a little bit later than the live version of this.
1:24.2	What's going on with the President? What's going on with the challenger?
1:28.0	Well, the way I like to think about this is you're in the campaign season now, and in
1:33.3	some elections, the state of the economy is in a situation where either the incumbent's
1:40.2	going to win or the incumbents in trouble. And this is an election where the incumbent's
1:46.0	in trouble. So it's going to be a close election, most of the economic models that I use,
1:53.7	free model and Doug Hibbs model. Those models show the election pretty close. Though Hibbs
1:59.4	model includes both the economy and troops abroad. Doug Hibbs model predicts that Obama
2:06.0	will lose the Ray Fair model, the A.A. Oleconomist predicts it'll be close to 50-50. I think it's
	...

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