Republican Challenger Research Articles

A Tale of Two Cities Revisited

This article examines the Philadelphia Mayoral Election of 2003, which was a re-match of the 1999 contest. The author contends that while Philadelphia remained a divided city, partisanship rather than race best explains the election’s outcome. By “nationalizing” the election, Democratic Mayor John Street tied his moderate Republican challenger, Sam Katz, to the unpopular Republican administration in Washington, D.C. The revelation of a recording device in Mayor Street’s office, rather than damaging Street, galvanized his African-American base while bringing a number of white Democrats back into the Street camp. These factors, along with a massive voter registration drive by Democratic Party operatives, transformed the party’s narrow victory of 1999 into a landslide four years later.

“Our 1789”

Abstract Were the events of 1975–77 in Lebanon, commonly thought of today as an internecine sectarian war between Christians and Muslims, more comparable to the furies of revolution and counterrevolution? This article reframes the Lebanese National Movement's (LNM) “Transitional Program” as a revolutionary, anti-colonial, and radical republican challenge that sought to implement a new constitutional order based on popular sovereignty. Internally, it severed the link between sectarian affiliation and political representation that was the hallmark of the Lebanese regime. Externally, the program announced a commitment to popular struggle against imperially sustained settler colonialism in Palestine while calling into question the authoritarian practices of most regional regimes. Drawing from periodicals, memoirs, diplomatic sources, and interviews, this article considers the efforts of the LNM-PLO alliance to push the Transitional Program in the political sphere and on the battlefield. In turn, it demonstrates how the United States, Syria, Israel, and Lebanese counterrevolutionaries worked in concert to ensure that the sectarian regime would be preserved at the moment of its greatest challenge. Against a historiography that either dismisses the venture as predestined to fail or considers the period only within the shackles of post-defeat melancholia, it reevaluates the history of one of the most explicit emancipatory challenges to the Arab order.

The Far-Right Threat in the United States: A European Perspective

The rise of Donald Trump has weakened the dominance of the “American exceptionalism” paradigm in analyses of U.S. politics, but the pivot to views of the United States as part of a global trend toward democratic backsliding ignores important, uniquely “American” cultural, historical, and institutional attributes that make the country more at risk for democratic erosion than most other established democracies. This short article puts Trump, and his Republican Party, into the broader comparative perspective of (European) far-right studies. I argue that Trump in many ways fits the “fourth wave” of postwar far-right politics, lay out the unique challenge that the United States is facing in terms of democratic erosion, and draw on the case of Viktor Orbán in Hungary to learn lessons for the United States. The article ends with some suggestions of how democrats (not just Democrats) should address the far-right Republican challenge to U.S. democracy.

Gone For Good: Deindustrialization, White Voter Backlash, and US Presidential Voting

Globalization and automation have contributed to deindustrialization and the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs, yielding important electoral implications across advanced democracies. Coupling insights from economic voting and social identity theory, we consider how different groups in society may construe manufacturing job losses in contrasting ways. We argue that deindustrialization threatens dominant group status, leading some white voters in affected localities to favor candidates they believe will address economic distress and defend racial hierarchy. Examining three US presidential elections, we find white voters were more likely to vote for Republican challengers where manufacturing layoffs were high, whereas Black voters in hard-hit localities were more likely to vote for Democrats. In survey data, white respondents, in contrast to people of color, associated local manufacturing job losses with obstacles to individual upward mobility and with broader American economic decline. Group-based identities help explain divergent political reactions to common economic shocks.

Texas Supreme Court 2020 Election Litigation: List of Cases with Hyperlinks to Dockets and Opinions

The 2020 elections were the most heavily litigated in U.S. history. Texas is no exception. This paper presents comprehensive data for election law cases filed in the Supreme Court of Texas (SCOTX), whether they resulted in an opinion or not. As of Nov. 9, 2020, the Texas Supreme Court has issued at total of 17 opinions in 31 election law cases, including concurrences and dissents. One member of the nine-member court, Justice John Devine, was a particularly active dissenter, with both separate opinions and with dissents merely noted on the docket. Some of the election-related cases were highly contentious and attracted ample media attention, as well as a total of 50 amicus curiae briefs and letters. The array of legal disputes before the Texas Supreme Court encompassed wrangling over ballot access by candidates (including those of minor parties), a dispute with the City of Houston over cancellation of the GOP’s in-person convention, the legal uncertainty regarding voters’ eligibility to vote by mail in times of pandemic, and efforts to squelch local election officials’ innovations in the management of elections, such as promotion of absentee voting as a pandemic mitigation strategy, drop-off locations for mail ballots, and drive-thru voting in Harris County. With respect to voting rights, the all-Republican Court ruled in a manner to restrict voting, consonant with President Trump’s rhetoric about voter fraud as also echoed by leading GOP politicians in Texas. The Republican Attorney General and is his army of litigators performed a leading role in that effort, both in public communication, and in state and federal courts. However, the Texas Supreme Court did not always favor Republican petitioners, rejecting requests for relief on various grounds, including lack of jurisdiction in one case and unjustified delays in bringing their complaints to the court. Not all of the controversies presented to the Texas high court led to decisions on the merits. Noteworthy is the Court’s rejection of Republican challenges to drive-thru voting in Harris County without ruling on whether the practice conforms with the Texas Election Code, and without resolving whether the validity of more than 120,000 ballots already cast by drive-thru voters was affected. Four sitting members of the court, including Chief Justice Nathan Hecht, were themselves on the ballots in 2020, and in the end comfortably won reelection even though Texas was said to be “in play” in the lead-up to early voting.

Writing and Democracy in the Early United States

Writing and Democracy in the Early United States

The 1891 McKinley-Campbell Ohio Gubernatorial Debate and the Draw That Still Splits America

The 1891 McKinley-Campbell Ohio Gubernatorial Debate and the Draw That Still Splits America Robert Klotz (bio) Thick smoke from a fifty-gun salute drifted over the heads of the approximately twelve thousand spectators who had gathered for a debate in Ada, Ohio, on October 8, 1891. The smoke was the only thing that muted the sparkle of the day. The previous night's rain had given way to sunshine. The village of Ada was covered in red, white, and blue decorations. As James Campbell began speaking, he was interrupted by the brass band playing as part of a late arriving club. Campbell said, "We will suspend till the rest of the State gets in."1 Everybody wanted in to witness the momentous candidate debate. The outcome would shape American history and more than a century later, the debate still echoes an enduring division in American politics. It was an unlikely year for such a historic event since 1891 was an off, off-year election with no scheduled presidential or congressional races. The governor's race in Ohio was the only real story, but what a story it was. Even if the center of US population had recently drifted a few miles west of Ohio, the center of US politics remained in Ohio. Two rising stars with national political ambitions were participating in the only debate of the campaign. The press coalesced around one historical analogy: "The debate between Campbell and McKinley to-day in Ohio attracts about as much attention as the famous Douglas-Lincoln debates in 1858."2 [End Page 32] competitors The two participants in the debate had parallel careers. Both Republican challenger William McKinley and Democratic incumbent James Campbell fought for the Union in the Civil War. They then proceeded into careers in the law. Both married and became known as devoted husbands. Both were lifelong residents who set themselves up for careers in Ohio politics with McKinley based in Stark County in northeast Ohio and Campbell in Butler County in southwest Ohio. The first elective office for each was serving a two-term stint as elected county prosecutor. When the opportunity presented itself, both made successful runs for Congress. Seen as rising stars, McKinley and Campbell became targets for the perpetual gerrymandering of congressional districts by the Ohio State Legislature. In 1884, the Democratic legislature tried to gerrymander McKinley out of Congress by replacing Republican areas in his district with Democratic ones to make it a majority Democratic district. The race finished in a virtual tie with McKinley initially seated but later removed by a Democratic Congress that threw out enough of his votes to seat the Democrat. In 1886, the now Republican legislature reinstated McKinley's original district and tried to gerrymander Campbell out of Congress by adding Republican areas to his constituency. Campbell managed to win 15,303 to 15,301. In 1888, faced with a difficult district and Republican momentum, Campbell decided to leave Congress and focus on improving his finances.3 In 1890, the Democratic legislature designed a gerrymander to defeat McKinley, who put up a valiant fight but could not overcome his new huge party disadvantage. The battles of McKinley and Campbell with gerrymanders had raised their national profiles. Gerrymandered out of office, McKinley and Campbell plotted their next moves to reach their goal of becoming president of the United States. Choosing an office that would make him immune to gerrymandering, James Campbell decided to run for governor of Ohio in 1889. He defeated Republican incumbent Joe Foraker with 50.7 percent of the two-party vote. Having just won a prominent Republican-leaning electoral battlefield, he was regularly asked about a potential run for president or vice president. Although he dismissed the talk, Campbell traveled to other states and otherwise acted like a potential candidate. He decided to run for another two-year term as governor in 1891. [End Page 33] For his part, McKinley considered running for governor in 1891, running for Congress in a new district in 1892, or just flat-out running for president in 1892. His adviser, Mark Hanna, encouraged him to run for governor to earn his electoral bona fides. McKinley initially resisted. He...

Does Predisposition Toward Disgust Affect Emotional Response to Political Leaders? Evidence from the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election

ObjectiveWe explore the effects of trait disgust sensitivity and induced disgust on emotional response to political leaders. We assert that disgust sensitivity, especially in response to pathogen‐based stimuli (e.g., insects, feces, and vomit), will affect an individual's interaction with his or her political environment, including political leaders.MethodsWe analyze the effect of individual predispositions in response to stimuli indicating the presence of pathogens on emotional response to President Barack Obama, as well as his Republican challenger during the 2012 election, Mitt Romney. Study 1 utilizes cross‐sectional data to determine how disgust sensitivity relates to how President Obama made respondents feel. Study 2 analyzes experimental data considering the effect of a disgusting odorant (butyric acid) on emotional response to Obama and Romney.ResultsFindings suggest disgust plays an important role in emotional response to political leaders both through trait sensitivity and when induced and it is particularly relevant to emotional responses to President Obama.ConclusionsDisgust, both as a trait sensitivity and as experimentally induced by an odorant, influences emotional response to the political environment, including high‐profile political leaders.

A High-Wire Crusade: Republicans and the War on Poverty, 1966

Abstract:During 1966, the Republican Party launched a largely successful challenge to Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty.” Republican candidates pursued an anti–War on Poverty midterm strategy, which made antipoverty programs the symbol of Great Society liberalism, rather than its more popular programs, such as Medicare or the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Moreover, in Congress and on the campaign trail, Republicans offered well-crafted alternatives—such as their “Opportunity Crusade”—to offset charges of negativism and elitism that had dogged the Grand Old Party (GOP) since the creation of the New Deal in the 1930s. Significantly, while the War on Poverty survived the year, the Republican minority was unexpectedly successful in making important changes to the Economic Opportunity Act during the antipoverty legislation’s renewal. Overall, the Republican challenge to the War on Poverty in 1966, boded ill for the program’s longevity when the GOP finally secured the levers of power.

Authentic Moral Leadership, Attributed Charisma, and Cynicism about Change in the Context of a Presidential Election: Understanding the Moderating Role of Crisis Perceptions

The current study examines authentic moral leadership in the setting of a U.S. presidential election, with the Democratic incumbent and Republican challenger in 2012. Pre and post-election data were collected yielding 432 matched responses. Perceptions of authentic moral leadership were positively related to attributions of charisma, with crisis perceptions having a moderating effect. Pre-election perceptions of the incumbent’s authentic moral leadership had a negative effect on cynicism about change, and a negative indirect effect on post-election cynicism about change, through pre-election attributions of charisma. The implications of the research for understanding authentic moral leadership and attributed charisma are discussed.

The Message Matters: The Influence of Fact-Checking on Evaluations of Political Messages

Fact-checks have become prolific in U.S. campaigns over the last ten years. As a result, fact-checks have become one of the easiest ways for individuals to analyze the truthfulness of politicians’ statements. The increase in both fact-checking and its accessibility to voters led us to ask whether fact-checks influence individuals’ attitudes and evaluations of political candidates and campaign messages. To examine the impact of fact-checking, we conduct two original experiments using the 2012 Ohio Senate race between Republican challenger Josh Mandel and Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown. The first experiment utilized a sample of over 300 students during the fall of 2013. The second experiment is a crowdsourced Amazon Mechanical Turk Sample in the fall of 2014. We find the content of fact-check messages are influential in altering assessments of candidates’ advertisements. We also find the source of the fact-check only modestly impacts assessments. The findings illustrate the potential power of fact-checks to influence the effectiveness of candidates’ messages and reaffirm the important role the news media plays in validating candidate claims and arguments during political campaigns.

Functions and Topics of 2012 American Presidential Advertising: An Increase in Attacks?

The American presidential campaign in 2008 saw a sharp upturn in attacks in advertising: Was that an anomalous result or does in presage a trend in presidential advertising? Notably, the increase in negativity in TV spots was not accompanied by an increase in attacks in other media, such as televised debates. The 2012 American presidential general election featured Democratic incumbent Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney. In sharp contrast to earlier campaigns (those prior to 2008), the two candidates combined used more attacks (66%) than acclaims (32%); this essay argues that this shift reflects a sea change in presidential election advertising prompted by the rising costs of presidential campaigns and candidates’ recent decision to decline federal campaign financing and raise money throughout the campaign.

Non-Elite Twitter Sources Rarely Cited in Coverage

Agenda building, the process by which news outlets determine what cover, is one of the most widely studied topics in mass communication research.1 As McCombs pointed out, however, the dramatic changes brought on by the Internet require additional examinations into which are influential in the agenda building process.2 According the American Journalism Review, Twitter is one Internet-based source that seems particularly likely change the dynamics of media agenda building. Indeed, because reporters are relying on Twitter to story ideas, sources, connect with local communities, network and share and break news,3 the site may play increasingly important role in determining which issues receive media attention and which do not.4Perhaps the most conspicuous illustration of Twitter 's ability influence journalists occurred during the final weeks of the 2012 American presidential election campaign. In the first debate between President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Romney, Romney claimed:I'm gonna stop the subsidy PBS....I like PBS, I like Big Bird.... But I'm not going keep on spending money on things borrow money from China pay for it.5Within five minutes of remarks, #BigBird was one of the fastest trending topics on Twitter-with 17,000 tweets per minute mentioning the popular Sesame Street character.6 Supporters of PBS took advantage of this spike in interest and quickly created parody accounts such as @SadBigBird and @FiredBigBird mock statements. Almost immediately after the debate, President Obama entered the fray by tweeting, Thank goodness somebody is finally getting tough on Big Bird.7The cascade of Twitter activity sparked scores of newspaper stories across the United States. USA Today, for example, ran a story titled Romney's 'Big Bird' comment stirs social media.8 The Los Angeles Times published article called Mitt plan cut Big Bird's funding sparks Twitter frenzy.9 Not be outdone, the Global Post wrote #BigBird: Romney provokes Twitter backlash.10The case of Romney and Big Bird illustrates that a few thousands tweets can create instantaneous avalanche of media attention. But how common is it for Twitter exert this kind of influence over media coverage? This study attempts answer this question by providing empirical assessment of how political reporters used Twitter find story ideas and develop sources by tracking newspaper mentions of tweets during the 2012 American election campaign.11Literature ReviewSources in Media CoverageAccording Franklin et al., an understanding of the relationship between journalists and their sits at the heart of journalism studies.12 Shoemaker and Reese define news as external of raw material, such as speeches, interviews, corporate reports and government hearings.13 Beginning with the work of Sigal, numerous studies of news production have attempted clarify the role that these external suppliers play in structuring media coverage.14 Most notably, Gans described the relationship between journalists and their as a complicated, yet mutually beneficial, dance-where seek out journalists in order reach the media's audience and journalists nurture relationships with in order establish reliable channels of access newsworthy information. According Gans, the heavy informational demands and tight time constraints of the news business inevitably mean that this dance is led by rather than by journalists.15 Indeed, subsequent research has demonstrated that often shape news reports more than journalists themselves.16As a result of the fact that journalists so frequently follow their lead, are seen be essential components of media agenda building. Unsurprisingly, therefore, researchers have conducted numerous studies of sourcing patterns in attempt identify the actors who are influential in shaping the media's agenda. …

Assessing the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election

Like all but three presidents since the end of the Second World War, Barack Obama was reelected in 2012. (1) Obama triumphed over Republican challenger Mitt Romney by 332-206 in the Electoral College and by 51 to 47% in the national popular vote. Obama secured a second term with fewer electoral votes and fewer popular votes than he had accrued in the 2008 election cycle, becoming only the second Democrat in U.S. history, the other being Franklin Roosevelt, to win a majority of the popular vote more than once. Most preelection polls showed modest advantages for Obama (relative to Romney) over the course of the campaign, but the contest between the two contenders, at least according to preelection polls that registered voter preferences, remained close throughout (Panagopoulos 2013). The president faced several headwinds in his reelection quest. First, despite signs of economic recovery from the severe recession that began in 2008, the economy remained fragile. Economic growth was anemic. During 2009, gross domestic product (GDP) growth fell by 2.3% but only rebounded in 2010 and 2011 by 2.5% and 1.8%, respectively. This compares with an average GDP growth rate of 3.2% for all years from 1946 through 2011. (2) Unemployment tells a similar story. The unemployment rate stood at 8.2% in January 2012, about 2.4 percentage points higher than the average for all months from 1948 through 2011, according to data provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (3) Thus, on the economic front, often among the first factors that analysts look at in predicting and accounting for election outcomes, Barack Obama did not appear an overly successful steward. And the public seemed to agree that the president's economic leadership was lackluster. From mid-May 2009 onward, Gallup polls showed more voters disapproved of the president's handling of the economy than approved. (4) But elections are not only about economics. The passage of other important legislation may affect a president's reelection prospects, which is one reason Paul Light (1982), among others, urges presidents to hit the ground running to secure major legislative accomplishments. In the legislative domain, Obama was also challenged. His signature piece of domestic legislation, health care reform (or so-called Obamacare), was controversial. Early in the debate on health care reform, pluralities of voters disapproved of the president's job in handling the issue according to Gallup. Over the first six months of 2012, well into the reelection season, disapproval on health care ran ahead of approval by 15-25 percentage points in almost all Gallup polls. (5) Additionally, the passage of Obamacare contributed to a major voter backlash against the administration and to the emergence of the Tea Party, which led to a resounding election defeat for the Democrats in the 2010 midterm congressional elections. Looking at general indicators of public opinion would not necessarily indicate that Obama would be a formidable competitor. His overall job disapproval ratings tended to outpace his approval numbers by about two percentage points on average during the first six months of 2012, although his favorability ratings were stronger with about a four percentage-point edge for favorable versus unfavorable evaluations. Such modest favorability advantages do not portend a strong electoral showing. Despite these challenges for Obama, elections are contests between two candidates. In some respects, Obama likely benefitted from disarray and other developments in the GOP. First, Romney was not the darling of the Republican right wing, the strongest faction within the party. Romney had to contest for the nomination, along with other contenders including former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, and Texas Governor Rick Perry, who, at one point or another were frontrunners in the GOP field. Although Romney emerged without clear evidence that the primaries divided the party, Obama appeared to have more enthusiastic backing from Democrats than Romney had among Republicans. …

Race and the 2012 Election

Introduction: A Post-Racial Society?President Barack Obama was re-elected forty-fourth president of the United States for a second term in the 2012 election against Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Obama gained votes among Asians and Latinos; Latinos represented one in ten votes nationwide who overwhelming supported Obama by a three-to-one mar- gin over Romney (up from 61% in 2008). Minority voters accounted for 45 percent of Obama's support, reflecting the expanded power of African Americans and Latinos in national elections. Strong Latino turnout made previous swing states like Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada safe for Democrats in presidential politics. And even Texas, a solid Republican stronghold, may turn purple in 2016 driven by the Latino vote. Not only has America elected an African American president for two terms but also Obama won both the 2008 and 2012 elections with solid majorities. On several fronts, this was a first for the United States. This mini-symposium examines various dimensions of the ostensible role of race in the 2012 election.In 2012 Obama's campaign message to keep moving the nation forward replaced the theme of hope which dominated the 2008 election, but the strategic elements of Obama's ground game in key battleground states were similar. His army of volunteers mobilizing voters with door to door visits and phone calls sealed Obama's vic- tory in the 2012 election, as it had in 2008, not to mention the billion dollars in campaign contributions that broke all previous records and effectively ended the nation's system of public financing of presidential campaigns. In soundly defeating Romney, Obama won nearly every battleground state, including Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Wisconsin (with a narrow advantage in Florida).A common, and compelling, narrative in the public discourse is that America has become a society as demonstrated in back-to-back elections of an African American president and seventy-three African American and Latino members of Congress, a record, serving in the U.S. Congress. While such outcomes are ostensibly consistent with the post-racial description, the underlying dynamics that produced these results, and other issues of process, policy, and governance in con- temporary American politics, suggest otherwise.While white non-Hispanics made up 77 percent of the electorate in 2004 and 74 percent in 2008, they comprised just 72 percent in 2012, as minority voting rates rose. In recent presidential elections, a majority of whites voted for the Republican presidential candidate. The conver- gence of race and party affiliation is notable. Thus, a counterargument made by some scholars-including a number of papers in this symposium-contends that the supposed dawn of a post-racial America is probably more apparent than real. A fuller understanding of the role of race in the 2012 election requires careful attention to how its implications may be manifest, or latent, in ideas and attitudes, institutions, and practices of American politics (see also Smith and King 2011).While Obama overcame viperous attacks in both elec- tions to win by a convincing margin, race remains an important undercurrent of American life, politics, and electoral politics. Kinder and Sanders (1996) reveal that racial resentment remains the most powerful determinant of white opinion on such racially charged issues as wel- fare, affirmative action, and school desegregation. Tesler and Sears (2010) find that race and racial attitudes were more important in voting in the 2008 presidential election than at any time in recent history. They also argue public opinion about health care, and the Affordable Care, was connected to Obama, in part because of his race. The papers in this symposium suggest the 2012 election, like 2008, continued to be influenced by racial attitudes. Public opinion about candidates and many policy issues, from immigration to electoral rules, remains divided by race. …

Varieties of No

Considerable scholarly attention has been paid to the putatively corrosive power of negativity on American politics and culture. This article focuses, instead, not on the ethics of negativity but on the less studied distinctions between simpler and complex negativity strategies, rhetorically and performatively. Negativity strategies are examined across a continuum from the conventional (i.e., simple, credibility-damaging attack) to more complex negativities marked by irony, inspiration, and poetics. The article’s frame of reference includes, but is not limited to, the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign that matched incumbent Democrat Barack Obama against his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney.

Introduction: Special Issue on Jewish Demography in the United States

Social scientists played a prominent role in the 2012 United States presidential campaign, both advising candidates on strategy for engaging their base and developing widely discussed narratives about the race between President Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney. One of the most influential narrators was a statistical analyst, Nate Silver, a columnist and blogger for the New York Times. His blog, FiveThirtyEight (http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/author/ nate-silver/), provided statistical summaries and analyzed poll data about the presidential race. Along with the poll data, Silver gave probability estimates of the likelihood of each candidate winning. Although routinely excoriated by advocates for candidates who appeared to be losing, his predictions of the election outcome proved to be highly accurate. His methods, as well as his approach to reporting on surveys, are relevant to our study of the socio-demographic state of American Jews. Key to Silver’s approach, developed in his recent book, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don’t (2012) is acknowledging the complexity and the difficulty of predictions. Even with the aid of statistics, prediction of societal trends is difficult. Good prediction is the result of both theory and data, usually multiple forms of data. Silver’s cautionary approach is especially relevant in the case of ‘‘predicting’’ the Jewish population of the United States. Because of the nature of Jewish identity—as a religious-ethnic identity that is both ascribed and achieved—as well as the small number of Jews relative to the overall population, US Jews are difficult to locate and track over time. The challenge for socio-demographers of American Jewry is to use survey data and other sources to

The Miserable Presidential Election of 2012: A First Party-Term Incumbent Survives

This article examines the influences on the 2012 presidential election that led to the closely decided re-election of Barack Obama. Partisan parity, ideological polarization, a hyper-competitive campaign, and approval ratings for the incumbent, plus pre-convention preference polls that were evenly split, were strong signs that the 2012 presidential election would be close. The economic record of the Obama presidency, however, favored the election of Republican challenger Mitt Romney. On the other hand, President Obama had the advantages of a first party-term incumbent, and this first party-term advantage was the major reason for President Obama’s reelection. As a first party-term president, fewer voters blamed President Obama for the nation’s economic problems than blamed his predecessor. Of the 12 first party-term incumbent presidents to seek reelection since 1900, 11 won and only one lost. The election of a new presidential party is tantamount to electing a president to an 8-year term.

ELECTION FORECAST: A LOOK BACK AT THE TIME FOR CHANGE MODEL AND THE 2012 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

The Time for Change Model once again correctly predicted the winner of the US presidential election. In late August, before the Republican and Democratic national conventions, the model predicted that President Obama would win 50.6% of the major party vote to 49.4% for his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney. When all the votes are counted, it now appears that Obama will end up with approximately 51.8% of the vote, making the Time for Change Model one of the nation's most accurate statistical forecasting models. Despite the fact that this prediction was made more than two months before Election Day, the Time for Change forecast was more accurate than the results of many national polls conducted immediately before the election including the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls both of which predicted a popular vote win for Mitt Romney.

Sandy’s Aftermath

If the pundits are to be believed, the mega­storm that blasted the East Coast late last month contributed to President Barack Obama’s reelection by pausing the presidential campaigns and putting Republican challenger Mitt Romney at a disadvantage. Except in relation to energy, Obama and Romney talked little about science policy during the campaign. It is now worth revisiting their thinking regarding science, technology, research, and education, as laid out in responses to questions posed to the campaigns by C&EN Assistant Managing Editor for Government & Policy Susan Morrissey and Science Debate, a nonpartisan, volunteer-based grassroots organization that aims to engage the presidential candidates in a discussion of the urgent science and technology questions facing the country (C&EN, Oct. 8, page 32). Because the economy will immediately hold much of Obama’s attention, it is up to scientists, researchers, and educators who support Obama’s position to hold the next Obama Administration’s feet ...