Stakes for Jobs Figures Rise as Voters' Views Start to Solidify

Anne Lowrey & John Harwood, NYT, 7/6/12

Economists are slashing their already tepid growth forecasts. The unemployment rate seems stuck at around 8 percent. It is a tense time for the American economy. It is also the time that some experts believe the country's undecided voters are beginning to cement their presidential picks.

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"I don't know whether it is because American voters are myopic, or because they are forward-looking," said Andrew Gelman, the director of the Applied Statistics Center at Columbia University. Center at Columbia University. "But they appear to care most about change in the economy in the year preceding the election," rather than the state of the economy over an incumbent president's first four years.

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Analysts say voters give more heed to where the economy is headed than to its current state. That means a president overseeing a high but falling unemployment rate might have a better shot than a president overseeing a lower but increasing one.

To make the point, Mr. Gelman used the presidencies of Jimmy Carter, who did not win re-election, and Ronald Reagan, who did. "Under Carter, the economy did well and then got worse," he said. "Under Reagan, it got worse and then got better. If you average over four years, the economy was better under Carter than Reagan. But that is not how voters think."

Full: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/07/06/us/politics/jobs-numbers-could-affect-presidential-race.xml

Gelman's statistics blog: andrewgelman.com