Ronald Klain takes issue with “data wonks” and their forecasting models and argues that election outcomes are not just the product of underlying fundamentals.
“First, the models’ seemingly objective factors are loaded
with ambiguity and interpretation that inject political
handicapping… Second, the models cheat by capturing the performance of
the campaigns and the candidates via backdoor measures… Third, and perhaps most important, the U.S. doesn’t hold
presidential elections often enough in a given time frame to
provide sufficient data to model the drivers of an election
result.”
Factors “such as the state of the economy
and the ideology of the Republican candidate will certainly
affect the president’s chances of re-election. But in the end,
how the campaign unfolds — the messages the candidates offer,
the campaigns they run, their performance on the stump, their
get-out-the-vote efforts and their debate appearances — will
make the difference. Candidates and their campaigns will dictate
the outcome, not calculators.”
