(Newser)
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Forget polls. If you want to know who's going to win in November, it's the economy, stupid. A new prediction model based on state-by-state economic data predicts that Mitt Romney will prevail with 320 electoral votes, snapping up nearly all of the key swing states, to President Obama's 217, reports Raw Story. When applied to the last 8 presidential elections, the model correctly predicted the winner, Politico reports.
The model takes into account things like incumbency and party affiliation, but "the apparent advantage of being a Democratic candidate and holding the White House disappears when the national unemployment rate hits 5.6%," one of the political science professors behind the report said. Their work also found that some much-discussed factors, like vice presidential candidates' home states, or the location of a party's convention, had no statistical impact. Still, the University of Colorado professors did acknowledge that their model could change if the economy sees big shifts between now and November.
