UCLA political scientists, Lynn Vavreck shows in a post at Erza Klein’s WaPo blog that the unemployment rate is not the best predictor of election outcomes. Instead, the place to look is GDP growth:
The data suggest that for every 1 percent growth in GDP from the fourth to the second quarter of an election year, an incumbent party can expect to pick up an additional 2.5 percentage points on Election Day.
The post is worth a look (and it has two graphs to boot!).
