Yale University economist Ray Fair has been using economic conditions to predict election outcomes for almost forty years. Since January 2015, Fair’s model has been predicting a Republican victory in the upcoming presidential election.
The Yale professor’s formula of economic forecasting has resulted an average prediction error between 2.5 and 3.5 percentage points in the 25 presidential elections since 1916. In 2012, he predicted Obama’s percentage of the popular vote within 2 points.
Factors for Fair’s presidential predictions include whether or not there is an incumbent running, how long a party has held control of the White House, a “slight but persistent” bias toward the Republican Party, and, chiefly, the state of the economy.
In his April update, Fair’s model continues to show that the 2016 race for the White House will result in a Republican victory. However, he acknowledges that this year’s prediction could “be trumped by other factors”. Fair exclusively told The Daily Caller, “it may be that this time personalities dominate economic factors in determining how people vote for president.”
Donald Trump has clinched the number of delegates necessary to secure the Republican Party’s nomination, but many have concerns about his temperament and ability to assume the position as the leader of the free world.
In regards to predicting how big of an impact this will have on the outcome of the election, Fair told TheDC that “there is no way to test for this; we will just have to wait and see.”