Who Will Win the Presidential Election in 2016?

By Miles Williams

B.A. (History & Political Science; Philosophy), Greenville College

Political Science Graduate Student, Eastern Illinois University

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past several months, you ought to know that there is a presidential election just more than a year away—and don’t we have quite the lineup! If you’ve been privy to the media’s reporting on the 2016 race, you no doubt are aware of the wild and crazy horserace afoot. However, is it really a wild and crazy horserace? The media would have us think so, but the media also have to put on a show to keep the public’s attention. The reality is, much of the drama unfolding on screen means nothing in the long-term. What Trump said, Carson said, Bernie said, Hillary said, etc., makes for interesting television drama but little else. Moreover, the polls we see in the media tell us nothing of long-term value—polls don’t even start becoming accurate predictors until 100 days out from the election (Wlezien and Erikson 2002). Just a few factors determine who wins elections, and these factors have to do with national conditions; not campaigns.

What the Literature Says
Let me be clear about one thing: campaigns can matter (i.e., debates, conventions, etc.); but they impact the final election results substantially less than national conditions (Holbrook 1994). In order for campaigns to exert major influence, either one candidate would have to totally botch their campaign, or the other would have to be exceptionally appealing. Campaigns could also make a difference if the presidential race is close (Abramowitz 2015). Nevertheless, the majority of extant research on this topic argues in favor of the significant and powerful effect of national conditions in comparison to campaign events.

National Conditions and Presidential Election Winners
What do I mean by “national conditions?” I’m referring to three primary factors: consumer confidence, presidential approval, and the current president in office. These variables have the most pronounced impact on which party takes the White House.
              Consumer Confidence: Consumer confidence is measured by the Consumer Confidence Index (The Conference Board).  I’ll keep things simple: when the Consumer Confidence Index is > 100, the party of the current president usually retains the White House. This pattern has held true 9 out of 11 times since 1968—10 out of 11 times if you ignore the fact that in 2000 the Confidence Index was 143 but Bush II, and thus the Republicans, took the presidency. For that election, Al Gore, and thus the Democrats, won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College vote.

Table Source: Yun 2001.

              Now, the results from the 2012 election present another notable exception to the rule. Consumer confidence during this year was below the 100 threshold, yet Obama was reelected. I think one explanation for this discrepancy is the 2008 recession. The recession undoubtedly had a negative impact on consumer confidence, but, by the time the 2012 election came around, consumer confidence had improved. Many in the electorate probably gave Obama the benefit of the doubt given the horrible state of the economy when he took office. In fact, Gallup poll data from October to November 2012 reveal that Obama’s approval rating was between 50-52% (Gallup)—I’ll cover presidential approval in greater depth soon.
              Where does the Consumer Confidence Index stand as of now? Most recently, in September this year the index was at 103—up from 101.3 in August (The Conference Board). And Consumer Confidence is only expected to improve over the long term. In fact, US Consumer Sentiment—a similar, though not identical measure to Consumer Confidence—has steadily been on the rise since 2010:

Chart Source: Trading Economics.

Given the improvement seen in US Consumer Sentiment and the Consumer Confidence Index since 2012, I suspect that the Democrats will be sitting pretty in 2016.
              Presidential Approval: Data from 1952 to 2008 suggest that when presidential approval ratings are > 50%, the party of the president leaving office has won the presidency every time (Abramowitz 2015). Where does Obama’s approval rating stand as of now? The most recent numbers from Gallup indicate his approval rating is at 46%. However, before all of you Republicans out there start whooping and hollering in excitement, be aware that we have more than a year to go before the 2016 election. Also note that until September in 2012, Obama’s approval ratings looked rather similar to what they do now (actually, in October 2011—the year prior to the 2012 election—his approval rating ranged from 40-43%, which is worse than his approval rating as of this October, the year prior to the 2016 election). Unless the economy absolutely tanks in the next year, I suspect that when September rolls around in 2016, we likely will observe an improvement in Obama’s approval ratings such that they surpass 50% by next November.
              President Currently in Office: Need I really say more? The party of the president currently in the White House determines in whose favor—Republican or Democrat—consumer confidence and presidential approval lie.

Who Will Win the Presidency in 2016?
If you buy any of what I’ve said above, then you should have guessed by now that national conditions favor whoever runs for the Democrats. However, outside of which party is likely to take the presidency, which candidate in particular is likely to win? The quick answer is Hillary Clinton. Why? Despite all the hoopla depicted by the media, public opinion polls following televised debates are not accurate predictors of who wins presidential primaries. Among one of the best predictors is endorsements (see The Party Decides by Cohen, Karol, Noel, and Zaller 2008). Why endorsements? Let me quote FiveThirtyEight writer Aaron Bycoffe:

“Before any votes are cast, presidential candidates compete for the support of influential members of their party, especially elected officials like U.S. representatives, senators and governors. During the period known as the ‘invisible primary,’ these ‘party elites’ seek to coalesce around the candidates they find most acceptable as their party’s nominee. Over the past few decades, when these elites have reached a consensus on the best candidate, rank-and-file voters have usually followed.”

In other words, the candidates for each party who end up winning in the primaries are also the candidates who rack up the most endorsements from party elites (these include governors, and US representatives and senators). As of this writing, Hillary leads the Democrats by a whopping 370 elite endorsements—Bernie as a measly 2, and O’Malley only 1. On the Republican side, Bush (or Jeb!) has the lead; however, it is not as substantial as Hillary’s—which is understandable given the number of Republicans making a bid for the White House. Bush, who stands at 36 elite endorsements is followed by Christie at 25. Trump has none (I’ll leave it at that). For a more in depth look at the “endorsement primary” see this FiveThirtyEight article.
              Just for fun, other surprisingly good—though also very illegal—predictors of who has a good chance at winning the presidency are election betting sites. One such site—PredictIt—shows most people betting money (literally) on either Bush or Rubio running for the Republicans, Clinton running for the Democrats, and the Democrats winning the presidency.

Conclusion
Online betting aside, chances favor the Democrats in November 2016 and more specifically Hillary Clinton. Of course, this is not an irrefutable prediction. Anything could happen between now and election day, and there is indeed a reason we base who wins and who loses on election results and not on predicted election results. Nevertheless, I’d bet money on Hillary taking the White House in 2016 (though not real money, because that’s illegal…).

Guns and Gun Violence: What's the Relationship?

By Miles Williams

B.A. (History & Political Science; Philosophy), Greenville College

Political Science Graduate Student, Eastern Illinois University 

At the time of this writing, CNN is on in my living room airing coverage of the latest mass shooting in the U.S.  Such tragedies are heartbreaking, and the families of those who lost their lives want more than answers, they want solutions.  They want to know how such abhorrent acts can be prevented in the future.  Of course, before one can even begin to think about what can be done, an examination of what actually is going on is in order.  As I listen to the news, I hear all kinds of claims about the relationship between guns/gun laws and gun related violence.  What’s the relationship between the two?  This question has been debated by pundits, policymakers, and academics for quite some time.  I doubt, therefore, that I’ll find anything definitive with my research, but I do hope that I’ll at least bring some clarity to this issue.

What the Research Says

Anglemyer, Horvath, and Rutherford (2014) in an effort to make sense of current estimates of the relationship between the availability of firearms and suicide or homicide, examined data from PubMed, EMBASE, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and Web of Science.  They concluded that access to firearms had an association with increased risk for completed suicide and being the victim of homicide.  However, the authors note that much of their data included survey interviews, which may mean that some “misclassification of accessibility may have occurred.”  To their credit, misclassification and misreporting are always concerns worth raising for surveys.  If I start disregarding studies that use self-reporting to gather their data, I’d have to disregard an awful lot of research!

              Regarding the relationship between right-to-carry (RTC) laws and crime, a working paper by Aneja, Donohue III, and Zhang (2012) finds a statistically significant relationship between RTC and increased murder rates while only a moderately significant (though perhaps still suggestive) relationship between RTC and aggravated assault, rape, and robbery.  These findings certainly make questionable the claims that RTC would effectively reduce gun-related crimes; however, as the authors of this paper note, “Researchers and policymakers should keep an open mind about controversial policy topics in light of new and better empirical evidence or methodologies.”  In other words, RTC should not be written off as an ineffective policy at all times and in all circumstances; conditions may change and future research may bring to light new evidence and utilize better methods.

              While it seems there may be a relationship between RTC and certain kinds of crime, a 2013 report from the Pew Research Center indicates that since a peak in gun-related homicide in 1993, rates have since decline by 49%.  However, while homicides due to firearms seem to have declined, the FBI reports that active shooter incidents (an active shooter incident refers to situations where both law enforcement and citizens have the potential to affect the outcome) have increased since 2000, with only one such event occurring in 2000, 17 occurring in 2013, and a peak of 26 occurring in 2010 (2013).  Moreover, in a comparative analysis among various nations, research by Richardson and Hemenway (2011) indicates,

“U.S. homicide rates were 6.9 times higher than rates in other high-income countries, driven by firearm homicide rates that were 19.5 times higher…The U.S. firearm suicide rates were 5.8 times higher than in the other countries, though overall suicide rates were 30% lower.  The U.S. unintentional firearm deaths were 5.2 times higher than in other countries.  Among these 23 countries, 80% of all firearm deaths occurred in the United States, 86% of women killed by firearms were U.S. women, and 87% of all children aged 0 to 14 killed by firearms were U.S. children.”

Are There Any Solutions?

The argument that more guns in the hands of “the good guys” would deter would-be assailants makes sense; however, this argument doesn’t have much empirical support.  In fact, research by Chapman, Alpers, Agho, and Jones (2006) on the effects of 1996 gun law reforms in Australia indicates that the removal of semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns and rifles from civilian possession was “followed by more than a decade free of fatal mass shootings, and accidental declines in firearm deaths, particularly suicides.”  The authors also found homicide rates similarly declined, thus leading them to conclude that “Removing large numbers of rapid-firing firearms from civilians may be an effective way of reducing mass shootings, firearm homicides, and firearm suicides.”

              Some also suggest that mental-health background checks could be used to prevent mentally ill people from obtaining firearms.  However, such background checks may be problematic.  Swanson et al. (2015) highlight the fact that many who report having patterns of impulsive angry behavior—a no doubt troublesome characteristic for a gun owner—are not subject to existing mental health-related legal restrictions on purchasing firearms because they have never been involuntarily hospitalized for mental health issues.  The authors of this study thus suggest that expanding the definition of people prohibited from possessing guns to those convicted of violent misdemeanors and multiple DUIs could be effective.

              A 2012 meta-analysis looked at the effects of various sorts of gun policies on gun violence (Makarios and Pratt).  The authors report that of the types of intervention policies implemented, law enforcement seems to be the most effective, followed by gun laws in general, while gun buy-backs have no statistically significant effect.  Regarding types of laws, weapons bans had the greatest effect on reducing gun violence, followed by enhanced prison terms and waiting periods/background checks.  Of the types of law enforcement intervention, policing strategy, probation strategy, and community programs had statistically significant effects while prosecutorial strategy did not approach significance.  Of the three effective strategies, probation strategy was the most effective.

The Biggest Challenge Facing Policymaking

While conclusions gleaned from extant empirical evidence remain tentative, it seems clear that gun restrictions may be the most effective means for reducing gun violence.  This finding, of course, does not speak to arguments surrounding Second Amendment Rights (this is an entirely different, and more ideological debate for another time and place).  Moreover, in an American Political Science Association Meeting Paper, Haider-Markel and Joslyn (2011) indicate that there is a strong partisan divide on the causes of mass-shootings (namely at Virginia Tech, Fort Hood, and Tucson, AZ).  Further evidence suggests that the partisan divide over gun rights has grown substantially, with 25% of Democrats and 45% of Republicans supporting gun rights in 1993, and 27% of Democrats and 72% of Republicans supporting gun rights in 2012 (Pew Research Center 2012).  This divide comes at time in U.S. politics when hyper-partisanship and an unwillingness to compromise are at a high, the results of which are legislative gridlock.

              I won’t speak to the claims surrounding the legality of gun restrictions, save that the Second Amendment complicates matters by introducing constitutionality into the debate.  I will further state that, if one wants to restrict guns in the civilian population in order to reduce gun violence, one must consider how to do so in a way that is both “legal” and “constitutional.”

The Takeaway

I will readily admit that I want to maintain the right to bear arms just as much as the next conservative (yes, I admit to having conservative leanings); however, as a political scientist, I cannot ignore the empirical evidence, which clearly indicates that RTC laws are associated with increases in gun-related violence.  I moreover cannot ignore the evidence that restrictions on gun possession result in declines in gun-related violence, nor can I skim over the fact the U.S. has some of the highest rates of firearm homicides and suicides among high-income nations.  From a purely pragmatic perspective, if one wants to reduce gun-related violence, gun restrictions are the way to go.  Now, this does not mean taking guns away from all citizens.  It does mean, however, that certain restrictions such as background checks, an expansion of the definition of people who should be restricted from obtaining firearms, and perhaps a restriction on certain types of firearms might be worth considering.

Resources Cited

Aneja, Abhay, John J. Donohue III, and Alexandria Zhang.  2012.  “The Impact of Right to Carry Laws and the NRC Report:  The Latest Lessons for the Empirical Evaluation of Law and Policy.”  NBER Working Paper No. 18294 (November).

Anglemyer, Andrew, Tara Horvath, and George Rutherford.  2014.  “The Accessibility of Firearms and Risk for Suicide and Homicide Victimization Among Household Members:  A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.”  Annals of International Medicine (January):  101-110.

2013.  “A Study of Active Shooter Incidents in the united States Between 2000 and 2013.”  U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation (September).

Chapman, S., P. Alpers, K. Agho, and M. Jones.  2006.  “Australia’s 1996 gun law reforms:  faster falls in firearms deaths, firearm suicides, and a decade without mass shootings.”  Injury Prevention (November):  365-372.

Cohn, D’Vera et al.  2013.  “Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware:  Pace of Decline Slows in Past Decade.”  Pew Research Center (May).

Haider-Markel, Donald P. and Mark R. Joslyn.  2011.  “Attributing Blame in Tragedy:  Understanding Attitudes About the Causes of Three Mass Shootings.”  APSA 2011 Annual Meeting Paper.

Makarios, Matthew D. and Travis C. Pratt.  2012.  “The Effectiveness of Policies and Programs that Attempt to Reduce Firearm Violence:  A Meta-Analysis.”  Crime & Delinquency (March):  222-244.

2012.  “More Support for Gun Rights, Gay Marriage than in 2008 or 2004.”  Pew Research Center (April).

Richardson, E.G. and D. Hemenway.  2007.  “Homicide, suicide, and unintentional firearm fatality:  comparing the United States with other high-income countries, 2003.”  The Journal of Trauma (January):  238-243.

Swanson et al.  2015.  “Guns, Impulsive Angry Behavior, and Mental Disorders:  Results from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R).”  Behavior Sciences & the Law (June):  199-212.

The Minimum Wage and Employment: Does the Minimum Wage Decrease Employment?

By Miles Williams

B.A. (History & Political Science; Philosophy), Greenville College

Political Science Graduate Student, Eastern Illinois University 

I often hear pundits and politicians debating—sometimes ad nauseum—the purported effects of raising the minimum wage.  Won’t raising it hurt employers and cause a rise in unemployment?  Or, wouldn’t an increase in wages filter into an increase in worker’s disposable incomes and thus drive consumption of goods and increase the demand employers have for workers?  When talking politics around the watercooler (or on CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS, etc.), people often generalize about abstractions.  Sometimes a number or a factoid will be thrown into the dialogue, but usually with far from objective intentions.  As someone on his way to becoming a political scientist (not a politician) I have to wonder whether there’s any truth beyond the politics. 

              The key difference between a political scientist and a politician is that the latter tries to get others to go along with how they think the world ought to be, while the former tries to explain how the world is as it is.  A political scientist, therefore, is to be a scientist.  As a scientist, a political scientist is to, as far as he or she can, try to examine political phenomena in a way that is valueless.  By valueless, I don’t mean “meaningless.”  I mean that political scientists should put aside any political, philosophical, ideological, and religious agendas that they may have when they look at the world.  Doing so is not always easy, or even entirely possible.  Nevertheless, the political scientist must try, just as I will try as I examine the issue of raising the minimum wage, to be objective.

What Have Other Researchers Said?

In general, the research seems a bit mixed as to whether raising the minimum wage has positive or negative effects.  Some contend that increases in unemployment due to increases in the minimum wage are nonexistent when one controls for certain factors (Dube, Lester, and Reich 2010).  According to a report from the Center of Economic and Policy Research by Schmitt (2013), the majority of extant evidence suggests that “modest increases in the minimum wage” have hardly, if any, effect on employment.  Schmitt indicates that this finding likely results from decreased labor turnover, increases in organizational efficiency, decreases in wages for higher earners, and small price increases for goods in response to minimum wage increases.  Manning (2012) concurs, arguing in a report for the Resolution Foundation that little evidence suggests increases in the minimum wage have a negative impact on both employment and wage distribution.  Moreover, after examining labor markets with relatively high minimum wages, he concludes that there is no “major reason for concern;” although, he does caution that such positive evidence does not provide us with “significant confidence to experiment with a much higher national minimum wage.”  It is worth noting that Manning makes his case in reference to the U.K.’s national minimum wage, but this fact need not necessitate the exclusion of his findings for those of us across the pond.

              Some other research indicates, however, that raising the minimum wage has few positive effects on employment (Rocheteau et al. 2007; Neumark, Salas, and Wascher 2013).  In fact, Meer and West (2013) argue that when one looks at the long-term growth impact of increasing the minimum wage, as opposed to simply looking at its short-term effect on employment levels, one observes a reduction in job growth over the course of several years, particularly for younger workers and those working in industries that employ a large percentage of low-wage earners.  I would, however, argue that a reduction in growth does not by definition mean a decline in jobs.  Nevertheless, reduced growth is, by various standards, not as good as increased growth. 

A 2014 report by the U.S. Congressional Budget Office indicates that increasing the minimum wage would have the positive effect of raising the income of low-wage workers, and by default their families; but, concomitant to this improvement for many would be the elimination of some jobs.  The balance between the two is, according to the report, related to the magnitude of minimum wage increase.  Of course, much of the literature would disagree with this Congressional report regarding its claim that raising the minimum wage would result in the elimination of certain jobs (however, and again, the research on this subject is mixed). 

What to Make of This Discrepancy

One could argue that, in light of the evidence, moderate yearly increases in the minimum wage should at the very least not have a harmful effect on employment.  Moreover, doing so would potentially have the benefit of raising wages for many families, thus raising the standard of living for several disadvantaged groups.  However, as Sherk (2012) contends, a great deal of empirical evidence suggests that increases in the minimum wage in fact reduce the chances disadvantaged workers have for employment while having a less pronounced effect on overall employment.  Sherk cites an interesting case study of a large retail chain:

“When the minimum wage rose, the chain slightly reduced overall employment.  Surprisingly, however, teenage employment rose in several stores.  These teen employment gains came at the expense of larger job losses among adults.  The composition of teenage employment also changed, with more teens coming from wealthier neighborhoods and fewer from low-income neighborhoods.  They crowded many low-income adults and youth out of jobs.”

Moreover, as Sherk contends:

“Higher minimum wages encourage employers to replace less-skilled workers with more productive employees.  Given the choice between hiring an unskilled worker for $10.10 an hour and a worker with more experience for the same rate, companies will always choose the more experienced and productive employee.”

Sherk further argues that many of the purported net benefits for low-wage workers fall into obscurity when one factors in tax and welfare policy.  Many of the programs that benefit low-income earners, such as SNAP, TANF, and EITC, child-care subsidies, and many others, phase out as income rises.  Also, an increase in pay means an increase in payroll and income taxes.  The issue here for Sherk is not that such reductions in welfare benefits and increases in taxes are inherently bad; rather, he argues that

“Congress did not coordinate these benefit phase-outs across programs.  Consequently low-income workers can face very high effective tax rates as they lose benefits from multiple programs.  Consider workers both losing SNAP benefits and landing in the EITC phase out range.  For each additional dollar they earn they pay 15 cents in additional payroll taxes, 15 cents in income taxes, an average of 5 cents in state income taxes, as well as losing 21 cents of their EITC benefit and forgoing 24 cents of SNAP benefits – an effective marginal tax rate of 80 percent.  Each extra dollar earned increases their net income by only 20 cents.  Not even millionaires pay such high tax rates.”

It Is What It Is

As already discussed, a political scientist’s job is to, effectively, “tell it like it is” in such a way that minimizes any biases and ideological leanings that may obscure his or her view.  As a political scientist-in-training, I have attempted to do just that for minimum wage.  What have I discovered? 

1. Raising the minimum wage (if done moderately) has few, if any, negative effects on overall employment.
2. Raising the minimum wage does have potentially negative effects for low-income workers (the very people policymakers are trying to help by raising the minimum wage).
3. One cannot simply raise the minimum wage to help disadvantaged workers.  One must also contend with, and properly coordinate, taxes and welfare programs in conjunction with increasing the minimum wage in order to eliminate any disincentives low-wage earners have for increasing their pay.
4. Even if raising the minimum wage is properly done, the problem of disadvantaged workers losing out to more skilled and advantaged workers is still not resolved.

As the cliché goes, more research needs to be done.  None of my conclusions are definitive by any stretch of the imagination.  Science, in addition to being (ideally) objective, is tentative.  I could be wrong in part or whole, but my conclusions seem to make sense in light of my research.  Now, I leave it up to you the reader to do something with this info (maybe you could make a claim about how things ought to be).  Meanwhile, I have to go back to making claims about what is.

Resources Cited

Dube, Andrajit, T. William Lester, and Michael Reich.  2010.  “Minimum Wage Effects Across State Borders:  Estimates Using Contiguous Counties.”  The Review of Economics and Statistics (November):  945-964.

Manning, Alan.  2012.  “Minimum Wage:  Maximum Impact.”  Resolution Foundation (April).

Meer, Jonathan and Jeremy West.  2013.  “Effects of the Minimum Wage on Employment Dynamics.”  NBER Working Paper No. 19262 (August).

Neumark, David, J.M. Ian Salas, and William Wascher.  2013.  “Revisiting the Minimum Wage-Employment Debate:  Throwing Out the Baby with the Bathwater?”  NBER Working Paper No. 18681 (January).

Rocheteau, Guillaume and Murat Tasci.  2007.  “The Minimum Wage and the Labor Market.”  Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland (May).

Schmitt, John.  2013.  “Why Does the Minimum Wage Have No Discernible Effect on Employment?”  Center for Economic and Policy Research (February).

Sherk, James.  2013.  “What is Minimum Wage:  Its History and Effects on the Economy.”  The Heritage Foundation (June). 

2014.  “The Effects of a Minimum-Wage Increase on Employment and Family Income.”  Congress of the United States, Congressional Budget Office (February).