Prominent statistician Nate Silver, who runs the FiveThirtyEightwebsite, said Sunday that it’s a toss-up right now as to whether Hillary Clinton could secure the presidency in 2016.
Silver based his prognostication on several factors, including President Obama’s approval ratings, the current electoral map and the economy.
“Clinton’s chances will be affected by Obama’s popularity as he exits office,” Silver wrote. “The relationship between the popularity of the previous president and the performance of the new nominee from his party isn’t perfect … but it certainly matters some, especially given that Clinton served in Obama’s cabinet.”
On the current electoral map, Silver said Democrats may have misinterpreted Obama’s success in 2008 and 2012, two elections that appeared to show a dramatic shift in the political landscape, trending Democratic. “Mostly, the ‘blue wall’ was the effect of Obama’s success in 2008 and 2012, not the cause of it,” Silver said. “If the economy had collapsed in the summer of 2012, Obama would probably have lost the election, and most of those blue states would have turned red.”
Silver said the inability to predict the economy also translates to an inability to predict how Clinton will do in a general election, should she win the Democratic nomination.
“[W]e know relatively little about what economic growth will look like a year from now, when the general election campaign heats up,” he wrote at FiveThirtyEight. “Historically, economists have shown almost no ability to predict the rate of economic growth more than six months in advance.”
Clinton declared her candidacy on Sunday. It is her second run for the White House. She first tried in 2008 but was bested by then-Sen. Barack Obama. She went on to serve as secretary of state for Obama’s first term.
“Clinton is so well-known, in fact, that it’s almost as if voters are dispensing with all the formalities and evaluating her as they might when she’s on the ballot next November,” Silver said. “About half of them would like to see her become president and about half of them wouldn’t. Get ready for an extremely competitive election.”
(Source: The Washington Examiner)
