How Not to Predict an Election

...As most voter surveys suggest, on Election Day, a solid majority agreed that Clinton and Gore had done a good Campaigns are a chance for voters to judge character...

...Gore opposed doing so...

...and in 1996 Bill Clinton bashed Bob Dole as an extremist who would abolish Medicare...

...In 1980 and 1992, economic woes turned many people against the incumbent party...

...job...

...These on-air-heads agree that the razor-close 2000 results mean "no mandate" for the new president, whoever he is, and four years of federal gridlock...

...In the 1890s, it was tariffs and whether the dollar should be made cheaper...

...On some complex, controversial, and costly measures like Medicare reform, action has been slow to no-go...

...3. To the "valence" victor goes the White House...

...During the Civil War, the great position issue was slavery...

...With James Q. Wilson, he is the co-author of the textbook American Government: Institutions and Policies (eighth edition, Houghton Mifflin...

...The Constitution makes even the most popular president not a "king" but a "clerk...

...Now, notice what nonetheless happened legislatively: lots...

...In 2000, both candidates had "valence" appeal...

...None, for example, foresaw the High Noon outcome of the current presidential election...

...He had to bounce, because he was convincing in neither role...

...But the typical voter never behaves as a pure homo economicus, and in 2000 single-minded pocketbook voters were a distinct minority...

...Well-run campaigns reawaken partisan loyalties...

...Legislative-executive relations have been rocky, but no more than usual...

...The public and the press can revoke that license in a D.C...

...Many people who are doing well financially will vote against the party in power if the country as a whole is not doing well...

...Traditional political scientists watched and waited for the mistake to catch up with Gingrich, and it didn't take long...

...This is important because, even with the rise of independent voters and ticket-splitting, most people still vote their party for president...

...Even a landslide winner who waltzes into the White House with a same-party majority in Congress has only a license to lead...

...The late great political scientist V.O...

...Newt Gingrich and company read a political realignment into the fine print of their Contract With America and acted as if Washington were Westminster...

...But in fact, if just 19,500 votes in 13 districts had switched from Republicans to Democrats, the Democrats would have retained control of the House...

...During the period of Gore's big lead, Bush and his campaign blinked but never buckled...

...But this is normal...

...The eleventh-hour "He was a drunk...

...In campaign 2000, Bush wanted to let people put some of their Social Security money into private savings accounts...

...Whether the next president, whoever he is, can persuade the public and the Congress to adopt his views on how to promote peace and prosperity and manage our domestic affairs will depend not on any mandate...

...Politically, if not technologically or economically, we live in ordinary times...

...What voters look for on valence issues is which candidate seems most closely associated with universally shared views, positive symbols, and desirable conditions...

...A "position issue" is one on which the voters are divided and the rival candidates or parties also have opposing views...

...in 1984 Ronald Reagan symbolized both good economic times and "morning in America...

...Tremendous helps, but as Harvard's Richard Neustadt has observed, in our "system of separated institutions sharing powers," presidential power is ultimately only "the power to persuade...

...America's major political parties are weak coalitions of diverse elements that reflect the many divisions in public opinion...

...1. It's never only the economy, stupid...

...If this was intended to head off Ralph Nader, it failed in several super-close states...

...For nearly a year, Gore bounced between being a liberal activist and a New Democrat...

...Nobody favors irresolute leadership, unpatriotic beliefs, wasted tax dollars, a weak national defense, political corruption, or personal dishonesty...

...The ABCs of our national policymaking process are alliance-building, bargaining, and compromise...

...We don't have one party advocating prosperity and the other recession...

...Besides, it's not clear whose pocketbook determines how a person will vote...

...attack was not the deathblow some may have hoped because Bush had long since confessed a past drinking problem, and most people trusted his word on the 24-year-old incident...

...And well-off voters may think the government has had little to do with putting bread on their tables or money in their mutual funds...

...Our constitutional system was designed to moderate the pace of change and to make it difficult to adopt radical proposals...

...4. Campaigns aren't just sound and fury signii^ng nothing...

...In our day, some ill-educated but statistics-enamored political scientists have sought to achieve a precision in election forecasting beyond what the nature of politics allows...

...in 1988 George Bush seemed more patriotic than his challenger...

...After eight years of good times, the national economy was indeed a plus for Gore...

...Exit polls and voter surveys confirm that in 2000, people were not manipulated by soundbites and false promises but had ample information about who stood where and who believed what...

...Campaigns also allow voters an opportunity to judge the character and core values of the candidates...

...The commanding lead he built up after the Democratic convention was based mainly on centrist appeals, the choice of Joseph Lieberman as his running mate, and Reagan Democrats who began to flock home...

...The model-builders think campaigns count for little, but traditional political science is replete with evidence that they can greatly influence who wins and by how much...

...Moreover, voters have always been more inclined to punish incumbents for bad times than to reward them for good times...

...That's how our government is supposed to work, and that's how it generally has worked, whether the president's electoral victory was tremendous or tiny...

...George W. ran a more thematic campaign than his father did against Clinton in 1992, one that showcased his character without damning Gore's...

...For example, in 1968 Richard Nixon seemed to be more anti-crime than his rival...

...and keeping the peace through strength...

...Parties or candidates, however, may be very differently linked in the public's mind with the universally approved condition of good times and the universally disapproved condition of bad times...

...Early on, the Gore campaign gorged itself on detailed policy and position papers that neither the media nor the voters wanted to study...

...second (ask Lyndon Baines Johnson...

...Political scientists call these matters "valence" issues...

...LONG AGO, Aristotle taught that it is the "mark of the educated person to seek precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits...

...5. Elections rarely produce a clear mandate...

...His exaggerations and half-truths tickled late-night comedians and ultimately troubled swing voters even in a few traditionally Democratic states...

...One South Philly friend said, "I don't care if he can name the dictators as long as I believe that he'll squash them if they bother us...

...Dozens of post-1980 "rational electorate" studies find that while voters may have hazy, even erroneous, views about monetary policy, Kosovo, and the trade deficit, they are nonetheless likely to have a very good idea about whether prices at the supermarket are stable or crime is a serious problem in their neighborhood...

...But even in hard times, other issues—^peace and crime, to name just two—have moved the electorate...

...They voted accordingly...

...all had good-economy Gore winning by comfortable margins in the popular vote and the Electoral College...

...Elections in ordinary times produce no major realignment, are fought over no single dominant issue, and provide the winners no clear mandate...

...Despite "divided government" (with different parties controlling the executive and legislative branches) and the Clinton impeachment battles, hundreds of new federal laws have been passed since 1994, including many coveted by conservatives, such as welfare reform and prison litigation reform...

...But, for reasons that have yet to be aired in public, over a month before the election, the Gore campaign ditched its centrist tactics and launched a liberal vote-gathering operation...

...Key looked at 1950s voters who switched from one party to another between elections and found John J. DiIulio Jr...

...Gore got partial credit for the good economy, but Bush struck voters as more honest, more likable, and more likely to be a strong leader...

...The electorate in 2000 is closely divided, but that ought not obscure a broad consensus in the country about three things: sustaining free enterprise-driven economic growth...

...2. Voters are not stupid, stupid...

...Electoral victory may turn on the contenders' success at shaping these public perceptions...

...By contrast, traditional political scientists know plenty about what decides American national elections, and their bedrock findings illuminate the 2000 election...

...In fact, on just two sets of position issues did the electorate consistently split by 10 points or more between Bush and Gore, namely, maintaining military preparedness and increasing military spending (advantage Bush) and making Medicare solvent and radically expanding prescription-drug benefits (advantage Gore...

...pumping (not slamming on) the brakes on federal domestic and regulatory programs...

...But neither Bush nor Gore challenged the national government's "duty" to "save Social Security...

...But no action or slow action on big, divisive issues is what we are supposed to have, given the deliberate dispersal of power in our system...

...in 1976 Jimmy Carter seemed to corner the market on honesty...

...Inevitably, their elaborate models fail...

...In the 1960s, it was whether new civil rights laws were needed...

...By contrast, Bush began and ended his campaign as a "compassionate conservative" who was strong on national defense...

...By comparison, today's position issues are a tame lot...

...As one South Philly friend said, "I don't care if he can name the dictators as long as I believe that he'll squash them if they bother us...

...The budgetary process has not been pretty, but it never is...

...The voters' desire to discern the candidates' character, combined with the mechanics of modern campaigning— brief radio and television ads and computer-targeted direct mail—invites an emphasis on themes at the expense of details...

...Presidential campaigns always involve both position issues and valence issues, but valence issues have risen in relative importance as the party alignments rooted in the powerful position issues of the past have weakened and as modern image-making technologies such as television have proliferated...

...We don't get, and good citizens should not want, decisive national action before we have a consensus backed by a persistent popular majority...

...The Republicans who gained control of the House in 1994 misinterpreted their victory as a mandate for radically downsizing and devolving the national government's domestic policy apparatus...

...But most voters, not just single-issue voters, know which candidate or party shares their fundamental political beliefs...

...Campaigns give voters a chance to watch how the candidates handle pressure and how they apply it...

...The only people worse at understanding national elections than the academy's quantitative quacks are the media's post-election pseudo-scholars and instant-analysts...

...is Frederic Fox leadership professor of politics, religion, and civil society at the University of Pennsylvania...

...On abortion and other hot-button issues, electoral minorities have strong opinions that determine how they vote...

...Besides, in presidential elections, the issues that make the biggest difference are increasingly ones on which nearly everybody agrees...

...but most voters had long since decided that Clinton was not a good man, and, thanks to a campaign season that began with Bill Bradley calling Gore a liar, they had come to doubt Gore's integrity, too...

...that most of them switched in a direction consistent with their own interests and values...