City B-school predicts Obama win

Studying management is not only about finance and banking. A teacher and students of the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University, have proven this by coming up with a research paper that predicts the winner of the US presidential elections.

Studying management is not only about finance and banking. A teacher and students of the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University, have proven this by coming up with a research paper that predicts the winner of the US presidential elections.

According to the team, Barack Obama is going to win a second term in the White House with a vote share of between 51.8% and 54.2%.

Published in the Journal of Prediction Markets (University of Buckingham Press), the paper — Prediction for the 2012 United States Presidential Election Using Multiple Regression Model — by professor Pankaj Sinha, Harsh Vardhan Singh and Aastha Sharma talks about how issues, including unemployment, the much debated healthcare spending and scandals, affect voting patterns.

To support the paper, another team headed by Sinha has come out with another paper —Forecasting 2012 United States Presidential Election, using the Factor Analysis, Logit and Probit Model — which is under review at the American Politics Research Journal.

According to both papers, the results show a remarkable deviation from the contemporary belief that economic indicators such as unemployment rate and healthcare spending play an important role in the voting pattern.

Instead, it is a combination of variables such as presidential job approval and contemporary scandals that influence the voting decision, the papers say.

“We discussed several factors while developing a prediction model for the election. As opposed to what several naysayers are stating, our research proves that in spite of the weight of the economic crisis upon him, Obama will not have difficulties in defeating Romney in the upcoming elections,” Sinha said.

The research papers have been circulated and published in international economics forums such as IDEAS, New Economics Papers and Econpapers.

Another team from the college has also written a research paper on the economic scenario of the US before and after the 2012 US presidential election. According to the paper, Obama's policies will inflate the budgetary deficit while Romney's strategy would lower it.