Is the US Presidential Election a Random Walk?

 

Today is (finally) the US Presidential Election. Can the results be predicted ahead of time? The Economist Magazine has a prediction model (here)  but most experts seem to be saying that the race is too close to call. I'll make a prediction because I have a little different approach than other forecasters. My results won't be very comforting.

First, I've created an Index of Political Support (see the graphic above, click to enlarge, the solid red line is the toss-up election line). A positive standard score indicates support for the GOP; a negative value indicates support for the Democratic party (this isn't a value judgment, just a way to present data).  Elections happened every four years in the US, but the support index is continuous and nonlinearly interpolated between elections. Support has cycled back and forth between parties over time with the mid-1970s to mid-1990s being GOP high points (except for the Carter years).

Then, I tested four models: (1) A Random Walk (RW), (2) A BAU (Business-As-Usual), (3) a US Economy Index model and (4) A World System Index model. The Index models are similar to the Atlanta Fed GDPNow Model except that the Political Support Index is substituted for GDP. If we accept the results of opinion polling (here), the US Economy should be the major determinant of Political Support with Foreign Policy (the World System Index) being the fourth most important. The BAU model would essentially mean that people cast their votes traditionally, possibly based on family upbringing. But, what would the RW model mean?

A Random Walk model, Support(t) = Support(t-1) + E(t-1), indicates that Political Support today is a function of yesterday's Political Support plus Random Error, E. It is sometimes called the Drunkard's Walk which assumes that randomness rules our lives, "...history being one damned thing after another." It would mean that Political Support is essentially unpredictable.

It turns out the the RW and BAU are the best models using the AIC Criterion. The RW or BAU result feel pretty appropriate for the current Presidential Election in the US. The voters seem to be very conflicted and acting randomly. The GOP nominee, a former single-term president, has an unsavory political and criminal record. The Democratic nominee, the current Vice President, is fighting deep-seated racial and misogynistic undercurrents in American history. The US has had only one Black president and has never had a female president.

What does this mean for our political system? David Easton's model of the Political System (here) might need to be modified. Support might be a poor method of controlling the System if it is simply a Random Walk. We have to wait for some Shock such as the Vietnam War or the 1973 Oil Crisis or the Great Inflation the Dot-Com Bubble or the Subprime Mortgage Crisis or the COVID-19 Pandemic (did I miss anything) to force the country out of random voting. Even then, it seems that the voters have poor memories (the botched handling of the COVID-19 Pandemic was during the Trump Administration and the Inflation Reduction Act did not cause the COVID-19 supply-chain inflation).

There is plenty of blame to go around. Can the Two-Party System be expected to field reasonably competent candidates who will run the country effectively? Can the Legal System hold political elites accountable for criminal activity? Can Congress impeach presidents who are incompetent? Can our Educational Systems produce citizens who can process economic and political information and make decisions?

Maybe my most depressing question is whether Democracy is compatible with Capitalism? Every day we go to work in organizations that are Authoritarian. They are not democracies. Our only experience with Representative Democracy is periodic elections which seem unable to sort out competent from incompetent candidates. Competent candidates seem to want nothing to do with political offices.

One positive trend is the Ballot Initiative (there should be more of these and some States do not allow them). Some of the big questions of the day (here) should be put to the voters. The political parties should make recommendations for each initiative and give their reasons. Only minor issues should be put to incompetent political representatives.

Data and Sources

Are Migrants Stealing Your Jobs?

The US Presidential Election is tomorrow. In a prior post (here) I presented poll results from the Pew Research Center showing that the Economy, Health Care,Violent Crime and Immigration were the major issues, of concern to more the 60% of all voters. What the polling doesn't tell me is whether these issues are interrelated. I expect they are but in no straight forward way (that's why they are political issues).

There is a mountain of research results on each issue; none of it is very easy for the average voter to wade through. Here's what the Artificial Intelligence (AI) System ChatGPT produces after surveying the results:

In summary, while there can be local variations, the data does not support a general link between higher immigration and increases in either unemployment or crime.

Interestingly, AI does not agree with Political Intelligence here. For example, the Heritage Foundation, a Right-Wing Think Tank,  argues that "...2/3 of Federal Arrests involve non-citizens". Of course, both ChatGPT and the Heritage Foundation have biases because they base their conclusions on very limited data and biased mental models. So, the assertions and arguments don't satisfy me.

In the causal diagram above (click to enlarge), I try to make some links that are missing from the literature which concentrates almost entirely on presenting numbers for Net Migration, Employment, Unemployment, Crime and Healthcare. My working hypothesis is that all these variables are being driven by Shocks and internal dynamics within the US Economy and the World-System. Causal links with "?" indicate that the direction of causation is unclear, at least to me.

First, let me summarize my results before getting into details. The models I will use are similar to the Atlanta Federal Reserve's Economy Now model but I've expanded the variables of interest to include Crime, Net Migration and Healthcare (the EconomyNow app, which you can download on your cell phone, covers GDP, Wages, Employment and Consumer Prices). It's the same model I have used in prior post (here and here). To summarize my findings:

• Crime Crime rates have been declining since 1974 with 1981 being the peak for violent crime rates. In the short run, crime rates are a random walk or driven by US Economic performance. In the long run, crime rates are driven by the World-System, particularly events in Latin America (this result should appeal to the Right-Wing). But, it is not driven by immigration.
• Government Healthcare Expenditure In the short-run, healthcare expenditure is also a random walk and driven by events in the World-System. It also is not driven by immigration.
• Unemployment In the short run, and the long run, unemployment is driven by events in the US Economy and not by immigration.
• Net Migration For net migration (more people entering than leaving the country), I don't get a very clear picture (this is probably why it is a perfect issue for wild political distortions). The best model is a Business-As-Usual (BAU) model, likely the result of US immigration restrictions. However, it does not support the assertion that the US has Open Borders.

If you are still interested, here are the details.

Crime

The graphic above (click to enlarge) shows violent crime over time across administrations (left panel) and violent crime after a NETM shock. Crime rates have been declining since a high in the late 1970s, bottomed out during the Obama Administration, began to climb again during the Trump administration and leveled off during the Biden Administration. A shock to NETM (right panel) decreased crime rates but not by a lot (the y-axis of both graphs is measured in standard score units).

The shocks to CRIME from World-System events are displayed in the graphic above. The two major shocks were the September 11 Attacks in 2001 during the Bush Administration and the COVID-19 shock during the Trump administration.

Government Healthcare Expenditure

The graphic above (click to enlarge) shows Federal Government Healthcare expenditures across administrations (left panel) and shocks to Health Care expenditure from NETM in the right panel. You can clearly see that Obama Care (the Affordable Health Care Act of 2010) "bent the curve" on US Healthcare expenditures. It is interesting that the time path of GHEALHX is best described as being driven by World-System events, specifically the state of the economy in Latin America. To my knowledge, this link has never been demonstrated before and should be considered controversial. However, shocks from NETM, although increasing GHEALHX, only have minor effects. And, the COVID-19 shock during the Trump Administration can be clearly seen. It would be fair to conclude from the graph above that abolishing Obama Care (a plank of the Trump Administration and Project 2025) would "unbend" the GHEALTHX curve.

Unemployment

The graphic above shows Unemployment (LU) by administration (in the left pane, driven by the US Economy) and shocks to LU from NETM in the right pane. You can clearly see the LU shocks at the beginning of the Reagan Administration, the beginning of the Clinton Administration, the beginning of the Obama Administration and the COVID-19 LU shock during the Trump Administration. Shocks to NETM (right pane) actually decrease unemployment but the effects are not very large.

Net Migration

The graphic above (click to enlarge) shows Net Migration (NETM) being driven by the World-System (left pane) and a shock to NETM from LU. NETM was particularly high in the Bush I and Clinton administrations as a result of World-System events. Shocks to LU decreased NETM, meaning that when Unemployment was high in the US, NETM was reduced (no jobs for migrants).

Summary

I have already summarized the results above, but I hope that the displays of Crime rates, Government Healthcare Expenditure, Unemployment, and Migration (GDP and Inflation here and here,  respectively) might help an interested voter make decisions about the upcoming Presidential Election.

One point that I hope is also made by the graphics is that "cherry-picking" isolated numbers and percentages (as seems to be the case in political rhetoric and Media presentations) mean very little without historical analysis. All the data presented above (and a lot more) are available from the World Bank Development indicators (here) and is freely available to you if you have other topics of interest.

If you would like to see some other series presented as an Economy Now model, please contact me. I am happy to post about other topics (otherwise, I'll just keep pursing my interests).