Instead of a wave in any direction, the 2022 election cycle is starting to feel more like a rollercoaster.
At different points, both sides of the political aisle have claimed momentum.
But now an economist with a nearly spotless record of predicting election outcomes just announced his forecast for this November.
The rollercoaster election cycle
The 2022 Midterm election cycle looked like a lock to be a huge red wave.
The party in power has huge negative ratings, the economy is in the toilet, and a series of cultural issues motivated voters in the 2021 off-year elections.
However, a landmark ruling from the Supreme Court of the United States and a group of 15 RINO Senators comprising Americans’ gun rights and all of a sudden, the political betting lines began to change.
It was a Democrat comeback, as blue candidates started pulling away in polls, Biden’s approval numbers – while still bad – stopped sinking like a rock and Democrats outraised their counterparts.
More recent polls are showing a mixed bag of results, as polling firms can’t seem to agree on how most battleground races will turn out.
Enter Yale economist Ray Fair.
The Fair Model
Fair teaches macroeconomic theory, econometrics, and macroeconometric modeling at the Ivy League institution.
He is the co-author of economics textbook, Principles of Economics.
And he’s also penned the books, Testing Macroeconometric Models, Estimating How the Macroeconomy Works and Predicting Presidential Elections and Other Things.
The economics professor has created The Fair Model, which he uses to predict elections in the United States, as well as 38 other countries.
And the results of The Fair Model are pretty impeccable.
In his long history of political prognostication, he’s typically within 3% of the final results.
The Yale professor has now released his findings for the 2022 Midterms using his model.
According to the Fair Model, Democrats will score just 46.7% of the national vote this November.
That’s down from the 51.3% Democrats received in the controversial 2020 election.
Democrats facing an uphill battle
With the Democrat score coming it at 47% and Fair’s track record of being within 3% of the final tally, it’s a long shot for President Biden’s party to tick up past the 50% threshold – a good sign for the GOP.
Along with Biden narrowly defeating Trump for the White House, the blue team took a slim majority in the House and were able to deadlock the U.S. Senate, effectively getting the majority in the Upper Chamber as well thanks to Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote.
“This prediction is based on business as usual; it’s based on estimations back to 1918, 100-plus years of data,” Fair said of the results. “In that period what seems to matter, election after election, is inflation, output, growth and the penalty you get for being the incumbent party in the White House.”
To Fair’s point, he uses straight economic data in his model.
No cultural issues, no personality traits, no local or state-level politics, cold, hard dollars and cents.
But while Fair doesn’t use any of those factors, he admits they play a role in deciding elections.
“This is not a perfect story,” Fair said. “There’s room for other stories in each election.”
However, Fair stands by the finding of his model and believes 2022 presents an uphill battle for Democrats to keep their majorities in the legislature.
