Obama, on the Trends.
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ANALYSIS – According to the Polls, Obama should win the US election only a couple of days away.
We hope this time the result is not tangled up in electoral court-cases or misanthropic journalism, as was the case in Gore v Bush.
We’ll look now at how trends support Obama.
Trends Support Obama.
Australia’s Centre Left.
The fortune of leaders are often tied to the same trends in English-speaking countries. Reagan-Thatcher. Clinton-Blair. Bush-Howard.
Australia’s Prime Minister Rudd represents generational change, Obama does too.
2thinknow accurately predicted the result of the Rudd election, and the margin within 1%, using nascent trend analysis.
We are doing a much-simplified version of that analysis about Obama now. We have less data, and more complexity for Obama.
Economics.
The dominating trend. Americans vote with their wallets.
Reaganomics, did end Jimmy Carter poverty & 70s malaise.
Bush Snr was voted out on economics. Clinton was voted in.
And Clinton & Reagan both reinvigorated America, mid-term. In different ways.
New ideas. Change.
Obama walks & talks change. There is a sense in America it is time for a change.
McCain is a decent man, but his negatives are too high on change.
His change force is Palin, but that boosts his negatives. Many citizens are rightly concerned about letting her into the White House.
Policy.
Obama policies are more in tune with the economic pain of citizens. Talbott’s book, Obamanomics, sets out broad principles.
One example, it always makes sense to tax the rich more than the poor.
They have the means to offset tax anyway, so they will still pay less.
Clinton People.
For many people there is a sense this is a return to the economic better times of Clinton. And Obama has Clinton people for the economics.
GWB, by contrast, had Nixon people and Bush people.
In comparison, Phil Gramm (McCain’s economist) is so out of touch in the French Revolution he would have ordered a magnum of champagne whilst the citizens stormed the Bastille.
McCain also has done himself no favours on economics, and standard GOP party policies will not return wealth to the bedrock middle class.
The broad opinion is that most likely, McCain policies will be similar to Bush GOP policies.
Bush was a President who does not understand economics, and Cheney was pulling the levers. Even Republicans no longer, en masse, support Bush.
The Influencing Trends?
The so-called Bradley Effect.
This is the theory that people will say they will vote for a black man, but will not.
Most likely this will have a small percentage impact on Obama, meaning the polls will be out by up to a percentage.
There is a small chance McCain could win on this basis, coupled with voter turn-out.
Voter turn-out.
This is complicated by voter turn out. If Obama seems to be going to ‘win’, many Obama supporters won’t vote. Or many McCain supporters will get fired up.
This can be emphasised by media opinion on results during voting day.
Foreign Policy.
Wars in Iraq & Afghanistan impact Americans.
A possible terrorist strike in Indonesia, is regarded by some as plausible in the next 48 hours due to the Bali Bombers execution. This may favour McCain, and shift the focus.
The 2thinknow View.
McCain, Unsteady.
People often vote for one candidate & against another.
McCain has looked ill-at-ease with many of his own positions. People see this.
I do believe McCain is a good man, which is why he blinks too much when he disagrees with what he is saying. Watch the Letterman interview on YouTube. It’s enlightening.
Attack ads & ‘going negative’ often backfire. Palin was a poor choice. And his overall goofiness is a sign of unease, and his own discomfort. But McCain is back ‘on-message’ at current.
McCain Economic Policy.
McCain’s policy positions of tax cuts for corporations will not work. They will damage small business, and further help big business to buy assets in a down turn. Joe the Plumber, probably better off with Obama.
However, many voters don’t normally make distinction between pro-corporate pro-business, and pro-business, pro-jobs. In the American psyche, few want to tax the rich, because they hope to be the rich.
Most innovation and jobs come from small to mid-size business. And growth comes from these entrepreneurs & mid-size businesses.
Eye-to-Eye.
Early on, 2thinknow trends thought America needed steadying, so supported McCain & Hillary. Hillary is no longer an option. McCain turned out to be less steadying than Obama.
America needs stabilising. And McCain hasn’t got the economic or international policies.
2thinknow don’t agree with blaming Clinton (or Greenspan) for the current crisis.
Fact is, having a President like GWB who didn’t understand economics and couldn’t debate his advisors opinions was a mistake.
United States of America is a far more complex & bigger challenge than in the 18th & 19th century. The USA could survive with less knowledgeable Presidents, then, when Government was more local.
Now there is only one choice against an unsteady McCain. Steady Obama.
2thinknow’s analysis.
2thinknow were a slow convert to Obama.
However, foregoing Hillary, Obama’s policies & debate performance shows a keen mind and intellectual ability to debate ideas in-depth with flexibility & nous.
And unlike Palin (GWB v 2), Biden would make a good President.
In the end, the final margin may be an uncertain 2-7% to Obama. We believe there is an 80% chance of this probability.
5% victory margin to Obama would be 2thinknow’s likely outcome, based on a a very limited data set, and incomplete nascent trend analysis. The assumption is that Bradley & voter turn-out won’t impact more than a few percent in an economic crisis.
This election is too complex to predict a single set of outcomes using trend analysis. Nascent trend analysis also requires broad local psychological understanding of numerous groups. Headline data is here.
2thinknow would need more data & analysis to be confident, and even the complexity makes it difficulty with 50 states & multiple voting methods.
However, we believe there is a 20% chance of a tight McCain victory based on Bradley & turn-out, in this case this is magnified if there is a terrorist attack in Indonesia or elsewhere.
2thinknow Final View.
2thinknow’s final view is that we predict an Obama victory based on the one over-arching trend that unifies all Americans above race, religion or creed.
Money-in-the-back-pocket.
But 2thinknow analysis believe the election will be closer than many polls suggest, and there is a significant discount factor on poll data.
Speaker. Author. Editor-In-Chief. Executive Director of Innovation, 2thinknow.
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