O-H-I-O: Why an Ohio State (football) win boosts Obama

USATODAY

If you support President Obama, root for college football teams from swing states today.

Wins today by Ohio State, Florida, Virginia and Michigan could help tip the balance for Obama in a close election, according to one study.

Sound far fetched? It's not. In 2010, a team of political scientists and economists looked at college football scores over 42 years and compared them to county-level election results. They found that wins by the old alma mater in the 10 days before an election can boost the incumbent party's vote by a little over 1% in the surrounding county.

Ohio State's game against Illinois today might be particularly important. Not only is Ohio considered a must-win state for Republican challenger Mitt Romney, but 6th-ranked Ohio State University is a football powerhouse -- a high-attendance, championship-caliber team whose wins had an even bigger impact in the study. Combined with a win last week over Penn State, a win today could be expected to boost Obama's vote by about 2.5% in Franklin County.

"We think that's big," said Neil Malhotra, a professor of political economics at Stanford University and co-author of the study. "In a place like Columbus, it could move the election by a few thousand votes."

Why? For no other reason than voters there are in a better mood, and therefore perceive the incumbent through rose-colored glasses -- or scarlet, as the case may be.

The authors of the study weren't as interested in college football as they were in the deeper question of how voters make decisions.

For example, it's well established that a poor economy hurts the incumbent. But does the impact of Friday's jobless report lie in the statistic itself -- the 7.9% of workers still looking for work -- or in something more personal, like a voter's own sense of economic security?

"The theory is that people are analyzing economic data and they're deciding whether to hire or fire the incumbent based on that analysis," he said. "But the other theory is that there's an emotional component." Voters may just be in a bad mood, and take those frustrations out at the ballot box.



To figure out if that might be the case, they looked at a variable with no rational connection to an election campaign: College football games.

Why college football? For one thing, it's a fall sport. But it also has a bigger potential effect on people's emotions. "Unlike pro sports, every single college football game matters. Losing a college football game is much more important than losing a baseball game, or even an NFL game," Malhotra said.

The study found a bigger effect for the college games played 10 days before an election than the weekend before. That might be because that's when people are more likely to make up their minds and "lock in" their vote, Malhotra said. (And with early voting, games played in early to mid-October might also be important.)

Is such emotional decision-making by voters a bad thing? Malhotra said that in the case of the economy, a voter's gut feeling about the direction of the country might be as good or better a barometer than attack ads, name recognition or other factors.

"College football is clearly a case where emotional responses -- you shouldn't be basing your vote on them," he said.