The model predicts that Romney will win nearly all key toss-up states. Professors' study predicts Mitt win

Mitt Romney will win the popular vote and take the White House with more than 300 electoral votes, according to a election model that correctly determines the winner when applied to the past eight presidential elections.

The model, based on state-level economic data, predicts that President Barack Obama will lose nearly all key states that many observers view as toss-ups: North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Wisconsin and New Hampshire. He’d also drop Pennsylvania and Minnesota, where polls indicate Obama is ahead, the study finds.


The analysis, authored by Colorado political science professors Kenneth Bickers and Michael Berry, looks at unemployment rates and per capita income from the past 22 years and builds a model that would have accurately predicted each election. It also looks at other indicators, like which party currently holds the White House.

“The apparent advantage of being a Democratic candidate and holding the White House disappears when the national unemployment rate hits 5.6 percent,” Berry said in a University of Colorado press release. The unemployment rate is currently 8.3 percent nationally.

But don’t take the prediction to the bank just yet, Bickers and Berry warn. They caution that the current economic data plugged into the model was gathered in June, and also note that the winner-take-all nature of the electoral college could tip the balance drastically if either candidate sees even a slight surge.

And pundits beware: The authors suggest that dissecting the political consequences of every campaign decision could be for naught. Neither the location of the upcoming political conventions nor the home state of the vice presidential nominees are statistially significant factors in who wins in November, the analysis found.

The study will be fully published later this month in a peer-reviewed journal of the American Political Science Association.