Predicting Presidential contests

The Weekly Standard has a review of the “Rule of 14” and the “Four Factor” and all those other intangible determinants of Presidential elections. My favorite:

Fair warning. Yale economist Ray Fair has a model for predicting the outcome of two-party votes, based on economic variables such as inflation and GDP growth. In early February, he predicted 58.7 percent of the two-party vote for Bush (up from 58.3 percent in October). It's bad news for Kerry. Since he started this voting forecast back in 1978, Fair has never misgauged the incumbent party's vote by more than 1.9 percent.

Bush/Cheney – mathematically unbeatable!