Events, My Dear Boy

Harold Macmillan, allegedly at least, when asked what presents the greatest challenge for a statesman replied “events, my dear boy, events.” Similarly, events are consistently the most overlooked aspect of political prognostication. The conventions of political journalism imply that clever campaign tactics can overcome every challenge and that the more cunning candidate always wins when, in fact, the shape of events typically determines the outcome. But conversely, model-mania can get out of hand as well (emphasis added):

An election forecast model developed by a political scientist 99 days before the 2008 elections and before the recent Wall Street crisis predicts significant Democratic gains in the 2008 congressional elections—including 11 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and 3 seats in the U.S. Senate.

The predictions are made in an article authored by Carl Klarner (Indiana State University) and published in an election-specific symposium in the October 2008 issue of PS: Political Science and Politics, a journal of the American Political Science Association (APSA).

Projections based on assessing the “fundamentals” have a decent track record. But the fundamentals themselves can change over time.