On Tue, 05 Jun 2012 15:06:25 -0400, Jack Slade said: > There's an election year in the US. A president has not been re-elected in > the last 40 years when the unemployment rate is above 8% Nixon got re-elected at 3.6%., Reagan got re-elected at 7.5%,, Clinton at 5.4%, and Bush the II got re-elected at 5.5%. Ford failed to get re-elected with an unemployment rate of 7.7%. Carter failed at 9.7%. Bush the First failed at 7.5% (even though Reagan got re-elected at that same rate). And extending back more than 40 years, Johnson didn't get re-elected even though the rate was 3.6% or so. So we have 4 guys that got re-elected, 4 that didn't, and only Carter ran for re-election in a year that the rate was over 8%. The previous president that ran for re-election with a rate that high was FDR during the Depression. So it looks like "no president has been re-elected when the rate is over 8%" isn't as strong a predictor as you might hope, with only one sample. Though I'll grant it appears to be a lot harder to get re-elected if the rate is over 7% unless you have the charisma of a Ronnie. (I got the yearly rates from here: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104719.html if anybody wants to do the research to find what the monthly rate in October of the elections was, feel free - short term spikes could have pushed it over 8% for Ford and Bush the First even though for the year it was under 8%.)
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