Archived Op-Eds & Blog Posts-2011

• 11/02/11 http://bit.ly/18pygZX -  The President's Fate May Hinge on 2009 (themonkeycage.org) By Larry Bartels - "Most of the ingredients in this recipe for success at the polls are very familiar to students of American presidential elections. The incumbent party tends to do less well the longer it has held the White House. Robust income growth in the year of the election provides a huge boost to the incumbent's electoral prospects. Income growth in the preceding year matters much less."
• 10/03/11 http://wapo.st/pYKKs3 - How Europe could steer the 2012 election (washingtonpost.com) By Ezra Klein -     "That trend holds internationally, too. Vanderbilt University political scientist Larry Bartels has studied 31 elections held in 26 developed countries since the 2007 start of the Lesser Depression. He found that "voters consistently punished incumbent governments for bad economic conditions, with little apparent regard for the ideology of the government."