The Gamble 2012

Which party is ahead going in to 2012? Was the nomination of Mitt Romney a disappointment to the party? What role does media coverage and campaign advertising play in swaying votes? The Gamble is the year’s first data-intensive attempt to answer these questions, ultimately telling the story of how the winner won. In The Gamble, political scientists John Sides and Lynn Vavreck are writing a rich, real-time account of this hotly contested election and they are doing it by bringing a “Moneyball” approach to understanding the 2012 presidential election, drawing on extensive data about media coverage, campaign advertising, and voter opinions.

You can download the first e-chapter previews at no cost now. In these chapters, Sides and Vavreck show that Obama is more popular than a typical president would be, given the slow-growing economy. This ancillary popularity is partly due to something Obama campaigned against in 2008: party polarization. It’s also due to something pundits routinely underestimate: his personal warmth. Obama’s popularity helps make him the narrow favorite heading into the election year.
Sides and Vavreck also investigate the Republican primary and show that, despite the apparent chaos, there was an underlying logic to the booms and busts of Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum. The media’s need to find novelty in the race gave these other candidates spikes in attention and thus in the polls. But these spikes were always temporary, and concealed the true advantages that Mitt Romney maintained among Republican voters and leaders alike. The prevailing notion that the primary was a search for “anybody but Romney” is a myth.

Future chapters of The Gamble will explore the contest between Obama and Romney throughout the summer and into fall. Will the nomination of Paul Ryan change the dynamics of the race and take the focus off of Romney’s inability to connect with voters? Will the slowdown in the economy doom Obama’s candidacy? Stay tuned.