Full Disclosure: Re: Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran

[valdis.kletnieks () vt edu]

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%.)

Attachment: _bin
Description:

_______________________________________________
Full-Disclosure - We believe in it.
Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html
Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/