Democrat Barack Obama is going to defeat Republican Mitt Romney by a comfortable
margin in the 2012 presidential election. This forecast comes from a statistical
model that uses the primary performance of the candidates and a cycle in
presidential elections to predict the presidential vote. In plain English, Obama has
history on his side as well as the fact that he was unchallenged in the primaries.
The model, called The Primary Model because of its heavy reliance on primaries,
covers elections from 1912, the beginning of presidential primaries. Since 1952,
however, only the New Hampshire Primary is used; we justify the choice of New
Hampshire at some length.