The Time for Change Model once again correctly predicted the winner of the US presidential election. In late August, before the Republican and Democratic national conventions, the model predicted that President Obama would win 50.6% of the major party vote to 49.4% for his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney. When all the votes are counted, it now appears that Obama will end up with approximately 51.8% of the vote, making the Time for Change Model one of the nation's most accurate statistical forecasting models. Despite the fact that this prediction was made more than two months before Election Day, the Time for Change forecast was more accurate than the results of many national polls conducted immediately before the election including the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls both of which predicted a popular vote win for Mitt Romney.

An examination of the results of the recent midterm elections indicates that the new House of Representatives will probably be the most conservative and ideologically polarized House since the end of World War II. Republicans will hold 242 seats after a net gain of 63 seats, constituting the largest Republican majority in the House of Representatives since the 80th Congress (1947–49), which also had 242 Republican members.

As Election Day approaches, many political commentators are asking whether the 2010 midterm elections could be a reprise of 1994, when Republicans picked up eight seats in the Senate and 52 seats in the House of Representatives to take control of both chambers for the first time in 40 years. There is almost universal agreement that Republicans are poised to make major gains in both the House and the Senate. And while the GOP's chances of gaining the 10 seats needed to take control of the upper chamber appear remote, results from the generic ballot forecasting model indicate that the 39 seats required to take back the House of Representatives are well within reach.

The October 2008 issue of PS published a symposium of presidential and congressional forecasts made in the summer leading up to the election. This article is an assessment of the accuracy of their models.

The Time-for-Change Model proved one of the most accurate of the 2008 presidential election forecasts run in the October PS symposium. Using three predictors—the president's approval rating at mid-year, the growth rate of real GDP during the second quarter, and the time-for-change dummy variable—the model predicted that Barack Obama would win the presidential election with 54.3% of the major-party vote. According to nearly final tabulations compiled by uselections.org, as of December 8, Obama has received just over 53.6% of the major-party vote. However, it is likely that Obama's final total will reach 53.7% of the major-party vote. Therefore, the model's current error of 0.9 percentage points is likely to decrease further. The model has now correctly predicted the winner of the popular vote in all six presidential elections since its creation in 1988.

At first glance, the outcome of the 2008 presidential election would appear to be very difficult to predict. For the first time in over 50 years, there will be no incumbent president or vice president in the race. Instead, the Republican Party, which has seen its popularity and electoral fortunes plummet since 2004, is pinning its hopes of retaining control of the White House on Arizona Senator John McCain—an individual who has frequently clashed with his own party's leadership. And McCain's Democratic opponent will be Illinois Senator Barack Obama, the first African American ever to receive a major-party presidential nomination.

With the 2006 midterm election fast approaching, Democrats' chances of regaining control of the House of Representatives remain unclear. On the one hand, national political conditions appear to be more favorable for Democrats than at any time since the Republican takeover of the House in 1994. A pickup of only 15 seats would give Democrats control of the House in 2007 and, since the end of World War II the average midterm seat loss for the president's party is 24 seats. Moreover, when the president's approval rating is below 50%, the average midterm seat loss is 38 seats and, according to data compiled by pollingreport.com, George W. Bush's average approval rating during the month of June was only 37%.

Weighting survey data based on social background characteristics such as age, education, gender, and race is a standard practice in public opinion polling. By adjusting the composition of their samples to conform to known demographic characteristics of the population, pollsters greatly increase the accuracy of their results. However, with the exception of the Zogby Poll, most major polling organizations, including the Gallup Poll, have strongly opposed weighting their data based on party identification. This opposition is understandable. Party identification is not a fixed characteristic of the electorate. It is a political attitude that can vary over time. As a result, most pollsters believe that there is no way of accurately determining the underlying distribution of party identification in the population for weighting purposes.

Based on George Bush's net approval rating of −1% in the final Gallup Poll in June, a 3.7% growth rate for real GDP during the first two quarters of 2004, and the fact that the Republican Party had controlled the White House for only one term, the time-for-change model predicted that Mr. Bush would win reelection with 53.7% of the major party vote. This forecast was made in late July, before the Republican National Convention and more than three months before Election Day.

Despite mediocre approval ratings and below average economic growth, George W. Bush has a good chance of winning a second term in the White House according to the time-forchange forecasting model.

“It is no accident that the president's travels this year have followed the map of states that top the Bush target list for winning in 2004, particularly Florida and Pennsylvania. That also helps explain why his advisers sometimes seem more focused on electing Republican governors rather than members of Congress in states like Florida, Illinois, and Michigan: they could help him immensely in 2004.”Richard L. Berke, “Is What's Good for Bush Also Good for the G.O.P.?” New York Times, February 10, 2002, section 4, p. 5.