Trump or Hillary?

September 20, 2016

With just 48 days remaining until Americans cast their ballots, Matthew Lebo, a visiting professor at U of T’s Department of Political Science and The Centre for the Study of the United States at The Munk School of Global Affairs, will host an event next Monday that will focus on U.S. presidential dynamics and the state of the race in the run up to the 58th election.

Panelists taking part include Natalie Jackson, Senior Polling Editor at The Huffington Post, Michael S. Lewis-Beck, Professor Emeritus at the Department of Political Science, University of Iowa and Helmut Norpoth, Professor of Political Science at Stony Brook University. Explaining why he picked this particular panel, Lebo explained, “Michael Lewis-Beck and Helmut Norpoth are 2/4ths of the team that wrote ‘The American Voter Revisited’. They are also, separately, perhaps the two most prominent election forecasters in political science. Natalie Jackson works to synthesize the wealth of available polling data into up-to-the-minute forecasts on the state of the races – presidential and congressional. In all, the panel will cover three different approaches to forecasting: the long-term party-swing model (Norpoth), the medium-term economic model (Lewis-Beck), and the short-term polling-based model (Jackson).”

Trump or Hillary? Forecasting the 2016 U.S. Election will be held on Monday, September 26th in Room 3130 in Sidney Smith Hall from 4:15pm to 6pm. Lebo is hoping the event will be attended by both “faculty and graduate students with research interests in American politics as well as by students interested in the methodology of political, economic, and election forecasting.”

Lebo completed both his BA and MA at U of T’s Department of Political Science and his research focuses on political methodology as well as public opinion, elections and party politics in the United States and Great Britain. His forthcoming book with the University of Chicago Press, ‘Strategic Party Government’ examines the way in which competing political parties make tradeoffs between electoral and legislative goals generally favoring winning over ideology.