1
Many thanks to an anonymous reviewer of this journal, to Ray Fair, and to Randall
Jones of the University of Central Oklahoma, from whose comments on earlier work of ours we
have profited, for their criticisms and suggestions. Also, we are grateful to William Niskanen
and Sam Peltzman who, at our request, offered suggestions to help us to explain, theoretically,
why spending, per se, is not to be construed as the benefits of government. Needless to say, we
are solely responsible for any conceptual, methodological, or empirical errors that may remain.
2
Cuzán and Bundrick (1992, 1996, 1999, 2000). See also Cuzán and Heggen (1984,
1985), and Cuzán, Heggen, and Bundrick, (
2003
). To the best of our knowledge, other than
ourselves, only economists William Niskanen (1975, 1979) and Sam Peltzman (1990, 1992)
have explored the relationship between fiscal policy and presidential elections in any depth,
although with different fiscal measures and over varying time periods.
3
For a representation of the relationship between spending and the vote that bears some
resemblance to ours, which we regret to say we did not discover until the late 1990s, see Nilson
(1969).
FISCAL EFFECTS ON PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS: A FORECAST FOR 2004
1
Alfred G. Cuzán and Charles M. Bundrick
The University of West Florida
1. Introduction.
In previous publications we have developed and tested a fiscal model of presidential
elections, including a forecasting application of the same.
2
Here we present a summary of the
theoretical model and the results of new empirical tests before using the model to make a
forecast for this year’s election.
2. The model.
Figure 1 is a graphical representation of the pure fiscal model of presidential elections.
3
It consists of two variables, F and VOTE2. Running along the horizontal axis, F is the percent of
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) spent by the federal government. VOTE2, the percent of the
two-party vote won by the incumbents at the end of term election, is viewed along the vertical
Convention