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Who is Going to Win? 

The 

So you might have heard of people running for president in 2016, including Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders (sorry if I missed your favorite). However, there is one thing that no one knows right now: who is going to win the 2016 election and take the throne, I mean, the presidential seat?

I'm not here about the politics of the presidential election, I am here about the more important, although I may be biased, economics of winning.

 

Over the past couple of decades, an interesting set of data has accumulated about the winning of the presidential seat. But whoa! You’d think I’d introduce some crazy terms without giving you some background knowledge?

 

Terms to know: GDP- Gross Domestic Product. Our friends at Investopedia have given us a great definition: “Gross domestic product (GDP) is the monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country's borders in a specific time period.” For a more indepth explanation, GDP is equal to consumer spending, government spending, a country’s investments in anything such as capital, and the nation’s total net exports.

 

Okay, back to the presidential election: “In eight out of the past nine elections, if real GDP has improved in an election year relative to the prior year, the presidential party in power won. If real GDP growth slowed relative to the prior year, the party out of power took the White House.” So…if you have been into politics the last couple of years, or in fact just know anything about the current presidency, you would know that Democrats hold the office at this time in our amazing, debt-ridden country! But current data right now has it that GDP growth will be reported as slowing down in comparison to other years (no knock on Obama.)

 

Guess what?

 

That means that Republicans are likely to win the presidential election… in terms of economics.

 

But don’t start making bets now because elections have much more to do than money...or do they?

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 Meet the Author: 

 Omar Sumadi

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