JAMES PINKERTON: Can The Past Repeat Itself In This Presidential Election?

Looking for clues as to who will win this presidential election?  Some study polls, others prediction markets, maybe even horoscopes.  But here’s another way: I took a look at past presidential elections. If that past is prologue, former President Donald Trump is the slight favorite.

In U.S. history, there have been 59 presidential elections. That is enough of a data set to enable some pattern recognition.

So, let’s identify three categories of patterns:

First, a presidential election in which there is no elected incumbent seeking an additional term. That is the case now, since President Joe Biden announced that he would not be seeking re-election, giving way to Vice President Kamala Harris to be the Democratic nominee. For her part, Harris was elected in 2020, but not as president. So, 2024 is an “open seat” election.

There have been 26 of these elections. (Not counting the first one, in 1789, which elected George Washington to the newly created office. So, yes, we are actually only examining 58 presidential elections.)  Of these hold-the-open-seat bids, the incumbent party won 12 and lost 14.

>We can observe there is a logic here: Any time the incumbent party makes a shift, from one candidate to another, there is a chance for a bobble — something that shakes the voters as the transfer is made. For instance, this year, there is the