As of January 2010, Mitt Romney is favored by the intrade.com prediction market to be the Republican nominee for the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election. The market sees his chances to win the nomination at about 25%, followed by Tim Pawlenty (20%), Sarah Palin (18%), and John Thune (13%).

According to the biographical model, the chances for Romney - for whom running in 2012 is "always a possibility" - to defeat Obama are not great. While Obama would achieve a score of 23, Romney's score is 21. This translates to a predicted two-party share of the popular vote of 51.7% for Obama, or 48.3% for Romney. Although Romney scored higher than Palin and Huckabee, he would need to achieve higher ratings than Obama on the four variables for which no data are yet available (i.e., facial competence, intelligence, attractiveness, and voice) in order to be predicted as the winner.

Here are the new scores after the model update for Barack Obama and Sarah Palin. While Obama achieves a score of 25, Palin’s score is 16. This translates to a predicted two-party vote share of 57.7% for Obama, with a 95% prediction interval of +/- 6.7%. If one removes predictor variables that might favor males in inter-gender races (such as the candidates’ height and weight), Obama would still be predicted to receive 56.3% of the vote. Even if Palin would be perceived as more competent, intelligent, and attractive than Obama – three cues for which no data are yet available – the model gives her little chance of defeating the incumbent president.

Bad news for Sarah Palin: PollyBio predicts that she would not be able to defeat President Obama in a potential 2012 showdown.

Based on her bio-demographic data, Sarah Palin does not seem to be a good choice for the Republican Party. While Obama achieves a score of 20, Palin’s score is 11 points. Given the model’s historical performance, this translates to a predicted two-party voteshare of 59.5% for Obama, with a 95% prediction interval of +/- 6.2%. 

Even if Palin would be perceived as more competent, intelligent, and attractive than Obama – three cues for which no data is yet available – the model gives her little chance of defeating the incumbent president. This suggests that the Republican Party further extends its search. The PollyBio model can help with that. Evaluations of other potential Republican candidates will be posted here in due course. 

The Economic Logic Blog reports on the PollyBio election forecasting model, which can help parties to identify who they should nominate to run for office. Click here for the paper.