President Obama leans across finish line just ahead of Romney

I have followed American Presidential politics and elections ever since as a young boy I lamented the defeat of Adlai Stevenson by Dwight D.Eisenhower in 1956.American elections despite their blemishes remain vibrant and exciting . American democracy despite the corruption of super pacs and the grotesque unlimited spending permitted by the Supreme Court decision to allow super pacs to spend as much as they liked is still a powerful expression of mass democracy in which millions of mostly thoughtful and well informed citizens choose their leader. The electoral college to foreign eyes seems crudely anti-democratic and in desperate need of reform or even abolition. Nevertheless, it offers an exciting showcase to the selection of the American President. Based on the average of the latest polls it would appear that President Obama now has a very narrow lead in the popular vote and a significant small lead in most of the battleground states. These include Ohio, Nevada,Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Iowa, New Hampshire, Colorado and Michigan. Among the battleground states Romney is ahead in the polls only in Florida and North Carolina. If these poll numbers hold up in the turn out and in ballots counted Obama will win the hotly contested election. Even if several of these states outside of Ohio go to Romney Obama should still win a narrow victory. If Romney were to somehow triumph and actually implemented his policy of slashing expenditures at this fragile stage of the recovery the impact would be disasterous.

The latest U.S. unemployment numbers were somewhat of an improvement with 171 000 new jobs an improvement over the 121000 expected. The uptick in the headline rate of unemployment to 7.9 % reflected the fact that many more discouraged workers than last month rejoined the labour force searching actively for work. The broader definition of unemployment U6 actually declined to 13.9 % down from 15.3 % a year ago and 14.2 % a month ago. More needs to be done but these improvements are evidence of a slowly healing economy.

About haroldchorneyeconomist

I am Professor of political economy at Concordia university in Montréal, Québec, Canada. I received my B.A.Hons (econ.&poli sci) from the University of Manitoba. I also completed my M.A. degree in economics there. Went on to spend two years at the London School of Economics as a Ph.D. student in economics and then completed my Ph.D. in political economy at the University of Toronto. Was named a John W.Dafoe fellow, a CMHC fellow and a Canada Council fellow. I also was named a Woodrow Wilson fellow in 1968 after completing my first class honours undergraduate degree. Worked as an economist in the area of education, labour economics and as the senior economist with the Manitoba Housing and Renewal Corporation for the Government of Manitoba from 1972 to 1978. I also have worked as an economic consultant for MDT socio-economic consultants and have been consulted on urban planning, health policy, linguistic duality and public sector finance questions by the governments of Manitoba, Saskatchewan,the cities of Regina and Saskatoon, Ontario and the Federal government of Canada. I have also been consulted by senior leaders of the British Labour party, MPs from the Progressive Conservative party, the Liberal party and the New Democrats on economic policy questions. Members of the Government of France under the Presidency of Francois Mitterand discussed my work on public sector deficits. I have also run for elected office at the municipal level. I first began to write about quantitative easing as a useful policy option during the early 1980s.

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1 Response to President Obama leans across finish line just ahead of Romney

grant mitchell says:

November 7, 2012 at 4:53 am

I was driving home and heard on VPR that Obama got past 270 electoral college votes (283)!
Yahoo!

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