Hillary Clinton is now formally a presidential candidate, to pretty much no one’s surprise. One of the important challenges she faces is simple history: it has been difficult for a political party to hold the White House for more than two terms. The political scientist Alan Abramowitz, whose presidential election forecasting model explicitly includes this tendency, calls it the “time for a change” factor.
Now, new research offers an explanation for why a party’s control of the White House so frequently ends after eight years. In short, it’s about policy. And this poses a challenge for Clinton because the Obama administration’s key policy achievements are distinctly out of step with the trend in public opinion. CONT.
John Sides, Monkey Cage