Forecasting the Senate vote on the Supreme Court vacancy:

摘要

This paper forecasts current senatorsa?? votes on Merrick Garlanda??s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, in the unlikely case that a vote actually takes place. The forecasts are necessarily conditional, awaiting measurement of the nomineea??s characteristics. Nonetheless, a model that combines parameters estimated from existing data with values of some measurable characteristics of senatorsa??particularly their party affiliations, party loyalty levels, and ideological positionsa??is sufficient to identify potential swing voters in the Senate. By accounting for a more nuanced and refined understanding of the confirmation process, our model reveals that if President Obama were to nominate almost any nominee (conservative or liberal) today, that nominee would be rejected if a vote was allowed to take place. So why nominate anyone at all? Obamaa??s hope for a successful confirmation must come from the stochastic component, that is, from outside the traditional decision-making calculus.