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Presidents, Baseball, and Wins above Expectations: What Can Sabermetrics Tell Us about Presidential Success?

Why Ronald Reagan is like Bobby Cox and Lyndon Johnson is like Joe Torre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 March 2017

Manuel P. Teodoro  and
Jon R. Bond
Manuel P. Teodoro
Affiliation:
Texas A&M University
Jon R. Bond
Affiliation:
Texas A&M University
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Abstract

Presidential scholars and baseball writers debate who were the greatest. While baseball analysis evolved from qualitative impressions of “experts” to rigorous, data-driven “sabermetrics,” analysis of presidential greatness continues to rely on “old-school” reputational rankings based on surveys of scholars’ qualitative assessments. Presidential-congressional relations and baseball are all about winning, but what fans (of sports and politics) find most intriguing is Wins Above Expectations (WAE)—did the team do better or worse than expected? This paper adapts the Pythagorean Expectations (PE) formula developed to analyze baseball to assess legislative success of presidents from Eisenhower to Obama. A parsimonious regression model and the PE formula predict annual success rates with 90% accuracy. The estimates of WAE from the two approaches, however, are uncorrelated. Regression analysis does not identify any president who systematically exceeded expectations, but sabermetric analysis indicates that Republican presidents outperform Democrats. Neither approach correlates with recent presidential greatness rankings.

Type
Articles
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , April 2017 , pp. 339 - 346
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2017 

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Appendix A

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Appendix B

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