Sports and politics

Bob Brockie writes:

But three Californian economists – Andrew Healy, Neil Malhotra and Cecilia Mo – have just shown that completely irrelevant events can swing public voting. They matched up top American college football and basketball results between 1964 and 2009 with results from senate and presidential elections.

The economists found that local wins and losses affected voters’ choice of candidates. More exactly, they found that a win in the 10 days before election day gave the incumbent candidate an extra 1.6 per cent more votes. The effect was most noticeable where sports teams had a big following of fans.

So if the All Blacks continue with this form, John Key will call the election for Saturday 29 October 2011 🙂

Of course the PM will not have the election campaign overlap with the Rugby World Cup. I believe the likely date is the last Saturday of November. I suspect that six weeks after a sporting event, any impact on how people vote will be minimal.