I increasingly find myself turning to Political Arithmetik for guidance on matters political.

Charles Franklin, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin, exposes the often-wrong conclusions of Conventional Wisdom through his clear graphs and explanations. He has had two posts recently on the so-called second term presidential jinx. The first shows how few data points there are, and even with those, the results are ambiguous.

It is hard to argue that 3 out of 5 cases constitute a clear pattern of poor second terms. Rather it looks like a toss up.

There is another problem with the second term jinx argument: it ignores those presidents who had a first term “jinx” and never got to serve the second term. Recognizing this selection bias in second term jinxes wipes out any remaining argument for systematic decline in the second term.

We have five postwar presidents with 2nd terms (not counting Bush) three of whom do clearly worse in the second term. Compare that with the four ONE term postwar presidents who had such bad first terms they couldn’t win reelection. (Johnson, and Ford are special cases, neither initially elected but both eligible for another term). So it looks to me like four presidents had “jinxes” in the first term, and three of five had “jinxes” in the second term. It isn’t a jinx.

When you do bad in the first term, you don’t get to have a second. When you do ok in the first, there is still a just about even chance (3/5) that the second term is worse than the first. I conclude there is no systematic difference between first and second terms, at least in presidential approval ratings.

The second post expands the argument.

So, if the second term is not generally worse than the first in mean or median approval, and the second term is not generally more variable than the first (2 of 5 are more variable), and if in the face of scandal some presidents can rebound (Reagan and Clinton), though others resign (Nixon) I think we should say that, at least when it comes to public opinion, there is precious little evidence to support commentary which presumes a systematically worse second term than first.

It’s so wonderful to find someone who looks dispassionately at the data, rather than parroting the notion that all presidential second terms are a disaster. And there’s the bonus of the great information graphics. Definitely right at the top of my reading list these days.