Nine ways to predict presidential elections.

AS WE ENTER another presidential election year, political pundits will retail a variety of different ways to predict the winner. Here are nine of these predictors and their track records.

1. Incumbent Presidents who run again, win. This was true of 12 of the 16 races in this century when an incumbent President was re-nominated. The four exceptions: Taft in 1908, Hoover in 1932, Ford in 1976, and Carter in 1980. In addition, two other incumbents probably would have lost if they had run: Truman in 1952 and Johnson in 1968.

2. Incumbent Presidents with positive performance ratings in the polls win. Those with negative ratings lose. True, but something of a "no-brainer." The only incumbent Presidents to run and lose since polls began were Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Both were rated, in eve-of-election polls, very negatively. However, Harry Truman had a negative rating in the poll conducted by Gallup five months before the 1948 election; we don't know how he would have rated in November. Eisenhower in 1952, Johnson in 1964, Nixon in 1972, and Reagan in 1984 all had positive poll ratings.

3. The candidate who is ahead in the first polls after Labor Day wins. True, except--rarely--when the lead changes. The two exceptions are Truman in 1948 and Kennedy in 1960.

4. The final pre-election polls get the winner right. True--except when it's very close, when at least some of the final polls may get it wrong. The major national polls have got the winner right in all the presidential elections since they started (beginning with Gallup in 1932) except in 1948, 1968, and 1976.

In 1948, the most infamous polling debacle, the few polls that were conducted all showed Dewey ahead of Truman, mainly because they stopped polling weeks or months before Truman's late surge.

In 1968 and 1976 the polls disagreed but most pollsters said it was too close to call. In the other very close election, 1960, the only major poll, Gallup, correctly showed Kennedy ahead by a whisker, but questions remain about whether he really won (or whether Mayor Daley's and Lyndon Johnson's help in "creative vote counting" put him over the top).

5. The party of the incumbent President, whether he runs or not, loses if the country is in a recession in the fall of an election year. True, according to Alan Lichtman of American University. In his book Thirteen Keys to the Presidency he writes that all seven times since the Civil War when the economy was in a recession in the fall of an election year, someone from the opposition party was elected President. The winners were Hayes (1876), Cleveland (1884), McKinley (1896), Harding (1920), Roosevelt (1932), Kennedy (1960), and Reagan (1980).

Two nit-picks are that the recession in 1980 probably ended in July, and that McKinley was re-elected in 1900 even though some believe there was a recession then.

6. If real disposable income increases by 3.8 per cent in the year before an election, the incumbent party wins; if not, it loses. True, according to Robert Westcott of Wharton Econometric Forecasting, of all elections since World War II. The incumbent party's candidate was defeated following the failure to reach the 3.8 per cent mark in 1952, 1960, 1968, 1976, and 1980. The incumbent party won in 1948,1956, 1964, 1972, 1984, and 1988 after real disposable income had grown 4 per cent or more.

7. If unemployment is falling, the incumbent party wins. True, according to Michael S. Lewin-Beck of the University of Iowa, for all five times since World War II when the unemployment rate fell in the second quarter of the election year (1948, 1964, 1972, 1984, 1988).

Conversely, the incumbent party lost in five out of six election years when the unemployment rate was flat or rising (1952, 1960, 1968, 1976, and 1980). The one exception: Eisenhower's re-election in 1956.

8. Whe either the UK or the United States swings left or right the other follows. Peter Kellner of the London Independent points out that for more than four decades U.S. presidential and UK parliamentary elections have tracked each other precisely; when either country has shifted to the right or left the other country has followed at its next election. The last occasion was Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 following Margaret Thatcher's 1979 victory. Britain will vote this year.

9. The taller of the two main candidates wins. True in 22 of the 23 presidential elections in this country. The one exception was when the unelected President Ford lost very narrowly to Jimmy Carter, who was the beneficiary of the nation's post-Watergate, post-Vietnam, anti-Republican mood.

This is a good omen for President Bush, who is 6'2". All the declared Democratic candidates are shorter except for Clinton, who is the same height. Bradley--6' 5''--is not running.

Mr. Taylor is President and CEO of Louis Harris and Associates, Inc.