Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore's recent leap ahead of his Republican rival George W. Bush in national polls was predicted in quality of life research by an associate professor at the University of California, Davis. Ignoring polls that had placed Bush ahead by up to 10 percentage points, Michael Hagerty of the Graduate School of Management had predicted in June that Gore would win by 2 percentage points. He made his prediction in research presented at a scholarly meeting of the Institute of Management Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Hagerty also holds to his prediction that Gore will win 54.6 percent of the popular vote in California and 52.2 percent nationally. His state-by-state predictions and other information on his forecasts are available on the World Wide Web at http://www.gsm.ucdavis.edu/~mrhagert/Pres2000.html. Hagerty used his background as a market researcher to develop an index of "citizen satisfaction" with the governing party. If citizens' quality of life has increased during the last four years, then Hagerty predicts that voters will reward the governing party with another term. His statistical analysis correctly forecasted six of the seven presidential elections since 1972. Hagerty's research shows polls don't predict presidential elections well until a month or two before the vote -- with an average error of eight percent in June and declining to about two percent near the election. "My method takes President Clinton's maxim, 'It's the economy, stupid,' and adds to it other elements of quality of life that citizens value," Hagerty says. Based on the relationship between popular vote since 1972 and changes in personal income, violent crime and household inequality, Hagerty found voters consider the economy most important, followed by closing gaps in inequality and changes in violent crime. Regarding this year's election, Hagerty says, "It's not just that the economy has improved by 10 percent in the last four years, but also that crime has declined by 16 percent and that the gap between rich and poor is narrowing. "These are fundamentals that voters tend to reward, because they improve life for all citizens," he adds. Hagerty is a director of the International Society for Quality of Life Studies and chairs the society's committee developing indexes.