Wharton Professor Weighs In On The Elections

Caesar S. writes "Recent research directed by Wharton School Professor J. Scott Armstrong takes political forecasting to the next level by using innovative techniques to combine forecasts from polls, enonometric models, betting markets and predictions by experts (Delphi surveys). Check out Polly's page to hear Polly the parrot objectively predict this year's presidential election. There's lots more interesting stuff on this site about how electronic markets and Delphi surveys can be used for forecasting. Definitely worth a read."

Comments

Interesting site, but there's a fatal flaw

[Ivan the Terrible]

Unfortunately, popular votes do not elect a president; Electoral College votes do.

Here are two sites that attempt to predict what the Electoral College votes will be:

Current Electoral Vote Predictor 2004
Election Projection - 2004 Edition

I discount the second site because of its obvious bias, but even so, things are looking grim for Kerry.

Here's my prediction:

Bush will win a second term, but his popularity will decline steadily, due to an increasingly Vietnam-like Iraq and an increasingly bleak economic scene.

His low popularity will limit his ability to enact his conservative agenda, and with a little luck, the Republicans will implode, leading to a Democratic landslide in 2008.

What evidence do I have to back up my prediction? Well, er, ..., see my next posting for details.

better projection site

[Trepidity]

The best projection site I've found so far is race2004.net. It takes into account multiple polls, while most seem to call the states based on whatever the most recent poll is. Since there is such huge volatility in polls this year, that strategy doesn't work to well.

Re:better projection site

[demaria]

Federal Review does something similar.

Re:Avoiding the big issues, analyzing the details.

[bladernr]

I'm British. I would vote for Kerry in a heartbeat. I am no Bush fan, but supported the Iraq war

Kerry supported the war as well, and believed Saddam had WMD. He thought the situation was serious. Here are some relevant Kerry quotes:

"I will be voting to give the president of the United States the authority to use force - if necessary - to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." -- John F. Kerry, Oct 2002

"The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons. He has had a free hand for 4 years to reconstitute these weapons, allowing the world, during the interval, to lose the focus we had on weapons of mass destruction and the issue of proliferation." -- John Kerry, October 9, 2002

"(W)e need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime. We all know the litany of his offenses. He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation. ...And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction. That is why the world, through the United Nations Security Council, has spoken with one voice, demanding that Iraq disclose its weapons programs and disarm. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but it is not new. It has been with us since the end of the Persian Gulf War." -- John Kerry, Jan 23, 2003