The Art of Elections Forecasting

ideonexus writes "Years ago Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com, a blog seeking to educate the public about elections forecasting, established his model as one of the most accurate in existence, rising from a fairly unknown statistician working in baseball to one of the most respected names in election forecasting. In this article he describes all the factors that go into his predictions. A fascinating overview of the process of modeling a chaotic system."

Comments

Educating the Public?

[newcastlejon]

I hope that includes "don't vote according to forecasts". I mean, it'd be nice if more people voted for the candidate they actually want instead of the one they think will win.

Re:Educating the Public?

[khallow]

I hope that includes "don't vote according to forecasts". I mean, it'd be nice if more people voted for the candidate they actually want instead of the one they think will win.

An educated public would realize that voting for who you want in today's election environment is not optimal strategy.

It's all about the money

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever since the Republican members of the supreme court overturned our campaign finance laws, elections have become an epic bribe-fest where money almost always wins.

You tell me which side is outspending the other 10-1 and I'll tell you who is most likely to win the election.

Let's just save ourselves alot of time and aggravation, and ask the America's 10 most bigoted and bribe-happy billionaires who they would like to win.

Re:It's all about the money

[XanC]

Even if what you say about 10-1 outspending is true (and it probably is), you haven't established causation, only correlation. Wouldn't you expect a better, winning candidate to be able to get more money as well as more votes than the other guy?

Re:It's all about the money

[Anonymous Coward]

Democracy = one man one vote.

Capitalism = one dollar one vote.

Only an idiot or a libertarian (but I repeat myself) fails to understand that you can't "vote with your wallet" unless everyone has about the same size wallet.

Re:It's all about the money

[robinsonne]

You can say "correlation != causation" all you want, but the simple thing is more $$$ = more advertising, and the more advertising = more votes. IOW more $$$ = more votes.

Re:It's all about the money

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

Oftentimes the guy who gets the bribes(campaign contributions) is the guy more willing to do what is asked of him. The road to increasing political power is less of who is best for the people, but who continually returns good for their campaign contributors. The more you help those who bribe you, the more money they're willing to give you.

Re:It's all about the money

[bit trollent]

Wouldn't you expect a better, winning candidate to be able to get more money as well as more votes than the other guy?

Not if the better candidate is advocating against the billionaire's personal interests (such as paying his share of taxes) while the corrupt candidate obeys his billionaire owner.

Re:It's all about the money

[CrimsonAvenger]

You can say "correlation != causation" all you want, but the simple thing is more $$$ = more advertising, and the more advertising = more votes. IOW more $$$ = more votes.

To a certain extent, this is true.

It must be remembered, however, that there are other ways to "advertise".

The "incumbent advantage" is an obvious one - it's pretty easy to get your name in the news just by proposing a new law, even if you have no intention of following through on it. And the evening news is just more advertising for a candidate.

Likewise, if a candidate is preferred by the various news organizations, he/she/it tends to get better coverage than a candidate that is actively disliked by the media. Again, free advertising....

Do remember that it's actually pretty hard to limit campaign spending without tripping over the First Amendment (face it, if a candidate is rich enough, he can just buy a TV station and BECOME part of the media)....

Re:It's all about the money

[tverbeek]

Correlation != causation.... but only up until you demonstrate the causal connection. The fact that money leads to advertising is self-evident, and the fact that advertising influences opinions and behaviors is also very well established.

Also, then notion that a vastly more popular candidate will attract vastly more money overlooks human psychology. Other than big donors buying access, why would most donors bother giving money to a shoo-in? What attracts money to a contest (as demonstrated most recently in Wisconsin) is a deeply and relatively-evenly divided electorate.

Re:It's all about the money

[Thomas M Hughes]

Do remember that he [Obama] was the first (and so far only) Presidential candidate to forgo Federal matching funds for his campaign, since skipping those funds meant he didn't have to abide by the campaign finance limits.

I don't believe that is accurate. This suggests that Steve Forbes skipped on matching funds in 1996 and 2000. G. W. Bush skipped on matching funds in 2000 and 2004, which caused Howard Dean and John Kerry to forgo in 2004 as well. Over the last decade, everybody who wins, forgoes matching funds, as well as a significant number of the losers.

There are valid reasons to say Obama is doing things that are bad, but I think we have a real tendency to say "He's the first to do this!" when he's doing stuff that has been the trend for quite some time.

Re:It's all about the money

[I_am_Jack]

I always thought a Libertarian was just a Republican who wanted to legally smoke weed.

Re:It's all about the money

[zill]

A corporation, not being human, has no claim to human rights.

But the people who make up the corporation do, especially when those people have formed the corporation for the explicit purpose of exercising the right to free speech. As did Citizen's United.

The people who make up the corporation have their rights, and they are welcome to exercise those rights to the fullest. However, they don't deserve extra rights just because they have more money.

As an individual, I am allowed to donate $2500 to my favorite candidate. A single cent more and the feds haul me off to jail.

But if I form a corporation, I can donate all the money I want to a super PAC. By forming a corporation, I suddenly have more free speech rights than anyone in the country who don't currently control a corporation.

Sure, there are laws prohibiting super PACs from coordinating with campaigns, but the candidate can just have his lawyer form the super PAC and the communication between them will be protected by the attorney–client privilege. (for the interest of partisanship I won't name that candidate)

electoral tracking

[tverbeek]

Andrew Tanenbaum (of Minix fame) does a good job of tracking state-by-state polling results and what they predict about the Electorial College outcome at http://electoral-vote.com/

Re:Doesn't Matter

[Nadaka]

Yes, he is. But he is still the best republican president we have had in a century.

Re:Doesn't Matter

[artor3]

Historically, people have been willing to cross the aisle on important policies, especially if you meet them halfway. Obama's health care proposal, cap and trade, and the DREAM act (i.e. citizenship through military service) were all Republican ideas that they would have loved to support as recently as 2006. No one could have predicted the scorched earth tactic they'd employ to bring the president down.

Obama's greatest fault was how long it took him to realize what was going on. Most people had realized all the Republican "negotiations" were a stalling tactic by the summer of '09, the fall at the latest. Obama didn't seem to get it until after the 2010 elections.

Re:Doesn't Matter

[Marcika]

Lieberman is no democrat. He sabotaged the public option for the republicans by joining the threatened filibuster. Thus no majority. Thus your point is moot, coward.