You can read my previous two election posts here and here. In this post I will take a look at who got the election right and what factors to look for in making that evaluation. Those factors include single polls versus (simple and complex) poll aggregations, use of combination forecasting, the use of cell phone only households in surveys and the astonishing performance of quantitative models that accurately predicted the final results almost a year back. Keep in mind that as of this writing, the final results are still not in both in terms of vote share and in terms of states (Missouri). That said, the results are close enough that we can get a good idea of what went right.
Posted by: Rajan Sambandam in Psychology, Polls on
Oct 29, 2008
It is election day and you do your civic duty by going to your designated polling place, standing in line, chatting with a couple of nice people, drawing the curtain and pulling the lever. Do you notice where you have voted? Of course, it's at your local school (or church or firehouse). Did that have any influence on how you voted? Of course not, right? Not so fast. New research (by Jonah Berger, Marc Meredith and Christian Wheeler) indicates that the type of polling place can have a subtle effect on how people vote. The impact is small but it is there in both a controlled lab experiment and in a noisy real-world environment.
The Bradley Effect is quite often mentioned in the media as we approach the Presidential election. It refers to the under-performance of a black candidate as compared to poll numbers. A good summary of various issues can be found here. A lot of the information about this effect is speculative or based on sparse polling numbers from other races which have led to questions of whether the effect really existed, whether it was seen in other races and whether in 2008 it is still likely to be seen. Perhaps the best study on this issue was conducted by Anthony Greenwald and Bethany Albertson the University of Washington. They used data from the Clinton-Obama primary, the most comprehensive source available and studied it using regression analysis to explore the existence of the Bradley effect.
Posted by: Rajan Sambandam in Polls, Politics, Markets on
Oct 12, 2008
To read the first part of this post click here. In that we discussed how to use the available information to predict a winner in the current presidential race. While the polls (including the poll average) gave a small edge to McCain at that time, the other measures gave a mixed picture with the combined measure giving Obama a slight edge. Since that post a month ago the race has changed quite a bit. In this post I will revisit those numbers to see where they stand, how they have changed and what that means when you track such numbers. In the next one we will look at the impact of race on the race, or the so called Bradley Effect.
Posted by: Rajan Sambandam in Polls, Politics, Markets on
Sep 12, 2008
A question that is of great interest now and the common response tends to be "who's leading in the polls?". You often hear people say that the latest poll from some reputable organization shows one candidate with a 3 point lead. Is that the best measure we have of predicting who will win the Presidential election? I submit that it is not and will walk you through the different measures available and what is most likely the best one. I say most likely because nothing predicts the future with complete certainty. Further, the aim here is not to examine the political strategies used by the candidates or speculate on who has a better ground game. We just want to see what is the best way to predict the winner, using all publicly available information.
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