Citizen Forecasts of the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election
نویسندگان
چکیده
We analyze individual probabilistic predictions of state outcomes in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Employing an original survey of more than 19,000 respondents, we find that partisans gave higher probabilities to their favored candidates, but this bias was reduced by education, numerical sophistication, and the level of Obama support in their home states. In aggregate, we show that individual biases balance out, and the group’s predictions were highly accurate, outperforming both Intrade (a prediction market) and fivethirtyeight.com (a poll-based forecast). The implication is that electoral forecasters can often do better asking individuals who they think will win rather than who they want to win.
منابع مشابه
The Role of Internet in Elections (A case study of the Presidential Election of the USA in 2008)
Internet has found an increasing role in the politics, during the last decade. Today, terms like digital democracy, Internet elections, Internet advertisements (propaganda, social- political Web logging in the internet has become common terms. Internet is getting replaced for the traditional media in politics. The interactive characteristic of this media has changed it to an unrivaled instrume...
متن کاملA disaggregate approach to economic models of voting in U
By examining disaggregate state-level data, we address two weaknesses of prior estimates of economic voting models in U.S. Presidential elections. First, our disaggregate approach substantially improves statistical power, thus reducing the danger of “overfitting.” Second, our analysis demonstrates systematic differences in voting behavior across states, which have been ignored: voters in higher...
متن کاملEvaluating U.S. presidential election forecasts and forecasting equations
This article examines four problems with past evaluations of presidential election forecasting and suggests one aspect of the models that could be improved. Past criticism has had problems with establishing an overall appraisal of the forecasting equations, in assessing the accuracy of both the forecasting models and their forecasts of individual election results, in identifying the theoretical...
متن کاملModeling and forecasting US presidential election using learning algorithms
The primary objective of this research is to obtain an accurate forecasting model for the US presidential election. To identify a reliable model, artificial neural networks (ANN) and support vector regression (SVR) models are compared based on some specified performance measures. Moreover, six independent variables such as GDP, unemployment rate, the president’s approval rate, and others are co...
متن کاملLinguistic Construction of a Winning Apology
The study analyzes the apology delivered by the then-democratic Presidential contender in 2007, Senator Barack H. Obama, to the Indian-American community. This apology succeeded in convincing American citizens of Obama’s goodwill and clean political standards, which eventually led him to surpass his chief opponent, Senator Hillary R. Clinton and become the President of the United States. The st...
متن کامل