PollyIssues: Predicting Elections from Candidates' Ability to Handle Issues

Who will win the election if voters decide based on which candidate they expect to do better in handling the issues? Graefe and Armstrong addressed this question. They found that, historically, voters chose the candidate they expected to do the best job in dealing with the issues facing the country.

The approach is based on the assumption that voters select the candidate they expect to perform best in handling the issues. Thus, it is assumed that

  1. For the voter, it is not primarily important how the candidates intend to solve the problems or what policies they promise to pursue. 
  2. Rather, the voters simply want the problems to be solved. 

Graefe and Armstrong tested their approach for the 10 U.S. Presidential Elections from 1972 to 2008, analyzing data from 376 historical polls. Nine times their PollyIssues model correctly predicted the winner of the popular vote, with one tie. For the last three elections from 2000 to 2008, the method outperformed well-established election forecasting methods.  

Graefe, A. & Armstrong, J. S. (2008). Forecasting Elections from Voters' Perceptions of Candidates' Ability to Handle Issues, SSRN Working Paper, Presented at the 28th Annual International Symposium on Forecasting, Nice, 2008.

Data files: View online or download as Excel sheet



German news channel n-tv on PollyIssues
Written by Andreas Graefe   
Wednesday, 22 October 2008 15:39
The German news channel n-tv reports on the PollyIssues forecasting model in an article on their website. Click here for the full article.
 
BNN on PollyIssues
Written by Andreas Graefe   
Tuesday, 21 October 2008 15:42

The German broadsheet Badische Neueste Nachrichten reports on PollyIssues in an article about the US elections. Click here for the full article.

 

 

 
dpa - Deutsche Presse Agentur on PollyIssues
Written by Andreas Graefe   
Tuesday, 21 October 2008 15:35

The dpa - Deutsche Presse Agantur, one of the world’s leading international news agencies, sent out a news item about PollyIssues.

 
PollyIssues on the Betfair Blog
Written by Andreas Graefe   
Wednesday, 08 October 2008 12:17
Leighton Vaughan Williams reports on PollyIssues. Click here to get to the blog post.