PollyVote Project

Polly the parrot uses the high-profile application of election forecasting to demonstrate advances in forecasting methodology.

Her focus is on the principle of combining by averaging forecasts from different component methods. This approach has lead to highly accurate forecasts for the past five U.S. presidential elections (Graefe et al. 2011).

Polly's caretakers are Scott ArmstrongAlfred CuzanAndreas Graefe and Randall Jones.

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Ray Fair model update predicts a virtual tie in the popular vote
Written by Andreas Graefe   
Thursday, 03 November 2011 14:11

Ray Fair updated his vote-share equation with the latest economic data. The revised forecast of the model fell from 53.4% for Obama to 50.0%.

According to Fair's model, the election outcome strongly depends on the state of the economy. For a moderately growing economy, which is the current assumption in the model, the election is predicted to be close. If the economy will do considerably better, Obama is forecasted to win. In contrast, if the economy is going into another recession, Obama is predicted to lose. 

Incorporating this information, the combined PollyVote forecast now predicts Obama to gain 50.4% of the popular vote. 

 

PollyVote 2012

 
Today's forecast of the
popular two-party vote


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