Forecasting Elections

This is a page for students of PS 240. On October 29th and 31st we discussed election forecasting.

Possible Exam Questions

1. Nobody has suggested any yet.

Readings

L. Arcuri, Castelli, L., Galdi, S., Zogmaister, C. and Amadori, A. (2008). Predicting the Vote: Implicit Attitudes as Predictors of the Future Behavior of Decided and Undecided Voters. Political Psychology, 29, 369-387.

Summary: This article focused on one method that can be used to predict how undecided voters will ultimately vote. Findings in the study report that despite what undecided voters say about their lack of preference to one candidate or another people have implicit attitudes towards these candidates. Such attitudes that undecided voters would not verbally express are good predictors of future voting behavior. The study used an Implicit Associations Test (IAT) to measure implicit attitudes. IATs measure how quickly people respond to associations between two things. For example, the test might pair a picture of one of the candidates with negative words (war, death, evil). A quicker reaction by the respondent indicates his or she already associates that candidate with 'bad' things even though the person never explicitly indicated this attitude.

M.A. Barreto, Streb, M. J., Marks, M. and Guerra, F. (2006). Do Absentee Voters Differ from Polling Place Voters?: New Evidence from California. Public Opinion Quarterly, 70, 224-234.

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R.S. Erikson and Wlezien, C. (2008). Are Political Markets really Superior to Polls as Election Predictors? Public opinion quarterly, 72, 190-215.

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M.S. Lewis-Beck (2005). Election Forecasting: Principles and Practice. British Journal of Politics & International Relations, 7, 145-164.

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From the International Journal of Forecasting

Campbell and Lewis-Beck. An introduction.

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Abramowitz. Time-for-change model.

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Berg, Nelson, and Rietz. Prediction market accuracy.

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Erikson and Wlezien. Economic indicators.

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Lewis-Beck and Tien. Changing the model.

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Lichtman. The keys.

Summary: The keys is a binary forecasting model that does not use any polling data, instead it uses a wide range of indicators. They keys were created in 1981, and have correctly predicted every election from 1860-2008. They keys do not predict the winner of the election, but the popular vote winner. The keys are: Party Mandate, Party Contest, Incumbency, Third Party, Short-Term Economy, Long-Term Economy, Policy Change, Social Unrest, Scandal, Foreign or Military Failure, Foreign or Military Success, Incumbent Charisma/Hero, Challenger Charisma/Hero.

Sidman, Mak, and Lebo. Non-incumbent elections.

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