It’s the Economy, Stupid, says the University of Colorado
People have become increasingly skeptical and dissatisfied with major election polling — and with good reason. All too often polls no longer seem to reflect demographic reality or eventual election results. Recently several excellent articles have been written evaluating the pro’s and con’s of election polling and their questionable predictive ability. These articles examine various relevant issues; accuracy, demographic sampling versus voter demographics or political party affiliation, national versus state versus local polls and how they relate, or the relative merits of one polling company’s proclamations versus another… The media just adores this very contentious issue — reporting and debating the ‘horse race’ provides endless fodder for the front page. However, while mucking around in the weeds, the forest is all too often ignored; for the most part, polls which have become extremely numerous over the years, have simply become far less accurate — or perhaps this is just surrendered as “something that goes without saying.” Polls that do manage to accurately predict one election frequently fail to do so in other elections.
One might protest, “So what, polls are the best thing we have!” Or “what else can we use?” Well, it turns out that there actually may be a better way to predict presidential election results. A rather obscure university model has proven to be far more reliable than public polling — or pretty much any other model. Continue reading
