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PollyVote.com - Forecasting the 2008 US Presidential Election
Polly the parrot is back! Having provided near-perfect predictions for the 2004 election, Polly (http://www.pollyvote.com) is back for forecasting this year's US Presidential Election. Polly predicts the Republican's share of the popular two-party vote.
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September 6, 2008 (FPRC) -- Polly the parrot is back! Having provided near-perfect predictions for the 2004 election, Polly (http://www.pollyvote.com) is back for forecasting this year's US Presidential Election. Polly predicts the Republican's share of the popular two-party vote.
Aggregating information from different forecasting methods, Polly provides a daily updated prediction of the election outcome.
Based on scientific evidence
As shown by J. Scott Armstrong, Professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, combining forecasts reduces forecast error. Under ideal conditions, such combined forecasts can even be more accurate than their most accurate components. Polly follows the principle of combining and averages forecasts from four components: opinion polls, a prediction market, expert judgments and currently seven quantitative models.
Thereby, Polly accounts for error implied in the component forecasts. For example, research has shown that opinion polls can not be interpreted as a forecast of the election outcome, especially early in the campaign. Thus, Polly discounts poll data based on historical poll records to achieve more reliable forecasts.
Polly’s current forecast
For the last two weeks, Polly’s forecast has been quite stable, predicting about 48.0% for the Republican’s share of the popular two-party vote. Thus, currently, Polly sees Barack Obama ahead by approximately 4.0%. Ever since her re-launch in August 2007 through to August 2008, Polly predicted that the Democratic candidate would win. As shown in the PollyGraph, by August 2008, none of her components predict a Republicans win.
Pollyvote is part of the Political Forecasting Special Interest Group at http://www.forecastingprinciples.com, a resource for scholars and practitioners interested in forecasting elections and other political events. It is supported by the International Institute of Forecasters.
Send an email to Andreas Graefe of ITAS
+49-7247-82-4841
Keywords:
politics, election 2008, pollyvote
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