Citizen Forecasts of the 2008<scp>U</scp>.<scp>S</scp>. Presidential Election

Miller, M.K.; Wang, Guanchun; Kulkarni, Sanjeev R.; Poor, H. Vincent; Osherson, Daniel N.

doi:10.1111/j.1747-1346.2012.00394.x

Cited by 25 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 83 publications

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“…Based on data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) from 1952 to 2008, they found that citizen forecasts predicted more states correctly than did vote intentions in eight presidential elections out of ten. Similarly, Miller, Wang, Kulkarni, Poor, and Osherson (2012) compared the relative accuracies of citizen forecasts and the prediction market Intrade. Using a unique survey during the 2008 US presidential election, they showed that citizen forecasts predicted state outcomes more accurately than the prediction market.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The wisdom of crowds: Applying Condorcet’s jury theorem to forecasting US presidential elections

Murr

2015

International Journal of Forecasting

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The wisdom of crowds: Applying Condorcet’s jury theorem to forecasting US presidential elections

Murr

2015

International Journal of Forecasting

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“…between the respective forecasts and the final vote was slightly higher for the vote expectations compared to the IeM forecasts (Holbrook 2010). Another study found that an online expectation survey of more than 19,000 respondents was more accurate than the Intrade prediction market when forecasting winning probabilities for the 2008 Us presidential election (Miller et al 2012). finally, a study of the 2006 swedish parliament elections found that combined vote-share forecasts of non-experts (members of the public) were more accurate than combined forecasts of experts (sjöberg 2009).…”

Section: Vote Expectation Surveys Versus Prediction Markets and Expertsmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…Wishful thinking occurs in all types of elections, from local referenda to national elections, and across various countries. see Miller et al (2012) for an overview of recent research.…”

Section: Vote Expectation Surveysmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…That is, one would estimate different vote equations depending on the time to election day. such an approach would account for the uncertainty that occurs over the course of a campaign, which is reflected in the decreasing accuracy of people's expectations for long time horizons (Lewis-Beck and skalaban 1989; Lewis- Beck and Tien 1999;Miller et al 2012;Murr 2011). Unfortunately, limited historical data currently preclude such an analysis, as only a few surveys are available for early elections (cf.…”

Section: Data and Forecast Calculationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Accuracy of Vote Expectation Surveys in Forecasting Elections

Graefe

2014

Public Opinion Quarterly

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simple surveys that ask people who they expect to win are among the most accurate methods for forecasting Us presidential elections. The majority of respondents correctly predicted the election winner in 193 (89 percent) of 217 surveys conducted from 1932 to 2012. Across the last 100 days prior to the seven elections from 1988 to 2012, vote expectation surveys provided more accurate forecasts of election winners and vote shares than four established methods (vote intention polls, prediction markets, quantitative models, and expert judgment). Gains in accuracy were particularly large compared to polls. On average, the error of expectation-based vote-share forecasts was 51 percent lower than the error of polls published the same day. Compared to prediction markets, vote expectation forecasts reduced the error on average by 6 percent. Vote expectation surveys are inexpensive and easy to conduct, and the results are easy to understand. They provide accurate and stable forecasts and thus make it difficult to frame elections as horse races. Vote expectation surveys should be more strongly utilized in the coverage of election campaigns. "Who do you think will win the Us presidential election?" Pollsters have regularly asked variations of this question since the 1940s. Yet little is known about the relative accuracy of such vote expectation surveys compared to alternative methods for forecasting elections. Although researchers have long

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“…From the standpoint of election forecasting, citizen forecasts of elections outperform predictions based on intended vote choice (Rothschild and Wolfers 2013). For public opinion scholars, citizen estimates of electoral viability provide insight into the power of partisan bias (Thibodeau et al 2015;Daniller, Silver, and Moehler 2013) and the potential for collective wisdom (Page and Shapiro 1992;Murr 2009;Miller et al 2012). Whether actors can anticipate electoral results also has implications for the use of elections as exogenous treatments that impact political and economic outcomes (Snowberg, Wolfers, and Zitzewitz 2007a;Gerber and Huber 2010;Caughey and Sekhon 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Closeness Counts: Increasing Precision and Reducing Errors in Mass Election Predictions

Quek¹,

Sances

2015

Polit. anal.

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Mass election predictions are increasingly used by election forecasters and public opinion scholars. While they are potentially powerful tools for answering a variety of social science questions, existing measures are limited in that they ask about victors rather than voteshares. We show that asking survey respondents to predict voteshares is a viable and superior alternative to asking them to predict winners. After showing respondents can make sensible quantitative predictions, we demonstrate how traditional qualitative forecasts lead to mistaken inferences. In particular, qualitative predictions vastly overstate the degree of partisan bias in election forecasts, and lead to wrong conclusions regarding how political knowledge exacerbates this bias. We also show how election predictions can aid in the use of elections as natural experiments, using the effect of the 2012 election on partisan economic perceptions as an example. Our results have implications for multiple constituencies, from methodologists and pollsters to political scientists and interdisciplinary scholars of collective intelligence.

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Citizen Forecasts of the 2008U.S. Presidential Election

Cited by 25 publications

References 83 publications

The wisdom of crowds: Applying Condorcet’s jury theorem to forecasting US presidential elections

The wisdom of crowds: Applying Condorcet’s jury theorem to forecasting US presidential elections

Accuracy of Vote Expectation Surveys in Forecasting Elections

Closeness Counts: Increasing Precision and Reducing Errors in Mass Election Predictions

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