Evolved election forecasts

Abstract

In this paper, we apply a genetic algorithm to the field of electoral studies. Forecasting election results is one of the most exciting and demanding tasks in the area of market research, especially due to the fact that decisions have to be taken in seconds on live television. We show that the proposed method outperforms currently applied approaches and thereby provide an argument to tighten the intersection between computer science and social science, especially political science, further. Numerical results with real data from a local election in the Austrian province of Styria from 2010 substantiate the applicability of the proposed approach.