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Deconstructing the 2004 Presidential Election Forecasts: The Fiscal Model and the Campbell Collection Compared

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2005

Alfred G. Cuzán  and
Charles M. Bundrick
Alfred G. Cuzán
Affiliation:
The University of West Florida
Charles M. Bundrick
Affiliation:
The University of West Florida
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Extract

In this paper we compare the August 1st forecast of the 2004 presidential election generated with the fiscal model with those made with the seven models of what we call the “Campbell Collection,” after James E. Campbell, the editor or co-editor of several forecasting symposia that have appeared in the American Politics Quarterly (October, 1996) and in successive issues of PS: Political Science and Politics (October, 2004 and January, 2005). For reasons that will become evident, Ray Fair's “presidential vote equation” (Fair 2002a, 2002b) is also included in the comparison. First, given space constraints, we present only a brief summary of the theoretical model. (For a more extended discussion, interested readers are encouraged to pursue the relevant references.) Then, as we did pursuant to issuing a forecast for the 2004 election, we estimate the model over the 22 elections held between 1916 and 2000, showing the out-of-sample results. Finally, we evaluate the model relative to the Campbell Collection on operational and substantive criteria.

Type
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PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , April 2005 , pp. 255 - 262
Copyright
© 2005 by the American Political Science Association

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