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ELECTION FORECAST: A LOOK BACK AT THE TIME FOR CHANGE MODEL AND THE 2012 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2013

Alan I. Abramowitz*
Affiliation:
Emory University

Extract

The Time for Change Model once again correctly predicted the winner of the US presidential election. In late August, before the Republican and Democratic national conventions, the model predicted that President Obama would win 50.6% of the major party vote to 49.4% for his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney. When all the votes are counted, it now appears that Obama will end up with approximately 51.8% of the vote, making the Time for Change Model one of the nation's most accurate statistical forecasting models. Despite the fact that this prediction was made more than two months before Election Day, the Time for Change forecast was more accurate than the results of many national polls conducted immediately before the election including the Gallup and Rasmussen tracking polls both of which predicted a popular vote win for Mitt Romney.

Type
Features Symposium: Recap: Forecasting the 2012 Election
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2013

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