Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-44mx8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-19T09:33:43.139Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Election Forecasting for Turbulent Times

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2012

Michael S. Lewis-Beck  and
Charles Tien
Michael S. Lewis-Beck
Affiliation:
University of Iowa
Charles Tien
Affiliation:
Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Election forecasters face increasing turbulence in their relevant environments,making predictions more uncertain, or at least apparently so. For US presidentialcontests, economic performance and candidate profiles are central variables in moststatistical models. These variables have exhibited large swings recently. Before the2008 US presidential election, the economy fell into a Great Recession, and thecandidate of one of the two major parties was, for the first time, a black man.These unprecedented conditions were trumpeted in the media, with heightened frenzyover the “horse race” question of who was going to win the White House. In thepress, many forecasts appeared, taking different forms—polls, models, markets,pundits, to name some—offering a broader range of possible outcomes than everbefore. Just looking at the predictions of the statistical modelers alone, we findthat for 2008 many teams offered estimates of the incumbent (Republican) vote,ranging over an 11 percentage point spread. At one extreme, Lockerbie (2008) forecast 41.8% while at the otherextreme Campbell (2008) forecast 52.7%. Ofcourse, other methodologists offered their own, different, forecasts. The media, inits various forms, added to the hyperbole, aggressively reporting differentforecasts on an almost daily basis.

Type
Symposium: Forecasting the 2012 American National Elections
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , October 2012 , pp. 625 - 629
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2012 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Campbell, James. 2008. “The Trial-Heat Forecast of the 2008 Presidential Vote: Performance and Values Considerations in an Open Seat Election.” PS: Political Science & Politics 41 (4): 697–701.Google Scholar
Gibson, Rachel, and Lewis-Beck, Michael S.. 2011. “Methodologies of Election Forecasting, Symposium on the 2010 UK Election.” In Electoral Studies 30 (2), ed. Rachel Gibson and Michael S. Lewis-Beck.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Peter. 2008. A Guide to Econometrics, Sixth Edition. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lewis-Beck, Michael S. 2005. “Election Forecasting: Principles and Practice.” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 7: 145–64.Google Scholar
Lewis-Beck, Michael S., Bélanger, Eric, and Nadeau, Richard. 2010. “Election Forecasting in France: A Multi-Equation Solution.” International Journal of Forecasting 25: 11–18.Google Scholar
Lewis-Beck, Michael S., Nadeau, Richard, and Bélanger, Eric. 2011. “Nowcasting v. Polling: The 2010 UK Election Trials.” Electoral Studies 30 (2): 284–87.Google Scholar
Lewis-Beck, Michael S., and Rice, Tom W.. 1992. Forecasting Elections. Washington, DC: CQ Press.Google Scholar
Lewis-Beck, Michael S., and Tien, Charles. 2001a. “Modeling the Future: Lessons from the Gore Forecast.” PS: Political Science and Politics 34 (1): 21–23.Google Scholar
Lewis-Beck, Michael S., and Tien, Charles. 2001b. “Election 2000: How Wrong Was the Forecast?” American Politics Research 29: 302–06.Google Scholar
Lewis-Beck, Michael S., and Tien, Charles. 2002. “Presidential Election Forecasting: The Bush-Gore Draw.” Research in Political Sociology; Sociological Views on Political Participation in the 21st Century 10: 173–87.Google Scholar
Lewis-Beck, Michael S., and Tien, Charles. 2004. “Jobs and the Job of President: A Forecast for 2004.” PS: Political Science and Politics 37 (4): 753–58.Google Scholar
Lewis-Beck, Michael S., and Tien, Charles. 2008. “Forecasting Presidential Elections: When to Change the Model?” International Journal of Forecasting 24: 227–36.Google Scholar
Lewis-Beck, Michael S., and Tien, Charles. 2011. “Election Forecasting” In The Oxford Handbook of Political Methodology, ed. Clements, Michael and Hendry, David, 655–71. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lockerbie, Brad. 2008. “Election Forecasting: The Future of the President and the House.” PS: Political Science and Politics 41 (4): 713–16.Google Scholar
Nadeau, Richard, and Lewis-Beck, Michael S.. 2001. “National Economic Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections.” Journal of Politics 63: 159–81.Google Scholar
Tien, Charles, Nadeau, Richard, and Lewis-Beck, Michael S.. 2012. “Obama and 2012: Still a Racial Cost to Pay?” PS: Political Science and Politics 45 (4): this issue.Google Scholar