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Bayesian Combination of State Polls and Election Forecasts

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  • Lock, Kari
  • Gelman, Andrew

Abstract

A wide range of potentially useful data are available for election forecasting: the results of previous elections, a multitude of preelection polls, and predictors such as measures of national and statewide economic performance. How accurate are different forecasts? We estimate predictive uncertainty via analysis of data collected from past elections (actual outcomes, preelection polls, and model estimates). With these estimated uncertainties, we use Bayesian inference to integrate the various sources of data to form posterior distributions for the state and national two-party Democratic vote shares for the 2008 election. Our key idea is to separately forecast the national popular vote shares and the relative positions of the states. More generally, such an approach could be applied to study changes in public opinion and other phenomena with wide national swings and fairly stable spatial distributions relative to the national average.

Suggested Citation

  • Lock, Kari & Gelman, Andrew, 2010. "Bayesian Combination of State Polls and Election Forecasts," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(3), pages 337-348, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:polals:v:18:y:2010:i:03:p:337-348_01
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    Cited by:

    1. Wiśniowski, Arkadiusz & Bijak, Jakub & Forster, Jonathan J. & Smith, Peter W.F., 2019. "Hierarchical model for forecasting the outcomes of binary referenda," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 90-103.
    2. repec:cup:judgdm:v:15:y:2020:i:5:p:863-880 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Bunker, Kenneth, 2020. "A two-stage model to forecast elections in new democracies," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 1407-1419.
    4. Andrew Gelman & Jessica Hullman & Christopher Wlezien & George Elliott Morris, 2020. "Information, incentives, and goals in election forecasts," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 15(5), pages 863-880, September.
    5. Wang, Wei & Rothschild, David & Goel, Sharad & Gelman, Andrew, 2015. "Forecasting elections with non-representative polls," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 980-991.
    6. José Garcia Montalvo & Omiros Papaspiliopoulos & Timothée Stumpf-Fétizon, 2018. "Bayesian forecasting of electoral outcomes with new parties' competition," Economics Working Papers 1624, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    7. José García-Montalvo & Omiros Papaspiliopoulos & Timothée Stumpf-Fétizon, 2018. "Bayesian Forecasting of Electoral Outcomes with new Parties' Competition," Working Papers 1065, Barcelona School of Economics.
    8. Rothschild, David, 2015. "Combining forecasts for elections: Accurate, relevant, and timely," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 952-964.
    9. Montalvo, José G. & Papaspiliopoulos, Omiros & Stumpf-Fétizon, Timothée, 2019. "Bayesian forecasting of electoral outcomes with new parties’ competition," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 52-70.

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