Forget about Obama versus Romney. The real contest in the 2012 election was about analytics. …
In the latest skirmish, the quants won. They predicted the election outcome far more accurately than the pundits did. Therein lies a lesson for executives and policy makers alike: Wisdom and intuition may actually be hurting your firm or organization. …
This doesn’t mean the quants can declare victory. As it turns out, there is an even better forecaster: crowds. Political prediction markets, such as Intrade, which rely on the wisdom of crowds rather than any individual uber-pundit, have historically done a better job of predicting elections than even very sophisticated statistical models do. [cont.]
Betsey Stevenson, U. of Michigan, & Justin Wolfers, U. of Pennsylvania (Bloomberg)