I was a modeler before it was cool.
Our firm brought modeling to Democratic poll data in the early 1980s, created the first micro-targeting models in the middle and late 1980s, developed the first state-level Senate forecasting model for use in resource allocation in the 1990s and built state-level presidential models and used them with Monte Carlo simulations in the early 2000s. …
Nonetheless, models are, by definition, simplifications of reality. …
Precisely because they focus on uncovering average historical patterns, there are some factors forecasting models cannot and do not consider. Among them: CONT.
Mark Mellman (Mellman Group), The Hill