As the U.S. blogosphere swirls with the arguments about the best ways to go about (or not) predicting election results, Justin Wolfers make a provocative argument today over at The Upshot in the wake of Thursday’s Scottish referendum. Wolfers claims that while the outcome was a “loss” for polling, the betting/prediction markets knew all along that the “No” side had a chance, but was more than likely to lose, and that this was basically what we observed. Moreover, Wolfers makes the additional point that asking people which side they thought would win – instead of aggregating up self-reports of intended votes – was a much better forecaster as well. The net result is that everyone calling the election close in the closing days was essentially looking at the wrong data to make that conclusion.
I’m not going to argue with Wolfers about his conclusion, as I’m sympathetic to both parts of his argument. But I do want to build on it by noting the following three points. CONT.
Joshua Tucker (NYU), The Monkey Cage