Predicting a presidential winner is one of America’s favorite pastimes in an election year. Pundits and bloggers rely on introspection and retrospection for their predictions. The politerati prognosticate at Aspen Institute round tables and in the Cambridge Journal. Pollsters crunch survey data to divine a victor. Everybody gets in on […] Read more »
Which Changed First, the Polls or the Markets?
While Wall Street has thrown the bulk of its donations behind Mitt Romney, it is not viewing his potential ascent as an entirely good thing for the markets. … Traders have not suddenly concluded that Mr. Romney is a sure bet for the White House — most prediction models still […] Read more »
Acknowledge the Limits of Prediction
… Gallup saw election polls as only the entering wedge for more important surveys on the issues of the day, which would restore political responsiveness by applying the new tool of statistical sampling “to the old problem of finding out what the people of this free-thinking, free-speaking democracy wish to […] Read more »
Polls, lies and ‘the prediction business’
These are the days of uncertainty. The pollsters tell us so. You wouldn’t know it from the pundits, however. They rend their garments or sing hosannas as if each little survey statistic was handed down from on high, chiseled into tablets. [cont.] Todd Leopold, CNN Read more »
PBS NewsHour: Political Polls, Professors and Election Markets Predict the Presidential Race
Watch Political Polls, Professors Predict the Presidential Race on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour. Read more »
The Silver Fox
Predictions are hard—especially about the future. It must have taken superhuman will for New York Times FiveThirtyEight blogger and columnist Nate Silver to avoid quoting Yogi Berra in the course of writing his engaging and sophisticated new book, The Signal and the Noise, especially because the line is so directly […] Read more »