As discussed in an earlier post, as of the morning of Election Day 2020, The Economist’s presidential forecasting model had a slightly higher Brier score (lower = better, higher = worse) than FiveThirtyEight’s model, but each model correctly predicted the outcome in the same number of states (49 out of 51). This made me curious […]
In the summer of 2020, online trash talking between FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver and The Economist’s G. Elliot Morris sparked the “Model Wars.” Now that the dust has settled, I’m comparing the Brier scores and the number of correctly called states from their final state-level model outputs on November 3, 2020. Please note that the models
Who won the 2020 Model Wars? Read More »
Election forecasting models took a hit to their credibility for missing Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 but were generally accurate in 2020. Because these models are dependent on polling, we can probably expect to see future issues with forecasting elections as pollster response rates drop, households disconnect their landlines, and social trust declines. At the
Were gamblers more accurate than the forecasting models in 2020? Read More »
As of Thanksgiving Day, PredictIt’s market in the Oregon 2022 Governor’s election contained price discrepancies in the “Best Buy” Republican and Democrat contracts. PredictIt offers binary option contracts: an event either happens or does not happen (Yes or No). A “winning” prediction receives $1/share, and a “losing” share receives nothing. PredictIt traders can buy “Yes”
Betting on the outcomes of elections in the United States is a long-time gambling proposition offered by legal bookmakers in the United Kingdom but is only something that has recently begun to occur in America. That raises the question: who is more accurate at predicting the outcomes of these elections, British gamblers for whom this
