Economist

Did Bookmakers & Prediction Markets fare that badly in the 2022 Senate races?

Elections / / , , , , , , , , , ,

There has been some ridicule about prediction markets’ poor performance in the 2022 Senate elections, but the data for individual Senate races is less clear.  Below we look at the state-level forecasts for 2022 Senate races from the following sources: These 12 platforms are being compared in two different ways: Prices, probabilities, and odds were […]

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How well did election models perform in the 2022 midterms?

Elections / / , , , , ,

We’re looking at the state-level election forecasts from FiveThirtyEight, The Economist, and Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ) for the 2022 U.S. Senate races.  The data was captured at 10:30 am on the morning of Election Day. Since ballots are still being counted, the Georgia runoff is on December 6th, and there will be inevitable litigation, we’re

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Comparing Economist & 538 Models over time

Elections / / , , , ,

We previously looked separately at both The Economist’s and FiveThirtyEight’s respective 2020 presidential models in the months leading up to the 2020 Presidential Election, and are now directly comparing their state-level predictions.  This is challenging because the models made different predictions.  The Economist’s model made forecasts in all 50 states plus Washington, D.C., while FiveThirtyEight’s

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Do averaging models, markets, and odds produce more accurate predictions?

Elections / / , , , , , ,

In judging state-level forecasts of the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, we’ve primarily looked at prices from one prediction market (PredictIt), outputs from two forecasting models (FiveThirtyEight and The Economist), and the implied probabilities of gambling odds from three British bookmakers (Sky Bet, BoyleSports, and Betfred.)  Because diversity in predictions can benefit ensembles, I was curious

Do averaging models, markets, and odds produce more accurate predictions? Read More »

Did The Economist’s 2020 Presidential forecast model perform worse closer to Election Day?

Elections / / , , ,

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

Did The Economist’s 2020 Presidential forecast model perform worse closer to Election Day? Read More »