For the second time in a row, Polly called a presidential election with a perfect or near-perfect forecast. Based on preliminary results, Polly's forecast hit the bull's eye. From the beginning at August 30, 2007 Polly never strayed from the Democratic candidate.
For the second time in a row, Polly called a presidential election with a perfect or near-perfect forecast. In 2004, the morning after the voters had had their say it appeared that Polly had hit the bull's eye, at 51.5% for President Bush. When the final official results were in, however, it turned out that that was not quite right. The Pollyvote was off-by a mere one-fourth of one percent!
Polly's final forecast on election eve was Obama 53.0% vs. McCain 47.0%. Yesterday's preliminary totals show the Obama-Biden ticket taking 53% of the two-party vote, exactly what Polly predicted. Once again, Polly has shown that combining election forecasts within and across methods, with polls, quantitative models, a prediction market and experts' forecasts averaged and weighted equally, is hard to beat.
To read more on Polly go to www.forecastingprinciples.com/PollyVote