IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/intfor/v24y2008i2p259-271.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Evaluating U.S. presidential election forecasts and forecasting equations

Author

Listed:
  • Campbell, James E.

Abstract

This article examines four problems with past evaluations of presidential election forecasting and suggests one aspect of the models that could be improved. Past criticism has had problems with establishing an overall appraisal of the forecasting equations, in assessing the accuracy of both the forecasting models and their forecasts of individual election results, in identifying the theoretical foundations of forecasts, and in distinguishing between data-mining and learning in model revisions. I contend that overall assessments are innately arbitrary, that benchmarks can be established for reasonable evaluations of forecast accuracy, that blanket assessments of forecasts are unwarranted, that there are strong (but necessarily limited) theoretical foundations for the models, and that models should be revised in the light of experience, while remaining careful to avoid data-mining. The article also examines the question of whether current forecasting models grounded in retrospective voting theory should be revised to take into account the partial-referendum nature of non-incumbent, open-seat elections such as the 2008 election.

Suggested Citation

  • Campbell, James E., 2008. "Evaluating U.S. presidential election forecasts and forecasting equations," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 259-271.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:intfor:v:24:y:2008:i:2:p:259-271
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169-2070(08)00033-2
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Erikson, Robert S., 1989. "Economic Conditions and the Presidential Vote," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 83(2), pages 567-573, June.
    2. Josep M. Colomer, 2007. "What other sciences look like," Economics Working Papers 1017, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    3. Gelman, Andrew & King, Gary, 1993. "Why Are American Presidential Election Campaign Polls So Variable When Votes Are So Predictable?," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 23(4), pages 409-451, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jastramskis, Mažvydas, 2012. "Election forecasting in Lithuania: The case of municipal elections," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 822-829.
    2. José García-Montalvo & Omiros Papaspiliopoulos & Timothée Stumpf-Fétizon, 2018. "Bayesian Forecasting of Electoral Outcomes with new Parties' Competition," Working Papers 1065, Barcelona School of Economics.
    3. Montalvo, José G. & Papaspiliopoulos, Omiros & Stumpf-Fétizon, Timothée, 2019. "Bayesian forecasting of electoral outcomes with new parties’ competition," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 52-70.
    4. Toros, Emre, 2012. "Forecasting Turkish local elections," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 813-821.
    5. Evans, Jocelyn & Ivaldi, Gilles, 2010. "Comparing forecast models of Radical Right voting in four European countries (1973-2008)," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 82-97, January.
    6. Toros, Emre, 2011. "Forecasting elections in Turkey," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 1248-1258, October.
    7. José Garcia Montalvo & Omiros Papaspiliopoulos & Timothée Stumpf-Fétizon, 2018. "Bayesian forecasting of electoral outcomes with new parties' competition," Economics Working Papers 1624, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    8. Tomi Ovaska & Ryo Takashima, 2019. "Export Jobs, Special Interest Groups, and the US Presidential Election of 2016: The Case of West Virginia," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 34(Winter 20), pages 75-97.
    9. Cáceres, Neila & Malone, Samuel W., 2013. "Forecasting leadership transitions around the world," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 575-591.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David A. M. Peterson, 2009. "Campaign Learning and Vote Determinants," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(2), pages 445-460, April.
    2. Jason Barabas, 1998. "Wage Erosion, Economic Assessments, and Social Welfare Opinions," JCPR Working Papers 56, Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research.
    3. Hibbs, Douglas A, Jr, 2000. "Bread and Peace Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 104(1-2), pages 149-180, July.
    4. repec:cup:judgdm:v:15:y:2020:i:5:p:863-880 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Juan Herreño & Matias Morales & Mathieu Pedemonte, 2023. "The Effect of Local Economic Shocks on Local and National Elections," Working Papers 23-08, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    6. Wang, Wei & Rothschild, David & Goel, Sharad & Gelman, Andrew, 2015. "Forecasting elections with non-representative polls," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 980-991.
    7. Jerome, Bruno & Jerome, Veronique & Lewis-Beck, Michael S., 1999. "Polls fail in France: forecasts of the 1997 legislative election1," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 163-174, April.
    8. Larcinese, Valentino & Puglisi, Riccardo & Snyder, James M., 2011. "Partisan bias in economic news: Evidence on the agenda-setting behavior of U.S. newspapers," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(9), pages 1178-1189.
    9. David Brulé, 2006. "Congressional Opposition, the Economy, and U.S. Dispute Initiation, 1946-2000," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 50(4), pages 463-483, August.
    10. Khan, Urmee & Lieli, Robert P., 2018. "Information flow between prediction markets, polls and media: Evidence from the 2008 presidential primaries," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 696-710.
    11. Temporão, Mickael & Dufresne, Yannick & Savoie, Justin & Linden, Clifton van der, 2019. "Crowdsourcing the vote: New horizons in citizen forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 1-10.
    12. Yarrow Dunham & Antonio A. Arechar & David G. Rand, 2019. "From foe to friend and back again: The temporal dynamics of intra-party bias in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 14(3), pages 373-380, May.
    13. A. Kamakura, Wagner & Afonso Mazzon, Jose & De Bruyn, Arnaud, 2006. "Modeling voter choice to predict the final outcome of two-stage elections," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 689-706.
    14. Caroline Le Pennec & Vincent Pons, 2019. "How Do Campaigns Shape Vote Choice? Multi-Country Evidence from 62 Elections and 56 TV Debates," NBER Working Papers 26572, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Stambough, Stephen J. & Thorson, Gregory R., 1999. "Toward stability in presidential forecasting: the development of a multiple indicator model," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 143-152, April.
    16. Bernardo S. Da Silveira & João M. P. De Mello, 2011. "Campaign Advertising and Election Outcomes: Quasi-natural Experiment Evidence from Gubernatorial Elections in Brazil," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 78(2), pages 590-612.
    17. Andrew Gelman & Jessica Hullman & Christopher Wlezien & George Elliott Morris, 2020. "Information, incentives, and goals in election forecasts," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 15(5), pages 863-880, September.
    18. Christine Fauvelle-Aymar & Abel François, 2003. "Campagne électorale, préférences politiques et participation. Une étude empirique sur les élections législatives françaises de 1997," Cahiers de la Maison des Sciences Economiques j04009, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1).
    19. Marcelo Tyszler & Arthur Schram, 2016. "Information and strategic voting," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(2), pages 360-381, June.
    20. Jonathon M. Clegg, 2016. "Perception vs Reality: How Does The British Electorate Evaluate Economic Performance of Incumbent Governments In The Post War Period?," Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers _143, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    21. Abu, Christian Ukeame, 2022. "Political Campaign and Human Rights Violation in Rivers State, Nigeria, 2013-2021," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 6(12), pages 536-543, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:intfor:v:24:y:2008:i:2:p:259-271. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ijforecast .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.