IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/intfor/v35y2019i3p868-877.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Accuracy of German federal election forecasts, 2013 & 2017

Author

Listed:
  • Graefe, Andreas

Abstract

The present study reviews the accuracy of four methods (polls, prediction markets, expert judgment, and quantitative models) for forecasting the two German federal elections in 2013 and 2017. On average across both elections, polls and prediction markets were most accurate, while experts and quantitative models were least accurate. However, the accuracy of individual forecasts did not correlate across elections. That is, the methods that were most accurate in 2013 did not perform particularly well in 2017. A combined forecast, calculated by averaging forecasts within and across methods, was more accurate than three of the four component forecasts. The results conform to prior research on US presidential elections in showing that combining is effective in generating accurate forecasts and avoiding large errors.

Suggested Citation

  • Graefe, Andreas, 2019. "Accuracy of German federal election forecasts, 2013 & 2017," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 868-877.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:intfor:v:35:y:2019:i:3:p:868-877
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijforecast.2019.01.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169207019300196
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2019.01.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    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. Andreas Graefe, 2017. "Prediction Market Performance in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election," Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting, International Institute of Forecasters, issue 45, pages 38-42, Spring.
    2. Genre, Véronique & Kenny, Geoff & Meyler, Aidan & Timmermann, Allan, 2013. "Combining expert forecasts: Can anything beat the simple average?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 108-121.
    3. Drew A. Linzer, 2013. "Dynamic Bayesian Forecasting of Presidential Elections in the States," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 108(501), pages 124-134, March.
    4. Clemen, Robert T., 1989. "Combining forecasts: A review and annotated bibliography," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 559-583.
    5. Alfred Cuzan & J. Scott Armstrong & Randall J. Jones, Jr., 2005. "How We Computed the Pollyvote," Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting, International Institute of Forecasters, issue 1, pages 51-52, June.
    6. repec:cup:judgdm:v:13:y:2018:i:4:p:334-344 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Graefe, Andreas & Armstrong, J. Scott & Jones, Randall J. & Cuzán, Alfred G., 2014. "Combining forecasts: An application to elections," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 43-54.
    8. Graefe, Andreas & Küchenhoff, Helmut & Stierle, Veronika & Riedl, Bernhard, 2015. "Limitations of Ensemble Bayesian Model Averaging for forecasting social science problems," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 943-951.
    9. Paul W. Rhode & Koleman S. Strumpf, 2004. "Historical Presidential Betting Markets," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 18(2), pages 127-141, Spring.
    10. Andreas Graefe & J. Scott Armstrong & Alfred G. Cuzán & Randall J. Jones, Jr., 2009. "Combined Forecasts of the 2008 Election: The Pollyvote," Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting, International Institute of Forecasters, issue 12, pages 41-42, Winter.
    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. UMEDA, Michio, 2023. "Aggregating qualitative district-level campaign assessments to forecast election results: Evidence from Japan," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 956-966.
    2. Graefe, Andreas, 2023. "Embrace the differences: Revisiting the PollyVote method of combining forecasts for U.S. presidential elections (2004 to 2020)," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 170-177.

    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. Graefe, Andreas, 2023. "Embrace the differences: Revisiting the PollyVote method of combining forecasts for U.S. presidential elections (2004 to 2020)," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 170-177.
    2. Graefe, Andreas & Armstrong, J. Scott & Jones, Randall J. & Cuzán, Alfred G., 2014. "Combining forecasts: An application to elections," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 43-54.
    3. Graefe, Andreas & Armstrong, J. Scott & Jones, Randall J. & Cuzan, Alfred G., 2017. "Assessing the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election Popular Vote Forecasts," MPRA Paper 83282, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Rothschild, David, 2015. "Combining forecasts for elections: Accurate, relevant, and timely," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 952-964.
    5. repec:cup:judgdm:v:15:y:2020:i:5:p:863-880 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. 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.
    7. Tai, Chung-Ching & Lin, Hung-Wen & Chie, Bin-Tzong & Tung, Chen-Yuan, 2019. "Predicting the failures of prediction markets: A procedure of decision making using classification models," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 297-312.
    8. Graefe, Andreas & Küchenhoff, Helmut & Stierle, Veronika & Riedl, Bernhard, 2015. "Limitations of Ensemble Bayesian Model Averaging for forecasting social science problems," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 943-951.
    9. Bunker, Kenneth, 2020. "A two-stage model to forecast elections in new democracies," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 1407-1419.
    10. von der Gracht, Heiko A. & Hommel, Ulrich & Prokesch, Tobias & Wohlenberg, Holger, 2016. "Testing weighting approaches for forecasting in a Group Wisdom Support System environment," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(10), pages 4081-4094.
    11. Munzert, Simon, 2017. "Forecasting elections at the constituency level: A correction–combination procedure," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 467-481.
    12. Armstrong, J. Scott & Green, Kesten C. & Graefe, Andreas, 2015. "Golden rule of forecasting: Be conservative," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(8), pages 1717-1731.
    13. Mauro Costantini & Ulrich Gunter & Robert M. Kunst, 2017. "Forecast Combinations in a DSGE‐VAR Lab," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(3), pages 305-324, April.
    14. Jing Zeng, 2015. "Combining Country-Specific Forecasts when Forecasting Euro Area Macroeconomic Aggregates," Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, University of Konstanz 2015-11, Department of Economics, University of Konstanz.
    15. Conflitti, Cristina & De Mol, Christine & Giannone, Domenico, 2015. "Optimal combination of survey forecasts," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 1096-1103.
    16. 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.
    17. Yang, Dazhi & van der Meer, Dennis, 2021. "Post-processing in solar forecasting: Ten overarching thinking tools," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    18. Diebold, Francis X. & Shin, Minchul, 2019. "Machine learning for regularized survey forecast combination: Partially-egalitarian LASSO and its derivatives," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 1679-1691.
    19. Sebastian M. Blanc & Thomas Setzer, 2020. "Bias–Variance Trade-Off and Shrinkage of Weights in Forecast Combination," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(12), pages 5720-5737, December.
    20. Jakub Nowotarski & Rafał Weron, 2015. "Computing electricity spot price prediction intervals using quantile regression and forecast averaging," Computational Statistics, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 791-803, September.
    21. Dimitrios I. Vortelinos & Konstantinos Gkillas, 2018. "Intraday realised volatility forecasting and announcements," International Journal of Banking, Accounting and Finance, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 9(1), pages 88-118.

    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:35:y:2019:i:3:p:868-877. 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.