The PollyVote project uses the high-profile application of predicting U.S. presidential election results to demonstrate advances in forecasting research.
[1][2] The PollyVote was created in March 2004 by marketing and forecasting expert J. Scott Armstrong and political science professors Alfred Cuzán and Randall Jones.
[3] The goal at that time was to apply the combination principle in forecasting to predict President Bush's share of the two-party popular vote (omitting minor candidates) in the 2004 presidential election.
In 2007, Andreas Graefe joined the PollyVote team and helped to launch the PollyVote.com website prior to the 2008 U.S. presidential election.
In addition, the advantage of the leading candidate was discounted (or damped) using the approach suggested by Jim Campbell.
In particular, the index models capture information about the campaign, such as the candidates' perceived issue-handling competence,[5][6] their leadership skills,[7] their biographies[8] or the influence of other factors such as whether the incumbent government faced some scandal.
The final forecast published on the morning of the election predicted that President would receive 51.5% of the popular two-party vote, an error of 0.3 percentage points.
On Election Eve, it predicted that Obama would receive 53.0% of the popular two-party vote, an error of 0.7 percentage points.
On Election Eve, it predicted that Obama would receive 51.0% of the popular two-party vote, an error of 0.9 percentage points.
"[1] They were right that Hillary Clinton would win the popular vote but failed to accurately predict the Electoral College winner.
They managed to predict the electoral count much closer than statistical models like Nate Silver's fivethirtyeight.
In addition, scholars have referenced the PollyVote as a benchmark when assessing the validity of U.S. presidential election forecasts.
[2] Another possible reason is that the PollyVote predictions are very stable and rarely change, whereas election observers and journalists are interested in excitement and newsworthiness.