Princeton Election Consortium

The near-final outcome of the 2010 elections is Senate 53D, House ~243R. What an event – the largest Republican majority in six decades. Yet a clear majority for Democrats in the Senate. This should be an interesting two years. So how’d we do? As I wrote before, Senate poll medians did well, with Nevada as […]

[Read more →]

I will write more later, but overall the simple approach did well…though not as well as expected. Current actual outcome: Senate 52D, House about 245 243R. The House discrepancy, about 1513 seats, is equivalent to about 1.6 1.4 percentage points of popular vote. Not ideal, but pretty good. If you’re dissatisfied, consider that this transparent, […]

[Read more →]

The Gallup generic Congressional preference poll (R+15%) has drawn notice, including from ostensibly statistics-savvy poll geeks. It’s unclear why since individual data points always vary more than averages. Then again, as the saying goes, if it bleeds it leads. But there’s something more surprising.

[Read more →]

Political scientist Matthew Dickinson offers a cogent essay on the difference between a real prediction and electoral “forecasting”.

[Read more →]

In the Senate: In critical states there are so many polls that fairly exact statements can be made. The probability of the Senate remaining Democratic is nearly 100%*. Assuming polls are unbiased on average, with 85% probability the following exact outcome is predicted: 51D-49R. Knife-edge races: WA: Murray (D) over Rossi (R) by 2.0 +/- […]

[Read more →]