A Local Experiment In Crowd Wisdom

Comments

39 responses to “A Local Experiment In Crowd Wisdom”

1. 

   A New Jersey Farmer

   December 20, 2021

   Mazel tov to you Sam. Proud to be a PEC fanatic.

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2. 

   Matt McIrvin

   December 20, 2021

   So how did you pick Tim Kaine? Data, or gut?

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3. 

   Alan Cobo-Lewis

   December 20, 2021

   Impressive–but your Kaine prediction couldn’t have been based on data, could it?

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4. 

   W.Dow Rieder

   December 20, 2021

   Cool, and congrats. But someone should talk to them about using something better than pseudo-3D bar graphs to present results. Tufte would be shaking his head.

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   1. 

      Alan Cobo-Lewis

      December 20, 2021

      Indeed. But Tufte is alive.

      Reply
5. 

   Joseph

   December 20, 2021

   Sam, are you sure you didn’t call up Hillary and say you’d split the winnings if she went with Tim? /s
   Congrats!

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   1. 

      Matt McIrvin

      December 20, 2021

      Now imagining someone trying to wear half a hoodie.

      Reply
6. 

   Chip

   December 20, 2021

   Congratulations. Well deserved. I’d have guessed Clinton/Biden and flipped a coin on the (R).

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7. 

   538 Refugee

   December 20, 2021

   Maybe ‘someone’ can link to this in their mea culpa on missing the Trump nomination early and often. Yes, my handle is my hint. 😉

   Reply
8. 

   David Fry

   December 20, 2021

   So no one picked Elizabeth Warren as Hillary’s running mate? I would have thought that would be a common guess, although in December she was tacitly aligned with Bernie.

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   1. 

      Matt McIrvin

      December 20, 2021

      Only one guess for a Clinton-Sanders unity ticket, too–fewer people than guessed Sanders would get the nomination. I suspect these choices were always considered less plausible by political junkies than by the masses.

      Reply
9. 

   Canadian Visitor

   December 20, 2021

   Dr. Wang, you’re the best. Congratulations. Internauts from the True North see PEC as a quick and reliable way of making sense of US politics. More wind to your sails.

   Reply
10. 

    pechmerle

    December 20, 2021

    Is there a list of the non-Princeton entrants in the competition somewhere? Interested in seeing who the persons/teams were.

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11. 

    Truthy

    December 20, 2021

    Careful Dr. Wang, today a hoodie, tomorrow a complete site redesign and articles about “How Trump’s momentum makes the race just too close to call!”

    Reply
12. 

    anonymous

    December 20, 2021

    Eight people got both presidential nominees right in January, which suggests hefty per entrant wisdom. But nobody got all four correct, which is probably due to the scarcity of political junkies (small crowd = less total wisdom).

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    1. 

       Jinchi

       December 20, 2021

       To be fair, Trump wasn’t even sure of his VP pick on the day before he announced him, so it’s asking a lot for anyone else to guess it correctly.

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       1. 

          Matt McIrvin

          December 20, 2021

          All four nominees were individually guessed by somebody, though. The one person who guessed Pence thought he would be Marco Rubio’s running mate.

          Reply
13. 

    BillSct

    December 20, 2021

    9:13 pm Friday July 29th PEC just got mentioned by Rachel Madow as a “high tech” election tracking organization along with a bunch of other more mainstream election tracking sites.

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    1. 

       Sam Wang

       December 20, 2021

       That’s nice! Though I have a somewhat contrarian view: I have noticed a tendency for that program to mention PEC whenever we make an extreme prediction favoring the left: Democrats retaking the House in 2012 (a miss), or retaining the Senate in 2014 (that’s what I said in September, though not in October; this is now remembered as a miss). I think I understand the reasons for those misses now (2012, population structure and gerrymandering; 2014, midterms aren’t random in their drift). I think the November prediction for 2016 is built on more solid ground…the coming weeks will tell.

       Reply
14. 

    pechmerle

    December 20, 2021

    The most optimistic of the forecasting sites currently: Election Analytics, a project of the Univ. of Illinois Computer Science Department:
    http://electionanalytics.cs.illinois.edu/
    Their forecast as of today: Clinton 100% to win [!]
    They got the result right in 2012, but were off on the EV totals. And that year one of their c0-leaders of the project, in his final before-the-election call, said Romney. Why: “basing that in large part on Rasmussen Reports polling data, which he said he considered ‘the most reliable.’” [!!] WSJ 11/7/12 follow-up on the forecasters.

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    1. 

       Tony

       December 20, 2021

       I hope it’s true, but I’m not sure I’d believe a group that says Clinton’s likely to win Kentucky and North Carolina is safer for Clinton than Washington.

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       1. 

          538 Refugee

          December 20, 2021

          “Each forecast provides a snapshot of the current state of the election and represents the outcome if the election was held on that day.” Well, there is 0% chance of them being proven wrong since the election isn’t held “on that day”. Combine that with little current state polling and roll your eyes.
          Expected Electoral Votes 328.78 209.22
          High precision for an impossible number. I’d suggest a drinking game based on misuse of significant digits but alcohol poisoning would ensue.

          Reply
          1. 

             UI Supporter

             December 20, 2021

             New feature added: How will undecided voters impact the Presidential election? Visit “Customize your forecast” at http://electionanalytics.cs.illinois.edu/
             You may not like what they say, but you cannot dispute their record in 2008, 2012, and 2014 (senate).

             Reply
15. 

    Amitabh Lath

    December 20, 2021

    Anne-Marie Slaughter! I have to admit she was not even on my way-outside list of possible VPs. Who sent in that pick? Was it someone from the New America Foundation?
    As for the top of the fight card, Clinton and Trump were pretty much consensus picks by late Dec/early Jan, at least here on the PEC. It would be interesting to poll these other experts and find out why they thought Trump would falter? Did they not trust the polling? Or suspect a Herman Cain style collapse in the spring? Or expect the rest of the republican field to collapse around a consensus anti-Trump choice sooner than they did? (well, actually they never did)

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    1. 

       538 Refugee

       December 20, 2021

       My guess is a health dose of “The Party Decides”. Let’s face it. It’s really hard for a lot of us to face up to the fact such overt hatred was just waiting for a champion to surface.
       Rosalynn Carter says about Ronald Reagan, “I think this president makes us comfortable with our prejudices.”

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       1. 

          Amitabh Lath

          December 20, 2021

          A large number of clear-eyed professional political experts did not consider Trump a serious choice. That means his nomination may not be a robust phenomenon. In alternate universes there may be more cases of Trump imploding or being taken down by a coordinated establishment attack than the reality we currently inhabit. A lot of low-probability events had to all line up. For instance note how Jeb was considered so strong early that Romney stayed out, but so weak later than he dropped out before FL.
          Or of course, the experts use the wrong metrics (or worse, their guts) and Trump rules the GOP across the multiverse. Either way, it would be good to diagnose this.

          Reply
16. 

    MarkS

    December 20, 2021

    Congrats! But what was the material gain?? At least lunch at Prospect House, I hope!

    Reply
    1. 

       Sam Wang

       December 20, 2021

       A hooded sweatshirt with a CSDP logo.

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17. 

    Mark J

    December 20, 2021

    Congrats on your correct pick.
    I have noticed in reading your web site and the comments a strong Democratic tilt. I suspect this same tilt in most punditry and media is creating a false signal in this election. There is a very strong anti-Trump bias out there.
    I realize every election in my 60-year lifetime has experienced this same lean and that pollsters and analysts have tools for correcting for bias, but Donald Trump seems different than anyone in the past. I suspect he is actually in better shape than his numbers show. It’s the Bradley effect and I saw it in the Brexit vote as well.
    I’d be quite interested to know if you have concerns about this.

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    1. 

       Sam Wang

       December 20, 2021

       No concerns, especially since there was no Bradley effect in the GOP primaries. Brexit is inadmissible, since it was a one-off election.

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       1. 

          Commentor

          December 20, 2021

          I seriously doubt the suggestion that there is a strong Democratic tilt in “most punditry and media.” Its certainly a GOP talking point, but several studies have been released suggesting that Clinton has received much more negative coverage than Trump has. And where do conservative media outlets such as Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and the NY Post fit into this narrative?
          Frankly, this post seems to echo the rationale behind the “de-skewing” movement from the last election.

          Reply
18. 

    Olav Grinde

    December 20, 2021

    We demand a photo of the winner in his new CSDP hoodie!

    Reply
19. 

    Paul

    December 20, 2021

    Sam,
    Yesterday in Bloomberg News, there was an article about polling results in which the question was: ‘who do you think will win?’ as opposed to ‘who will you vote for? With the point being that asking the first question is more informative re the actual outcome than the latter. Logically, this makes sense b/c the first question is asking each person questioned to do a mini poll in their head based upon everything and everyone they know rather than the personal voting question which is simply asking for 1 data point without reflection. On a personal level, I know that I do this, in particular, I focus my attention on people who are not stridently on either left or right. Do you have any thoughs/insights? Spoiler – Clinton is way ahead.
    Paul

    Reply
20. 

    Ali

    December 20, 2021

    Love your site! Is there any way you can add a graph that shows the progression of the Bayesian probability? Or does it so closely track the meta-margin that it’s not worth doing that?

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    1. 

       Matt McIrvin

       December 20, 2021

       So far it’s hardly moved at all. It would be a very boring graph.

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       1. 

          Kevin

          December 20, 2021

          I believe Sam intentionally dampens the noise on the Bayesian probability estimate by rounding it to the nearest 5%, on the grounds that this noise is not instructive in light of the uncertainty. I do worry about false impression of sudden movement created if the prediction suddenly ticks up or down 5%.

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21. 

    Matt McIrvin

    December 20, 2021

    Kaine was actually a far more popular guess for Democratic VP nominee than I would have expected: as many people picked him as Trump for R nominee, though only Sam named both. He wasn’t even on my radar until the rumors started to go around in the last days before the convention, though as soon as I heard the name I thought he wasn’t a bad choice.
    Nobody guessed Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who emerged as one of the progressive favorites in the final days.

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22. 

    Nick Carnes

    December 20, 2021

    This isn’t really your first CSDP win, though.
    In 2008 — after hearing you give a talk in the Politics Department — I submitted an entry in that year’s CSDP contest in which I answered every question I could using the latest estimates from your website. “My” entry won the CSDP contest in 2008 (Michele can verify).
    When I emailed about the win, you very kindly declined my offer to hand over the 2008 hoodie. I’m so glad to hear that you got a hoodie of your own — and the recognition you deserve — this time around.
    Congratulations on your win, and thanks maintaining such a terrific website.

    Reply
    1. 

       Sam Wang

       December 20, 2021

       That is an excellent point. Now I have my own hoodie at last. Thank you for remembering!

       Reply