January 25, 2023
Commentary
Back To The Future: Pre-/Post- Election Predictions
- by Ed DeNicola , Op-Ed Contributor, November 7, 2024
This is how it goes with prediction
science. There are no crystal balls.
It reminds me of an unhappy week I spent at the happiest place on earth – Disney World. TV ratings came in for new broadcast premieres and we started comparing them to predictions for their program development concepts. It ruined my vacation.
For this election, the methods with the best track record mostly missed and some of the newer betting-related sources did better. Most had some predictions that panned out and others that didn’t.
Following is how each performed based on Tuesday’s predictions:
The Polls
FiveThirtyEight’s polling average had Harris up by 0.9 (Harris 47.9 vs. Trump 47.0). The numbers looked to be within FiveThirtyEight's error band, forecasting a tie or a no call.
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If you read the results as a “no call,” you could say it wasn’t wrong or right. If you took it as a tie, you could say it was wrong. I prefer to go with “no call.”
The Prediction Markets
Iowa Electronic Markets (IEM) favored a Democratic victory, although, its vote-share market was so close, I listed it as a “no call” based on Media Predict’s rules. IEM’s Winner-Take-All market clearly missed. it favored Democrats 74% to 24% for Republicans.
PredictIt also favored Democrats, but both its Presidential-Election-Winner and Which-Party-Wins-the-Presidency markets were too close and determined no calls.
Polymarket got the election forecast right. However, it missed on the popular vote.
Kalshi’s Who-Will-Win-the-Presidential-Election market was in the no call range (45% to 55%). If we hadn’t applied the rule, it would have been deemed a correct prediction. Its Who-Will-Win-In-the-Popular-Vote market was a clear miss.
Media Predict’s Will-Harris-Be-Elected-As-U.S.-President-In-2024 Market prediction (44.8% odds) would have been right, but was so close we had it as a “no call” based on its own rules from when I worked there.
The Keys
The 13 Keys prediction system experienced a rare miss. This is the first time the keys were wrong, and not due to a discrepancy between the popular and the Electoral College votes.
Professor Allan Lichtman may want to go back to his research and add a key or two. There isn’t a key for the candidate being male or female. As there are only two instances, he wouldn’t have much historical data to establish a basis.
The Betting Market
From a prediction perspective, BetOnline’s 2024 presidential election odds to win were right (Trump -147, Harris +127). Its election-winner-to-lose-popular-vote odds were wrong (No -170, Yes +130). Its popular-vote-winner odds were also incorrect (Harris -425, Trump +315).
The Stock Market
The NASDAQ share price for Trump Media Technology Group Corp. (DJT ticket symbol) proved to be a prescient signal (+75.13% year-to-date).
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) Model missed. It predicted a 70% probability that the incumbent White House party would win. As it’s solely based on stock market performance, it doesn’t account for other variables.
The Misery
The Misery Index missed. The fact that it wasn’t correct says a lot about why the Democrats lost.
The Models
The Political Economy Model (Charles Tien, Hunter College & The Graduate Center, CUNY; Michael S. Lewis-Beck, University of Iowa) and the Prospective Financial Future & Length of Time in the White House Model (Brad Lockerbie, East Carolina University) were both no calls. Neither right or wrong.
The Voting
Early voter registration favored the Democrats. It proved to be an unreliable signal for this election.
There will be a lot of talk about why the Democrats lost and much of it will be speculation or myth.
It has come up that if Harris would have chosen Josh Shapiro instead of Tim Walz as her running mate, she might have won Pennsylvania. Shapiro is the popular governor of the state.
This is true, but PA only accounts for 19 electoral college votes and she’s currently short 46.
Another one is that if Biden would have stepped down earlier and the Democrats had had a real primary contest they may have come up with a better candidate.
Harris performed a little worse than Biden in a lot of counties where she needed to do as well or better. The underlying assumption is that gender, the fact that she’s female, could have caused her results to be lower than his. A male candidate might not have experienced the same decline.
Historical data shows that candidates who are highly contested in the nomination process usually lose.
There will be some people that blame inflation and the economy for the outcome.
However, the Misery index considers both inflation and unemployment and it was below the threshold for when the incumbent party would be predicted to lose an election. Therefore, we can surmise that Harris likely lost for other reasons.
Another interesting point about this election is that Trump won without the help of Cambridge Analytica (CA). Although, it’s likely that some of my former colleagues worked on this campaign while at other companies.
For those of you who supported Trump, congratulations. For those that didn’t, I’m sorry for your loss. 2028 will be here before you know it.
Note: This op-ed assumes the final popular vote outcome doesn’t change as of this writing (Harris 47.6% vs. Trump 50.9%).
7 comments about "Back To The Future: Pre-/Post- Election Predictions".
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"Early voter registration favored the Democrats. It proved to be an unreliable signal for this election"
No, it didn't favor Democrats.
This is basic data that can be looked up.
RE: The Misery Index - I believe it was almost 80% of exit polling showed that ALL voters think the country is on the wrong track and almost the same % feels they are in moderate to severe financial stress vs 4 years ago. This has been pretty consistent for 2-3 years, so how did the misery index come up that short? Also note that unemployment amongst young adults, especially those in minority groups, is anywhere between 12-24%.
You can't tell the electorate what they are experiencing day to day is not real.
Early voting and new registrants showed a substantial increase in repubican participation.
If we've learned anything over the last several elections cycles, it's that polling is terrible. As John Stewart suggested, and to quote Ms. Harris when it comes to poling in the future, "Don't."
If she won PA, she still lost all the other battleground states - so yeah, moot point.
Should have picked Shapiro vs Walz, blaming her gender on falling short even though Trump moved Hispanics, Jews, Suburban women, young adults, and Black men by double digits vs 4 years ago, Biden should have bailed sooner...OR maybe...just maybe...she was a lousy candidate who didn't do interviews, didn't answer questions, avoided the press, doubled down on Bidenomics, never explained what her "opportunity Economy" meant, said she wouldn't change anything Biden did, and never laid out a plan to address the issues that had Americans in every demographic worried....or is that too logical and not emotional enough?
Hi Mark --
The basic data was looked up.
Below are the early registration data for national and battleground states the morning of the day before Election Day.
76,438,831 early mail-in and in-person votes cast nationally
National - 41% Democrat vs. 39% Republican
Blue Wall Battleground States
MI - 46% Democrat vs. 43% Republican
PA - 57% Democrat vs. 33% Republican
WI - 34% Democrat vs. 26% Republican
Sunbelt Battleground States
AZ - 33% Democrat vs. 42% Republican
GA - 45% Democrat vs. 48% Republican
NC - 32% Democrat vs. 33% Republican
NV - 34% Democrat vs. 38% Republican
Source: NBC News analysis of TargetSmart data.
Early registration data had her a little ahead nationally and in the Blue Wall states. If she held all the non-swing Democratic states and won the Blue Wall states it would have put her at 270 to win.
Ed
Hi Ed.
Compare actual data instead of TargetSmart's BS projections...and then compare it to prior elections
https://election.lab.ufl.edu/early-vote/2024-early-voting/
https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fz_V3oAUL8XJMEudq5wm5hDT_f554uagt6sIm_sJDro/edit?gid=1996929977#gid=1996929977
https://rpubs.com/ElectProject/early_vote_2022
"Early voting and new registrants showed a substantial increase in repubican participation."
Exactly.
Random people on Twitter (X) following the data all year and in early voting saw what was happening.
@Ed
Early voter registration doesn't matter when TOTAL voter registration was up substantially in many swing states amongst republican voters. The early voter turnout with republicans was also up substantially across the board.
You can't look at many of these statistics in a singular context to make a prediction.
Finally, considering how Trump voters have been spoken to and treated for the past 7 years by the media and other political leaders, you'd be a fool to think that many of them would participate in disclosing their feelings in a poll or actually disclose their voting intentions.
Regardless, the polls were wrong. Again.
I agree Dan Kamala wouldn't speak on the plans she had on the issues and not doing interviews as well hide in the basement which didn't work this time around. Economy saying I grew up middle class every time it came up when she did interviews with the local & national media I was sick of hearing it kinda with John Kerry 20 years ago saying I have a plan.
Kamala didn't earn it either as I believe it's earned not given and I don't think Kamala could've won the primary if there was an open primary. Which Biden should've said last year I'm not running for a second term and the Dem manchine forced him out and in came Kamala, who just wasn't a very good candidate to begin with in my opinion why she lost on Tue. Who talks to pollsters in this day and age I wouldn't waste my time answering questions for 10 or 15 minutes. They're hidden voters that aren't ever going to say who their voting for. I'm happy that the Dem mancine lost big time even know I didn't vote for either Kamala or Trump as I voted 3RD party.