Predicting elections: Experts, polls, and fundamentals

Journal Title: Judgment and Decision Making - Year 2018, Vol 13, Issue 4

Abstract

This study analyzes the relative accuracy of experts, polls, and the so-called ‘fundamentals’ in predicting the popular vote in the four U.S. presidential elections from 2004 to 2016. Although the majority (62%) of 452 expert forecasts correctly predicted the directional error of polls, the typical expert’s vote share forecast was 7% (of the error) less accurate than a simple polling average from the same day. The results further suggest that experts follow the polls and do not sufficiently harness information incorporated in the fundamentals. Combining expert forecasts and polls with a fundamentals-based reference class forecast reduced the error of experts and polls by 24% and 19%, respectively. The findings demonstrate the benefits of combining forecasts and the effectiveness of taking the outside view for debiasing expert judgment.

Authors and Affiliations

Andreas Graefe

Keywords

Related Articles

Why are gainers more risk seeking

The phenomenon that prior gains may increase people’s willingness to accept risky gambles is named as the house money effect (Thaler and Johnson, 1990). Many studies have shown that the “house money effect” is a robust p...

Nudge to nobesity II: Menu positions influence food orders

“Very small but cumulated decreases in food intake may be sufficient to have significant effects, even erasing obesity over a period of years” (Rozin et al., 2011). In two studies, one a lab study and the other a real-wo...

Correlations of cognitive reflection with judgments and choices

We investigated the role of individual differences in cognitive reflection in decision making. We measured the performance of 157 participants in the cognitive reflection test (Frederick, 2005) and a number of decision-m...

Thoughtful days and valenced nights: How much will you think about the problem?

Considerable research has pointed towards processing differences as a viable means for understanding the strength and likelihood of a framing effect. In the current study we explored how differences in processing may eme...

Validation of Adult Decision-Making Competence in Chinese college students

The present study was conducted to validate the Chinese version of the Adult Decision-Making Competence scale. 364 college students were recruited from four universities in China. The results indicate the Chinese Adult D...

Download PDF file
  • EP ID EP678365
  • DOI -
  • Views 177
  • Downloads 0

How To Cite

Andreas Graefe (2018). Predicting elections: Experts, polls, and fundamentals. Judgment and Decision Making, 13(4), -. https://europub.co.uk/articles/-A-678365