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    Which election forecasting models can you trust?

    Pabio Posted on

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    WASHINGTON – As voters turn to polls and political analysts to find out who might win the presidency on Tuesdaya feud between two of the country’s leading election prognosticators, Allan Lichtman And Nate Silverwill soon be put to the test.

    Lichtman, American university professor who correctly predicted nine out of ten presidential elections, predicted a victory for Vice President Kamala Harris.

    Silver, the statistician and pollster who founded FiveThirtyEight, recently wrote in the New York Times that the race is a virtual tie, but his “instinct” tells him former president Donald Trump will probably prevail.

    More: Who wins the elections? Legendary Predictor Allan Lichtman Has “Crows” in His Stomach

    Lichtman and Silver clash over methods

    The couple has argued on social media on the validity of their respective methods.

    In September, Silver questioned whether Lichtman was correctly evaluating the “13 keys” he uses to project election results, arguing that the professor’s system actually favored Trump. Lichtman countered that Silver, whose background is in economics, was “neither a historian nor a political scientist” and that he had been wrong in the past.

    “At least 7 of the keys, maybe 8, are clearly in favor of Trump. Sorry bro, but that’s what the keys say. Unless you admit they’re totally arbitrary?” Money published on social networks.

    So which prediction is more accurate? And how do they reach these conclusions in the first place?

    More: Historian Who Correctly Predicted 9 of Last 10 Presidential Elections Picks Harris, Always

    Forecasting approaches

    Lichtman designed the measurements he uses for his election forecasts more than three decades ago with the help of an earthquake expert and mathematician from Moscow named Vladimir Keilis-Borok.

    The system, nicknamed the “13 Keys to the White House,” uses – you guessed it – thirteen true or false statements rooted in historical analysis of the state of the country, parties and candidates to determine who will win.

    It includes questions about the existence of a third-party challenger, whether “the White House party is avoiding a primary” and whether either candidate is charismatic.

    The method does not take into account how campaign messages or major events such as debates influence voter sentiment. Lichtman often makes his assessment several months before elections and only changes it if major foreign policy events arise.

    When six or more statements are true, the disputing party should win. When five or fewer are wrong, the ruling party is expected to win. In 2024, Lichtman said at least eight of the keys favor Harris.

    But Silver uses an entirely different strategy and data set to examine the state of an election.

    It builds probabilistic statistical models based on national and state polls, economic data, likely voter turnout and other factors. The model it also corrects discrepancies in the polls it aggregates and gives more weight to pollsters it considers more reliable.

    More: Historian’s latest prediction is that Kamala Harris will win the 2024 presidential election

    Prediction records

    Lichtman has correctly predicted the outcome of nine of the ten most recent presidential elections, dating back to 1984. The one he was wrong about? The 2000 presidential race where George W. Bush defeated Al Gore.

    Silver gained national recognition in 2008 when his statistical model correctly predicted the outcome of the presidential election in 49 of 50 states. His model has since predicted the outcome of the 2012 and 2020 presidential races. In the 2016 election, Silver’s model suggested a likely Hillary Clinton victory, but gave Trump about a 30% chance of winning – well more than most other tipsters.

    Which model is best?

    It depends who you ask.

    Thomas Miller, director of Northwestern University’s data science program, argued that Silver’s and Lichtman’s strategies are “wrong in different ways.” Miller created a election forecast system from its own combination of 60 years of historical analysis and betting market data, Predict It.

    He suggested that Lichtman’s model fails to account for how campaign messages and major events shift public opinion in the final months of an election.

    “According to Lichtman, nothing the campaigns do really matters. The message doesn’t matter, the positioning doesn’t matter… because everything is predetermined, in a sense, by the story,” Miller said. He also questioned whether Economic measures used by Lichtman, which examine U.S. gross domestic product, accurately target perceptions of the economy.

    More: Forget the polls? Prediction Fever Takes Over 2024 Trump vs. Harris Elections

    This year, for example, inflation is a major issue for many voters. The American economy is doing relatively well, but voters don’t necessarily feel it.

    But Lichtman objected to those claims and said his economic analysis is objective and rooted in history dating back to 1860. Each key is narrowly defined based on that analysis, Lichtman said. He argued that the lack of campaign events on his keys is one of the reasons they have been so successful.

    “What some say is the weakness of the Keys… is the strength of the Keys because they look at the fundamentals, not the fleeting events of the campaign,” Lichtman said. He said the structural model reflects how U.S. presidential elections actually work.

    More: Harris’ laugh, Trump as a teenager: Viral candidate impersonators weigh on election comedy

    Miller also saw flaws in Silver’s approach, namely that he relied too much on polling data, which varies and is fallible. If the polls are inaccurate, Silver’s predictions will be too.

    Weighting polls based on which groups of people are most likely to vote can also be complicated, Lichtman said. Polls can, for example, and have underestimated the number of Democrats and Republicans running for office.

    David Wasserman, election analyst for the Cook political reportsaid that despite the variability, he found Silver’s approach “methodologically more rigorous”.

    “Lichtman is comically overconfident and doesn’t admit to the subjectivities of his method,” Silver said in late September, “but you’ll legitimately learn a lot about presidential elections from reading his work, and he at least puts himself out there to do so. testable predictions.

    Wasserman said he thought Silver’s approach was better at “telling the public where the election is going,” in part because it “recognizes that there is inherent uncertainty in polls and future events.”

    “I am convinced that campaigns matter (…) and that the candidate’s choices affect the way voters think,” he said. “I value Silver’s approach more because it can take these factors into account.”

    But basically, the models are totally different.

    While Lichtman’s model relies on established patterns from past elections to predict future presidential votes, Silver’s model provides insight into how the views of the American electorate change over weeks and months.

    Pabio
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