Competing Approaches to Forecasting Elections: Economic Models, Opinion Polling and Prediction Markets

Andrew Leigh () and Justin Wolfers ()

No 12053, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We review the efficacy of three approaches to forecasting elections: econometric models that project outcomes on the basis of the state of the economy; public opinion polls; and election betting (prediction markets). We assess the efficacy of each in light of the 2004 Australian election. This election is particularly interesting both because of innovations in each forecasting technology, and also because the increased majority achieved by the Coalition surprised most pundits. While the evidence for economic voting has historically been weak for Australia, the 2004 election suggests an increasingly important role for these models. The performance of polls was quite uneven, and predictions both across pollsters, and through time, vary too much to be particularly useful. Betting markets provide an interesting contrast, and a slew of data from various betting agencies suggests a more reasonable degree of volatility, and useful forecasting performance both throughout the election cycle and across individual electorates.

JEL-codes: D72 D84 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm, nep-for and nep-pol
Date: 2006-02
Note: AP EFG POL
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12053.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

Related works:
Working Paper: Competing Approaches to Forecasting Elections: Economic Models, Opinion Polling and Prediction Markets (2005)
Working Paper: Competing Approaches to Forecasting Elections: Economic Models, Opinion Polling and Prediction Markets (2006)
Working Paper: Competing Approaches to Forecasting Elections: Economic Models, Opinion Polling and Prediction Markets (2006)
Journal Article: Competing Approaches to Forecasting Elections: Economic Models, Opinion Polling and Prediction Markets (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12053

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12053
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().