A Technician’s View of the Election
November 3, 2008
Election numbers and statistics can easily become overwhelming if you aren't picky about which you follow. Between the half-dozen daily tracking polls, state polls, variations of "likely voter" models, plus everything else out there; and with both sides drawing attention to whichever single outlier poll shows them with a distinct edge, making solid conclusions can be difficult. I have been following three sources this election season: MSNBC's electoral map, FiveThirtyEight.com's electoral map, and the Intrade.com prediction market's winner take all contracts and its electoral map. We will know the next president of the United States in only a few hours, and now is the time to test the accuracy of each source.
The MSNBC map is a standard mainstream media analysis of the election, relying primarily on mainstream polling data.
Nate Silver launched FiveThirtyEight.com in March of this year and uses advanced statistics to draw conclusions about election outcomes.
Intrade.com is a financial market for commodities that aren't normally traded on traditional markets. Intrade's conclusions are based exclusively on where money is flowing, although arguably, polls, news, and other expectations dictate where people want to put their money. The "winner take all" contracts are based on how likely the market believes each candidate is to win the election.
Intrade's state map is the sum of "winner take all" contracts for each individual state.
Each source shows a lock for Obama, with the only question being how many total electoral votes the Democrat will receive. It will be extremely interesting to see how accurate these sources turn out. Traditional polls have existed for a long time, but Nate Silver's advanced models. is very new phenomenon, and prediction markets have mostly been on the fringe of the internet until recently. Much like how the rise of the internet fundamentally altered the way campaigns are organize and executed; if these new models turn out to be highly accurate, it may drastically alter the way campaigns operate and how the media reports on elections in the future.
The MSNBC map is a standard mainstream media analysis of the election, relying primarily on mainstream polling data.
Nate Silver launched FiveThirtyEight.com in March of this year and uses advanced statistics to draw conclusions about election outcomes.
Intrade.com is a financial market for commodities that aren't normally traded on traditional markets. Intrade's conclusions are based exclusively on where money is flowing, although arguably, polls, news, and other expectations dictate where people want to put their money. The "winner take all" contracts are based on how likely the market believes each candidate is to win the election.
Intrade's state map is the sum of "winner take all" contracts for each individual state.
Each source shows a lock for Obama, with the only question being how many total electoral votes the Democrat will receive. It will be extremely interesting to see how accurate these sources turn out. Traditional polls have existed for a long time, but Nate Silver's advanced models. is very new phenomenon, and prediction markets have mostly been on the fringe of the internet until recently. Much like how the rise of the internet fundamentally altered the way campaigns are organize and executed; if these new models turn out to be highly accurate, it may drastically alter the way campaigns operate and how the media reports on elections in the future.
