My Final Election Predictions!
It all started with the innocuous question “Hey, I’m seeing scary national polls… how close is this election?” But, after throwing together a basic modeling framework and deciding I liked my numbers better than a lot of the other aggregators out there, I was hooked, and for the last month I’ve memorized way too many stats, watched Kander assemble that huge gun more times that I’d have thought necessary for my predictions, and developed a conditioned shudder reflex against the name “Rasmussen”.
I expect to spend all of tomorrow (after voting in my lovely garage-based polling place) on the edge of my seat all night, not just stressed about the direction of our country and political discourse, but desperately hoping that places like Alaska, Indiana, Maine, and Minnesota don’t betray me. But while swing states and senate seats remain up in the air, I announce my first 100% prediction that Wednesday will bring me the unbridled joy of knowing that I’ll never have to run this model again.
For more information on the model and how it was built, check out all my prior articles. The initial release is detailed here.
First, we’ll cover the overall presidential election forecast. Then, we’ll move to state-level results, with new margin-of-victory forecasts. Finally, we’ll move to projections for the overall Senate outcome, and individual seat races. For those of you following me (or involved with me! Our crew is now 7 strong, with a total investment in the 5 figures) at predictit.org, we’ll cover the final betting positions in another article to be released tonight as well. The betting markets are a world of continuous spectra, in which Georgia for the democrats is a valid question, but in this article, the shades of grey disappear and everything becomes binary, so we can later say things like “we got 50 of 50 states right!”, ignoring the fact that a bunch are basically coin flips. So without further ado….
I’ll follow up with some final stats on our projections, as well as a compare to the other analytics pundits after the election! Make sure to check out my final betting positions article (forthcoming!), and GO VOTE!!!!!!