politicartoons | Entries tagged with polls

дума, Я думаю! (Duma - think tank, to think) September 18 Make Russia Great Again!

Russians headed to parliamentary polls on Sunday, with parties loyal to President Vladimir Putin expected to maintain their
dominance as the Kremlin sought to make a show of eliminating voter fraud after mass opposition protests. Legislative elections
were held in Russia on 18 September 2016, having been brought forward from 4 December. At stake were the 450 seats in the
State Duma of the 7th convocation, the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia. Prior to the election United Russia had
been the ruling party since winning the 2011 elections with 49.32% of the vote, and taking 238 seats (53%) of the seats in the State Duma.

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Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium, is not as well known as Nate Silver of Five Thirty Eight, who was the media darling in the 2008 and 2012 elections with his amazing predictions for the Presidential elections and midterms. Despite current predictions by the Washington Post, the New York Times, Larry Sabato, Sam Wang currently is predicting the Democrats will keep control of the Senate, albeit by a razor thin margin.

Senate Democrats are doing surprisingly well. Across the board, Democratic candidates in the nine states above are doing better in the polls-only estimate than the mainstream media models would predict. This is particularly true for Alaska, Arkansas, and North Carolina. In these three states, Democrats are outperforming the expectations of the data pundits (The Upshot’s Leo, Nate Silver, Harry Enten, John Sides, etc.).

Currently, the long-term forecast for Democratic control on Election Day is 65%, about 2-1 odds in favor.

I’ve been asked why the PEC Senate poll snapshot is more favorable to Democrats than forecasts you’ll find elsewhere: NYT’s The Upshot, Washington Post’s The Monkey Cage, ESPN’s FiveThirtyEight, and Daily Kos. All of these organizations show a higher probability of a Republican takeover than today’s PEC snapshot, which favors the Democrats with a 70% probability. Today I will show that in most cases, added assumptions (i.e. special sauce) have led the media organizations to different win probabilities – which I currently believe are wrong. I’ll then outline the subtle but important implications for a November prediction.

Dr. Wang explains his methods why everyone else is missing what he sees. Sam Wang's predictions were even more accurate than Nate Silver's predictions, getting every close Senate race right in 2012 when Silver missed 2 of them.

Dr. Wang also wrote a lengthy article explaining his modeling.