Modelers argue about how valuable polls are for making early predictions about elections. The advantages of being a conservative get smaller when people say what they believe about economics and social policy. And most Americans want Karl Rove’s words to be taken differently. Today is Wednesday, May 28, 2014, and this is HuffPollster.
WHAT POLL RESULTS MEAN FOR EARLY PREDICTIONS – In an article comparing election prediction models, Sam Wang writes, “Today, there are a lot of forecasts, and each one claims to be more accurate than the last…. Before Memorial Day, there aren’t many polls, so early predictions about the November election have to be based on indirect signs of how voters are likely to act. These are what we call “fundamentals.” Once polls are available, they can tell you about November’s performance in the same ballpark as fundamentals but with much less uncertainty. Years of polling have shown that what voters say they want “right now” is an excellent place to start figuring out how they will vote in the fall, give or take a few points. Because of this, polling data, when there is enough of it, is the best way to make predictions about any race. Even though it’s still early, polls are the best way to figure out what will happen in November. In the 2012 election, for example, polling data available in July and knowledge of how far presidential polls tend to move in the months before the election were enough to give President Obama’s reelection a 91 percent chance. As the election got closer, that number got closer and closer to 100%.
Early Senate polls are almost as accurate as those in October. Wang’s argument is similar to what Harry Enten said in April: “I took a RealClearPolitics-style average of all the polls for 107 races since 2006… I made this chart, which shows that early polls can predict the final vote margin pretty well. Between the early election and the final results, there was an average difference of 6.4 points. On the other hand, in the 2012 Senate race, polls taken in the last month before the election was still off by an average of 4.8 points. Overall, the president’s party candidate won 83 percent of the time when early polls showed that they were ahead and lost 88 percent of the time when they were behind.
The “key difference” between the NYT and Post models is how they use polls. – Andrew Prokop: “The Upshot has made a model that is mostly based on polls, with fundamentals playing a supporting role.” Josh Katz of the New York Times tells me that the proportion of polling to background information changes from race to race. However, as of today, the background model can account for anywhere from one-third to less than five percent of the forecast. So, the Upshot’s results are much more in line with recent polls that show Democrats are ahead in a few close races. The Post, however, doesn’t use polls at all; their model is based only on the basics. They explain the bigger picture of each state’s race and use that to make their predictions. In the future, they want to add polls but focus on the basics first. Eric McGhee of the Monkey Cage, one of the model’s co-creators, says, “We wanted to be more careful and add polls gradually.”
CONSERVATIVE ADVANTAGE SHRINKING ON ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL POLICY – Jeffrey M. Jones: “On economic and social issues, more Americans still say they are conservatives than liberals. But the conservative advantage in each area is getting smaller. In recent years, it was higher, but now it’s only 21 points in economic policy and 4 points in social policy. Trends toward lower conservative advantages were evident as early as 2004 for social ideology and 2007 for economic ideology. Still, both were stopped in 2009 and 2010 when President Barack Obama and a Democratic Congress passed left-leaning legislation, most notably the Affordable Care Act. Republicans’ views on social issues have stayed the same in the past few years. In contrast, Democrats’ views on social issues have become more liberal, especially in the last four years. This means that most of the reason why conservatives are losing ground on social issues among all Americans is because of Democrats.