The Presidential Meta-Analysis for 2016

[BlueMTexpat]

http://election.princeton.edu/2016/06/30/the-2016-presidential-meta-analysis/

Excellent news from the PEC's Sam Wang, but it is no time to rest on our laurels:

As we have done since 2004, we are taking a polls-only approach to give a daily snapshot of the race – as well as a November prediction. This approach has an effective precision of a few tenths of a percentage point of public opinion, and performs very well as both a tracker and a forecast. Currently, the probability of a Hillary Clinton victory in November is 85 percent, based on polls alone.

Today, I give a brief tour of the computational approach.

The Meta-Analysis starts with a Python script that downloads recent state polls from the Huffington Post’s Pollster operation. Thanks to Natalie Jackson, the HuffPollster team, and dozens of pollsters for this stream of information, which forms the foundation of the calculation.

Where polls are not available, we use the election result from 2012. As I have written, this year’s Clinton-versus-Trump state polls are strongly correlated with 2012?s Obama-versus-Romney polls. Because no realignment is evident, past results are a good predictor of the likely outcome this year. At the moment, no more than fourteen states are genuinely in play.

-white

[floriduck]

1. So the short take is that neither would win right now?

[RandySF]

2. I don't think that tally is right.

Just looking at the map, Hillary is over 270

[La Lioness Priyanka]

4. lol. no.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

3. and he is really doing a meta-analysis, not even using that term weirdly.

[BlueMTexpat]

9. LOL, Sam is a bit too

cerebral for some.

The comments following his article are such a pleasant departure from comments at similar sites.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

11. I've never done a meta myself but am trained to do it

Hugely time consuming stuff

[Her Sister]

5. Sounds good but we got work to do!

[BlueMTexpat]

7. I agree absolutely.

One reason that the Brexit vote succeeded was because the advance polls were showing that "Remain" would win and too many eedjits either sat at home and didn't vote or stupidly voted to "Leave" as a protest vote against their party leaders rotten policies. They obviously did not make the connection that however POed they are/were with their party leaders, forfeiting EU membership is a dreadful consequence.

We must ensure that NO complacency exists in Nov so that our own best interests are not sabotaged. We must also ensure that everyone who wants to vote is properly registered and GOTV everywhere.

Don the Con would be a dreadful and unthinkable consequence of our complacency or personal snits.

[Cha]

6. Ahead but she'll work like she's 20 points behind.. thank you, BlueMT~

[BlueMTexpat]

8. Thanks, Cha!

[Cha]

12. Thank you!

[DemonGoddess]

10. K&R!

Agreed with everyone who says we must NOT take this for granted!

[Her Sister]

13. KnR