{"id":1541,"date":"2004-08-27T10:53:52","date_gmt":"2004-08-27T14:53:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/08\/27\/election-predictor\/"},"modified":"2004-08-27T10:53:52","modified_gmt":"2004-08-27T14:53:52","slug":"election-predictor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/08\/27\/election-predictor\/","title":{"rendered":"Election predictor"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

This is quite interesting<\/a>, as it uses each day’s new poll data to predict an electoral college score.<\/p>\n

My own profession has pretty bad record at this sort of thing.  At the last electoral-year meeting of APSA<\/a>,
\nall the models predicted a win for Gore (which you can argue actually
\ndid happen, if you’d like), but th margins of victory were all over the
\nplace.  There’s a panel on this again this year.<\/a><\/p>\n

In this week’s New Yorker, Louis Menand has an excellent piece on political science approaches<\/a>
\nto the question of “how people vote.”  You may be surprised or
\ndismayed to read what we know, especially those of you (many of the
\nreaders of this blog, from what I can surmise) who fit into the
\n“ideologue” category (which is not at all what you would think if you
\nlisten to our modern political discourse).<\/p>\n

…This absence of “real opinions” is not from lack of brains; it’s
\nfrom lack of interest. “The typical citizen drops down to a lower level
\nof mental performance as soon as he enters the political field,” the
\neconomic theorist Joseph Schumpeter wrote, in 1942. “He argues and
\nanalyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within
\nthe sphere of his real interests. He becomes a primitive again. His
\nthinking is associative and affective.” And Fiorina quotes a passage
\nfrom the political scientist Robert Putnam: “Most men are not political
\nanimals. The world of public affairs is not their world. It is alien to
\nthem—possibly benevolent, more probably threatening, but nearly always
\nalien. Most men are not interested in politics. Most do not participate
\nin politics.”<\/p>\n

Man may not be a political animal, but he is certainly a social
\nanimal. Voters do respond to the cues of commentators and campaigners,
\nbut only when they can match those cues up with the buzz of their own
\nsocial group. Individual voters are not rational calculators of
\nself-interest (nobody truly is), and may not be very consistent users
\nof heuristic shortcuts, either. But they are not just random particles
\nbouncing off the walls of the voting booth. Voters go into the booth
\ncarrying the imprint of the hopes and fears, the prejudices and
\nassumptions of their family, their friends, and their neighbors. For
\nmost people, voting may be more meaningful and more understandable as a
\nsocial act than as a political act. <\/p>\n

That it is hard to persuade some people with ideological arguments
\ndoes not mean that those people cannot be persuaded, but the things
\nthat help to convince them are likely to make ideologues sick—things
\nlike which candidate is more optimistic. For many liberals, it may have
\nbeen dismaying to listen to John Kerry and John Edwards, in their
\nspeeches at the Democratic National Convention, utter impassioned
\nbromides about how “the sun is rising” and “our best days are still to
\ncome.” But that is what a very large number of voters want to hear. If
\nthey believe it, then Kerry and Edwards will get their votes. The ideas
\nwon’t matter, and neither will the color of the buttons.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is quite interesting, as it uses each day’s new poll data to predict an electoral college score. My own profession has pretty bad record at this sort of thing.  At the last electoral-year meeting of APSA, all the models predicted a win for Gore (which you can argue actually did happen, if you’d like), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-oR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}