‘Secret’ Weapons for Tuesday Predictions
I would have posted this “news” earlier today, but I wanted to wait for my boss to confirm the results. In a limited, six-person survey in our office yesterday morning (no bets allowed, just cash-free guesses), he asked for our predictions on the top-three finishers in both parties in the Iowa caucuses.
Now, keep in mind, all six of the people involved in this mini-survey spend a fair portion of their professional lives managing public policy issues, and most of us spend a fair portion of our non-professional lives following politics in general.
But only one of us ended up with a perfect prediction. You guessed it. Moi. (Thank you. Thank you. No, seriously, thank you.)
Granted, there are no guarantees I’ll repeat this stunning performance Tuesday morning with respect to the NH primaries. But to even the odds, I did share with my colleagues two of the three main sources I use to track and inform my guesses, and I thought — what the hell — I’d list them here, as well.
Naturally, this list does not represent everything I read, not by a long shot. It focuses solely on my three most-trusted, race-prediction props. Granted, many readers here already have their own sources, or might use the same sources I list below. But for others who are casually stopping by and/or looking for a little extra edge in the “Guess Department” (to impress friends at cocktail parties, etc.) — well, here you go.
The Moderate Voice
No, I don’t just write here, I actually read what others write here, authors and commenters. (By the way, this site is the one source I did not share with my colleagues, since I try, with occasional success, to honor that ancient separation-of-work-and-extracurricular-interest principle.)
Politico
I focus on the front-page stories here, plus the blogs of Ben Smith (dogging the D’s) and Jonathan Martin (dogging the R’s). And I’ll continue reading this site, even though I thought their lead GOP headline today was a little ridiculous.
Real Clear Politics
Great coverage and very valuable poll summaries and poll aggregations. I pay particular attention to the aggregated state polls and the trends illustrated therein.
3 Responses to “‘Secret’ Weapons for Tuesday Predictions”
Thanks Pete,
I was also wondering which pollsters are proving to be most accurate.
I usually go to RCP first but was wondering if another strategy or source was more accurate in accounting for all of the variables.
p
Paul,
I don’t think there’s a magic bullet. I do think RCP’s aggregated, state-by-state breakdowns are the best place to start, as you do, but then there’s a big “zeitgeist” factor that plays into this, obviously, and that’s where I rely TMV, Politico, etc.
What I would NOT rely on is traditional assumptions about campaign strategy. My boss referenced in this post actually scored worse than any of us in his little survey, largely (I’m convinced) because he assumed the best on-the-ground staff/organization would keep Romney and Clinton at the top of their respective ballots. That’s a decent assumption, but it completely fails to appreciate the power in this election of what I like to call the “change quotient” and the “genuine quotient,” neither of which Mitt or Hillary could offer, as was clear from posts in these three places prior to the actual caucuses.
My two cents.
Jeremy Dibbell invited me to pass this on when I asked him about the more credible polls:
I recognize the difficulty of these kinds of polls. Nevertheless I imagine that some pollsters are more sensitive to the constantly evolving factors that reflect the actual likely behavior of the participants such as young folks who don’t have landline phones or independents who don’t follow party lines.
Apparently independents had a big impact on Obama’s results in Iowa.