Election Forecasting: Principles and Practice

Abstract

To forecast an election means to declare the outcome before it happens. Scientific approaches to election forecasting include polls, political stock markets and statistical models. I review these approaches, with an emphasis on the last, since it offers more lead time. Consideration is given to the history and politics of statistical forecasting models of elections. Rules for evaluating such models are offered. Examples of actual models come from the United States, France and the United Kingdom, where this work is rather new. Compared to other approaches, statistical modelling seems a promising method for forecasting elections.