Abstract
Elections draw enormous interest worldwide, especially if these involve major countries, and there is much speculation in the media as to possible outcomes from these elections. In many of these recent elections, such as the UK and USA, however, forecasts from market surveys, electoral polls, scientific forecasting models and even exit polls, obtained from voters as they leave the voting stations, failed to predict the correct outcome. Election night forecasts, which endeavour to forecast the ultimate result before the final outcome is known using early results, were also carried out, with some more accurate than others.After successfully predicting most of the metropolitan region results correctly in the South African local 2016 municipal elections, using an election night forecasting model developed for South Africa (SA), the question of adapting the model to work outside of SA on a different electoral system was raised. The focus of this paper is to describe the results obtained for the 2016 USA presidential election, on election night, using an adapted version of the SA model. This paper also addresses the applicability of the model assumptions as well as the data issues involved in forecasting outside of South Africa. It is shown that even with many hurdles experienced in the process the model performed relatively well.
Highlights
Elections draw enormous interest worldwide especially if these involve major countries such as the United States of America (USA), the United Kingdom (UK), Germany and France
The focus of this paper is to describe the results obtained for the 2016 USA presidential election, on election night, using an adapted version of a model developed for forecasting the final results for elections in South Africa (SA)
It was found that the SA election night forecasting model could be successfully adapted to different electoral systems such as the one used in the USA
Summary
Elections draw enormous interest worldwide especially if these involve major countries such as the United States of America (USA), the United Kingdom (UK), Germany and France. The forecasts from market surveys, electoral polls, scientific forecasting models and even the exit polls, obtained from voters as they left the voting stations, failed to predict the correct outcome. Over and above these approaches there is a further type of election forecasting model, namely one that is used to forecast the final election results, based on early results as they are released, during election night. Since 1999 an election forecasting team from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) have consistently, during every election, used an election night forecasting model to forecast the final election outcome using the first batch of voting district results as they are released by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). Some overall remarks on election forecasting methodologies and suggestions on adapting the model to pre-election forecasts are given and the paper is concluded
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