Reply #74: Hello, thanks for the hand [View All]

[BeFree]

Cool. You ain't gonna like this one bit, Mr. Hand, but your link seems to support TIA's position; that generic polls have been good predictors of elections.

To begin with, we estimate a regression equation predicting the House vote in the 15 most recent midterm elections, 1946-2002, from the average generic poll result during the last 30 days of each campaign. The generic polls turn out to be very good predictors, as we have shown. Based on the current average of the generic polls (57.7% Democratic, 42.3% Republican) the forecast from this equation is a 55% to 45% Democratic advantage in the popular vote (1).

http://www.pollster.com/guest_pollsters_corner/bafumi_erikson_wlezien_forecas.php

Then at a link there we go to:

http://www.temple.edu/ipa/workingPapers/

And there a pdf "generic" link leads us to:


Forecasting House Seats from Generic Congressional Polls
(October 24, 2006)
Joseph Bafumi
Dartmouth College ([e-mail])
Robert S. Erikson
Columbia University ([e-mail])
Christopher Wlezien
Temple University ([e-mail])
According to the frequent polling on the generic ballot for Congress, the Democrats hold
a large advantage leading up to the vote on November 7. But does this Democratic edge mean
that the Democrats will win a majority of House seats? Doubts are often expressed about the
accuracy of the generic ballot polls. And even if the polls are correct in indicating a majority of
votes going to Democratic candidates, further doubts are expressed about whether the
Democrats’ vote margin will be sufficient to win the most seats.1
This paper is intended to provide some guidance for translating the results of generic
congressional polls into the election outcome.2 Via computer simulation based on statistical
analysis of historical data, we show how generic vote polls can be used to forecast the election
outcome.


And at another link we find this website:
http://politicalarithmetik.blogspot.com/2006/08/votes-seats-and-generic-ballot.html

Where it is stated:

The first bit of "good news" for Dems is that despite these problems, it is still the case that as the generic ballot goes up for Dems, their national vote share has also generally gone up. So if we throw out all the econometrics and just ask "Does higher generic ballot support usually mean higher vote share on election day?" then the answer is yes.

Still, the good news for Dems is that high generic ballots do tend to go with more seats. Bad news for Reps.

And this is the good news for Reps and the very bad for Dems. IF the votes-seats relationship in 2006 follows the pattern of the past six elections, then EVEN THE EXTRAORDINARY SUCCESS currently forecast by the generic ballot may not be enough to give Dems control of the House. In the figure above, the red line for the 1994-2004 votes-seats relationship remains below the magic 218 seats even when Dems win the 53% of the national vote which current generic ballot results would predict. Rather than the 251 seats they would be able to expect under the 1946-1992 relationship, they will expect only 215 seats, 3 short. The Dems would need 55% of the vote to reach a predicted number of seats of 218, and even the current excellent generic ballot results are not enough to sustain that number of national votes.

I find that extraordinary, don't you? Since 1994, when I first suspected the vote machines had been 'fixed' the generic polls took a dive off their historic 1946-1992 predictions. Makes one wonder, doesn't it?

This means that I would be very reluctant to assume that the historic relationship between votes and seats is still true. (And a statistical test confirms that the slopes differ to a statistically significant extent between 1946-1992 and 1994-2004.) And the implication of that is that even a very successful vote for Democrats need not translate into control of the House.

Comments:

My sense has been that the election-eve generic ballot works pretty well in non-presidential-years in identifying emerging trends, if not actual party control.

Then another comment:

I hate to say this but the first thing that leaps to mind is increasingly corrupt voting apparatus. Out of curiosity do you have any information on the prevalence of electronic voting versus hand counting over time?

All in all, I have to say thanks, Mr. Hand, before now I had just trusted TIA, when he said the generic polls were good, and now, having gone through the link you provided, my faith in TIA has been reaffirmed!