Polls being tested this year

We are now about 2 weeks and some days until the nation voting day takes place (actually, it is taking place now with the early voting and the mail in). So, immense stress over the next two weeks and then depending on the outcome, either more intense stress or a great sigh of relief.

I do believe there will be a lot of litigation and possibly violence if T loses. But I won’t contemplate the other one.

But I want to talk about forecasting or in this case, polling.

Weathermen do forecast every day and during hurricane season, their forecasts can be lifesaving. I do believe they are using AI to help with the forecasts, and it does feel like their forecasts have gotten much better.

Businesses also do forecasting. They provide forecasts to their shareholders or maybe they use the forecasts internally to gauge how well the business is going to perform and what adjustments to tactics they may need to make to meet their goals. I’ve been involved in making forecasts pretty much since I started working.

Let’s just say that in the companies that I’ve worked in, most analysts may not have done a good job, based upon management exhortations to do a better job. I don’t really know since I didn’t get a chance to see others’ work. I’ve been fortunate enough to work in large programs so that my forecasts were able to be within 5% variance.

Election forecasts are a whole ‘nother story. Since 2016, polling doesn’t seem to work very well, or maybe we have an immense distrust of polls since the 2016 disaster. In 2016, the polls overwhelmingly indicated that Hillary Clinton would win; instead, T won in a shocker.

There’s a lot of PTSD out there.

There are two types of forecasters out there that seems to have a good record: 538 and Allan Lichtman’s 13 keys. In 2016, I believe 538 predicted Hillary while Allan Lichtman said T would win. For this election cycle, Allan Lichtman says Kamala Harris will win while 538 says it’s a toss up.

Toss up feels about right.

Although, I do wonder why the election is so close when one candidate is old and does seem to be in mental decline. The old one veers off the track and talks about a totally different topic when asked questions. In one instance, the host said, “The question was about the breakup of Google, President T. And then there was a cringey dancing for 40 minutes. And today, he talked about Arnold Palmer’s anatomy.

To me, it is very obvious who should be picked as President. But not everybody sees the same way.

So…probably by the end of the year, we will know which of the two forecasting methods worked this go round. I’m very curious to see how polling fares or will the governance method used in the 13 keys work better.