Predicting an Obama Win
Aug 28th, 2008 by nick
Political forecasters Allan Lichtman and Vladimir Keilis-Borok have derived a formula for predicting the winner of United States presidential elections. They have correctly predicted the winners of the popular vote in every presidential election since they devised the formula in the early 1980’s. As we are all now painfully aware, however, the winner of the popular vote doesn’t always win the Electoral College.
For 2008, Lichtman’s and Keilis-Borok’s model predicts a Democratic victory. However, before we all get too excited, I’m not sure they account for the unprecedented aspects of this particular race, specifically the potential for latent racism to influence the results.