The vote intention polls for the Scottish independence referendum seem to have been taken largely at face value by commentators, politicians and even the financial markets. In particular, the roughly equal split of the vote between Yes and No in several recent polls is being interpreted as if it implies that the result of the referendum is likely to be close. But how accurate are opinion polls as predictors of referendum outcomes and how accurate are polls for elections in Scotland more generally? Continue reading How accurate will the Scottish independence referendum polls be?→
In his article on last week’s forecast, John Rentoul wrote:
“Probability is hard enough to understand anyway, of course. Look at Nate Silver, the guru of American election predictions. He said Brazil had a 65 per cent chance of winning against Germany in the World Cup semi-final. Well, you could say that their 7-1 defeat fell in the other 35 per cent but – after the event – we can be pretty confident that the 65 per cent figure meant little useful.”
There are various issues here in the context of the overall article. Did the 65% figure mean little useful? How should we judge probabilistic forecasts after the event they were trying to predict? Even if John Rentoul’s interpretation here is right, should the poor performance of a football match prediction undermine the credibility of other forecasting exercises of very different kinds of events for the forecaster, or even for all forecasters? Continue reading Extreme events and probabilistic election forecasting: salutary lessons from football→
“My view, and this cannot be based on opinion polls, is that when the voters come to choose they will shy away from the prospect of Miliband as prime minister, just as they shied away from Neil Kinnock in 1992.”
Elections Etc 