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Life Before Polls: Ohio Politicians Predict the 1828 Presidential Vote
Abstract
Candidates covet votes. They exert extraordinary effort and expend vast resources seeking to win as many votes as possible. Yet, the costly pursuit of votes occurs under great uncertainty concerning both the strategic correctness of their positions on issues and the efficiency of their campaigns. Of course, prudent candidates dedicate some resources to learning how voters are responding to their appeals, generally by commissioning polls of public opinion.
Candidates' early adoption of scientific survey technology (Converse 1987) and the important role polls play in modern campaigns invite the question of how candidates ever got on without them. Before polls, did public opinion reside on a vast terra incognita on which candidates staked out issue positions oblivious to the whereabouts of the median voter? If so, campaigns must have been riddled with mistakes and inefficiency. John G. Greer (1991) made just this argument in claiming that the absence of accurate information about shifts in the electorate's preferences allowed political parties to be blindsided by what became realigning elections.
The historical record offers few clues as to the extent to which nineteenth-century candidates labored under strategic ignorance. Yet, accounts of politicos and pundits alike tallying newspaper endorsements and carefully gauging attendance at campaign rallies do survive. However questionable these indicators' validity, even to contemporaries, they represented some of the few quantifiable barometers of voter sentiment available to that era's politicians. Some candidates kept “their ear to the ground” (a nineteenth-century dictum) by engaging in more active forms of voter research.
... As long as there have been elections, people have tried to predict the outcomes. Before polls, knowledgeable observers, political insiders, and bellwether states were the most commonly used election forecasts (Kernell 2000). Although GallupÕs quota-selected polls in 1936 marked the beginning of scientific election polling, unscientific straw polls date to at least the 1824 presidential election, when informal trial heat tallies were taken in scattered taverns, militia offices, and public meetings (Smith 1990). ...
... Before public opinion polling took hold in presidential campaigns (and eventually campaigns for offices at almost all levels), candidates relied on the local party structure to assess the wants and needs of the electorate (Kernell 2000). By the 1960s, public opinion polls were central to campaign strategy, used to determine which issues to emphasize, to test messages, and to identify persuadable voters. ...
Public opinion polls have long played an important role in the study and conduct of elections. In this essay, I outline the evolution of polling as used for three different functions in U.S. presidential elections: forecasting election outcomes, understanding voter behavior, and planning campaign strategy. Since the introduction of scientific polling in the 1936 election, technology has altered the way polls are used by the media, public, candidates, and scholars. Today, polls and surveys remain vital to electoral behavior and our understanding of it, but they are being increasingly supplemented or replaced by alternate measures and methods.
... of the oldest approaches is to rely on experts' expectations of who will win. Expert surveys and betting markets were regularly conducted already in the 1800s, and are still popular today (Erikson & Wlezien, 2013; Kernell, 2000). In the 1930s, polls that ask respondents about their intention to vote arose as another alternative and the combination of such polls is undoubtedly the most popular means for forecasting the election results these days (Hillygus, 2011). ...
... One of the oldest approaches is to rely on experts' expectations of who will win. Expert surveys and betting markets were regularly conducted already in the 1800s, and are still popular today (Erikson & Wlezien, 2013; Kernell, 2000). In the 1930s, polls that ask respondents about their intention to vote arose as another alternative and the combination of such polls is undoubtedly the most popular means for forecasting the election results these days (Hillygus, 2011). ...
We review the performance of the PollyVote, which combined forecasts from polls, prediction markets, experts’ judgment, political economy models, and index models to forecast the two-party popular vote in the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election. Throughout the election year the PollyVote provided highly accurate forecasts, outperforming each of its component methods, as well as the forecasts from FiveThirtyEight.com. Gains in accuracy were particularly large early in the campaign, when uncertainty about the election outcome is typically high. The results confirm prior research showing that combining is one of the most effective approaches to generating accurate forecasts.
... Tenter de prédire systématiquement les résultats électoraux n'est pas un phénomène nouveau. Avant que ne soient développées des techniques scientifiques de sondage dans les années 1930, le rôle de prédiction était réservé aux experts, observateurs, initiés politiques et régions baromètres qui servaient à prédire l'identité du prochain président, gouverneur ou premier ministre (Kernell 2000). Cependant, la prédiction électorale en tant que discipline scientifique est nettement plus récente. ...
Résumé
Cette note de recherche a deux objectifs. Premièrement, nous présentons l'index relatif de confiance (IRC), une nouvelle mesure du potentiel de croissance et de la solidité du vote basée sur la probabilité exprimée par les électeurs de voter pour l'ensemble des partis dans leur circonscription. Nous nous penchons en détail sur les avantages de l'IRC et montrons qu'il permet d’évaluer le potentiel de croissance et la solidité du vote des partis politiques au niveau des circonscriptions et au niveau provincial. Deuxièmement, nous appliquons cet index au cas du Parti québécois à l'aide d’échantillons de grandes tailles récoltés pendant les campagnes électorales québécoises de 2012, 2014, et 2018. Cela nous permet d'illustrer et de tirer des constats sur le potentiel de croissance du Parti québécois.
... Expert surveys have a long history as a method to forecast election outcomes (Kernell, 2000). Experts are assumed to provide accurate forecasts due to their domain knowledge. ...
The present study reviews the accuracy of four methods (polls, prediction markets, expert judgment, and quantitative models) for forecasting the two German federal elections in 2013 and 2017. On average across both elections, polls and prediction markets were most accurate, while experts and quantitative models were least accurate. The accuracy of individual forecasts did not correlate across elections. That is, methods that were most accurate in 2013 did not perform particularly well in 2017. A combined forecast, calculated by averaging forecasts within and across methods, was more accurate than two out of three component forecasts. The results conform to prior research on US presidential elections in showing that combining is effective in generating accurate forecasts and avoiding large errors.
... It is difficult to find evidence for or against this claim. Although the use of expert judgment in forecasting elections goes back long before the emergence of scientific polling (Kernell, 2000), we know surprisingly little about the relative accuracy of experts and polls. ...
This study analyzes the relative accuracy of experts, polls,
and the so-called ‘fundamentals’ in predicting the popular vote in the four
U.S. presidential elections from 2004 to 2016. Although the majority (62%) of
452 expert forecasts correctly predicted the directional error of polls, the
typical expert’s vote share forecast was 7% (of the error) less accurate than a
simple polling average from the same day. The results further suggest that
experts follow the polls and do not sufficiently harness information
incorporated in the fundamentals. Combining expert forecasts and polls with a
fundamentals-based reference class forecast reduced the error of experts and
polls by 24% and 19%, respectively. The findings demonstrate the benefits of
combining forecasts and the effectiveness of taking the outside view for
debiasing expert judgment.
... Judgment of political insiders and experienced election observers were used to forecast elections long before the emergence of scientific polling ( Kernell 2000); and they still are. The common assumption is that experts have experience in reading and interpreting polls, assessing their significance during campaigns, and estimating the effects of recent or expected events on the aggregate vote. ...
... Politicians of the era often had reliable information on voters' partisan leanings, but only in very rare cases (seeKernell 2000) has this information been unearthed by modern researchers.3 This task was greatly enhanced by the fact that most congressional districts during this era were comprised of one or more whole counties. ...
Students of legislative behavior are divided over the extent to which an electoral connection existed in the early United States. In this article, we offer a test of the electoral connection in early American politics by investigating the electoral aftershocks of the disputed presidential election of 1824. Using newly available county-level presidential voting data, along with the unique circumstances associated with the presidential contest, we examine the connection between representative behavior, district public opinion, and electoral outcomes. We find that representatives who voted for John Quincy Adams in the House contest, yet were from districts supporting Andrew Jackson, were targeted for ouster and suffered a substantial vote-loss in the subsequent midterm election. We also find that the entry of a quality challenger had a sizeable impact on the fortunes of incumbent legislators. These results serve to confirm that representatives could be held accountable for their behavior in office during the antebellum era.
... Judgment of political insiders and experienced election observers were used to forecast elections long before the emergence of scientific polling (Kernell, 2000); and they still are. The common assumption is that experts have experience in reading and interpreting polls, assessing their significance during campaigns, and estimating the effects of recent or expected events on the aggregate vote. ...
This chapter summarizes the latest research on prediction markets for political forecasting. After describing the concept of judgmental forecasting, I outline the history of political prediction markets from their predecessors in 16th century Italy to modern day online markets. Then, I describe important aspects of prediction market design, followed by a comparison of features of prediction markets and simple surveys. I also provide evidence on the relative accuracy of prediction markets and alternative methods for forecasting 44 elections in eight countries. Finally, I discuss the findings as well as their implications for future research.
... Expert surveys have a long history as a method to forecast election outcomes. 18 Experts are assumed to provide accurate forecasts due to their domain knowledge. Experts may, for example, be able to correctly interpret polls and project their results to Election Day, by taking into account potential impacts of recent and future campaign events. ...
The present study reviews the accuracy of four methods for forecasting the 2013 German election: polls, prediction markets, expert judgment, and quantitative models. On average, across the two months prior to the election, polls were most accurate, with a mean absolute error of 1.4 percentage points, followed by quantitative models (1.6), expert judgment (2.1), and prediction markets (2.3). In addition, the study provides new evidence for the benefits of combining forecasts. Averaging all available forecasts within and across the four methods provided more accurate predictions than the typical component forecast. The error reductions achieved through combining forecasts ranged from 5% (compared to polls) to 41% (compared to prediction markets). The results conform to prior research on US presidential elections, which showed that combining is one of the most effective methods to generating accurate election forecasts.
... exPerT JUdGMenT Judgment of political insiders and experienced election observers was used to forecast elections long before the emergence of scientific polling (Kernell 2000), and it still is. The common assumption is that experts have experience in reading and interpreting polls, assessing their significance during campaigns, and estimating the effects of recent or expected events on the aggregate vote. ...
Simple surveys that ask people who they expect to win are among the most accurate methods for forecasting U.S. presidential elections. The majority of respondents correctly predicted the election winner in 193 (89%) of 217 surveys conducted from 1932 to 2012. Across the last 100 days prior to the seven elections from 1988 to 2012, vote expectation surveys provided more accurate forecasts of election winners and vote shares than four established methods (vote intention polls, prediction markets, econometric models, and expert judgment). Gains in accuracy were particularly large compared to polls. On average, the error of expectation-based vote-share forecasts was 51% lower than the error of polls published the same day. Compared to prediction markets, vote expectation forecasts reduced the error on average by 6%. Vote expectation surveys are inexpensive, easy to conduct, and the results are easy to understand. They provide accurate and stable forecasts and thus make it difficult to frame elections as horse races. Vote expectation surveys should be more strongly utilized in the coverage of election campaigns.
... It would seem to follow that elections of the prepoll era were conducted under greater uncertainty about the outcome than elections today. Given their limiting conditions, observers would monitor various indicators for cues (Kernell, 2000;Karol, 2007; see also Robinson and 2 One need not buy and hold, as a share can be sold at any time there is a buyer willing to pay the asking price. ...
Prediction markets have drawn considerable attention in recent years as a tool for predicting elections. But how accurate are they? Do they really outperform the polls, as some would have us believe? Do prices in election markets carry information beyond the horserace that is portrayed in the latest polls? And how well do election markets perform when there are no public opinion polls to provide the cues? This paper compares the accuracy of presidential betting markets in years before and after public opinion polls were introduced. For data, we rely on prices from modern internet-based election markets since 1992 but also from the vigorous election markets that thrived on Wall Street going back from at least as far as 1880 up to 1960. Our results comparing the performance of markets and polls are provocative. First, we find that market prices are far better predictors without polls (1880-1932) than with polls available (1936-2008). Second, we also find that market prices of the pre-poll era predicted presidential elections at least as well as polls have done following the introduction of scientific survey research. Finally, we find that last-minute market prices add nothing to election prediction once we control for trial heat polls during the final week of the campaign. The ordering of these results is not transitive.
... Before the emergence of polls in the 1930s, judgments from political insiders and experienced observers were commonly used for forecasting (Kernell, 2000). They still are. ...
We summarize the literature on the effectiveness of combining forecasts by assessing the conditions under which combining is most valuable. Using data on the six US presidential elections from 1992 to 2012, we report the reductions in error obtained by averaging forecasts within and across four election forecasting methods: poll projections, expert judgment, quantitative models, and the Iowa Electronic Markets. Across the six elections, the resulting combined forecasts were more accurate than any individual component method, on average. The gains in accuracy from combining increased with the numbers of forecasts used, especially when these forecasts were based on different methods and different data, and in situations involving high levels of uncertainty. Such combining yielded error reductions of between 16% and 59%, compared to the average errors of the individual forecasts. This improvement is substantially greater than the 12% reduction in error that had been reported previously for combining forecasts.
... provided them with a range and feel of information that the modern politician with . . . computers and survey data clearly does not have " (Marcus 1971, 10–14; Kernell 2000). The reformed ballot in contrast allowed variations in party loyalty and intensity of preferences to come into play and add an element of uncertainty to the outcome. ...
The modern history of divided government in America suggests that the framers succeeded in creating a government unresponsive to popular passions. Yet in the nineteenth century the party winning the presidency almost always captured control of the House of Representatives. Why and how could nineteenth century national elections be so responsive that they resemble parliamentary outcomes? We identify electoral institutions present in the states that directly linked congressional elections to presidential coattails. Specifically, we estimate the impact of state ballot laws and the strategic design of congressional districts on presidential coattail voting from 1840 to 1940. We find that presidential elections, as mediated by state electoral laws, strongly account for unified party control of the House and the presidency throughout the nineteenth century.
The purpose of this article is to explore electoral forecasting and public opinion tracking in Latin America. We review different approaches used to estimate the true value of public opinion, and assess the range of their application. We focus on election night forecasting and campaign variation tracking in Latin America. We propose a two-stage model based on poll aggregation and Bayesian inference. We present data from two presidential elections in Chile. We test the model and show that it provides the most accurate election night forecasting point estimate and the most comprehensive campaign variation tracking method. Finally, we discuss the advantages and limitations of our model, and suggest a route for future research.
The purpose of this paper is to propose a method to minimize the difference between electoral predictions and electoral results. It builds on findings that stem from established democracies, where most of the research has been carried out, but it focuses on filling the gap for developing nations, which have thus far been neglected by the literature. It proposes a two-stage model in which data is first collected, filtered and weighed according to biases, and then output using Bayesian algorithms and Markov chains. It tests the specification using data stemming from 11 Latin American countries. It shows that the model is remarkably accurate. In comparison to polls, not only does it produce more precise estimates for every election, but it also produces a more accurate forecast for nine out of every ten candidates. The paper closes with a discussion on the limitations of the model and a proposal for future research.
Information gathering underwent a dramatic transformation in the 1930s with the rise of survey research. Now, a growing number of critics are arguing that survey research's time has passed and it should and will be replaced by a combination of data mining from the Internet and the use of various administrative records. The promise and reliability of the new techniques are assessed, and although they show promise, they are not at present scientifically superior to survey research for most uses. © 2012 The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The World Association for Public Opinion Research. All rights reserved.
The author explores how incumbents form their preferences when regime types change. The author juxtaposes the perceptions of the Hungarian and the Soviet Communist Party hard-liners during the transition from Communism in 1989-91. During this time, the memory of a historical uprising reduced the incumbents' misperceptions about their popular legitimacy via two mechanisms. First, historical memory functioned as a "public tolerance indicator" because it brought the opposition together and demonstrated the true distribution of political support. Second, the memory of a past uprising served as a "conservative reformer" when it opened up internal party debate about the legitimacy of the regime. The author's argument contributes to the scarce literature on actors' preferences formation under conditions of transitional uncertainty. It also provides a useful analytical bridge between actor-oriented and system-centered approaches to democratization.
How has representation changed over time in the United States? Has responsiveness to public opinion waxed or waned among elected officials? What are the causes of such trends as we observe? Scholars have pursued these crucial questions in different ways. Some explore earlier eras in search of the “electoral connection”, i.e. the extent to which voters held office-holders accountable for their actions and the degree to which electoral concerns motivated politicians' behavior. Others explore the effects of institutional changes such as the move to direct election of senators or the “reapportionment revolution.”
Students of legislative behavior are divided over the extent to which an electoral connection existed in the early United States. In this article, we offer a test of the electoral connection in early American politics by investigating the electoral aftershocks of the disputed presidential election of 1824. Using newly available county-level presidential voting data, along with the unique circumstances associated with the presidential contest, we examine the connection between representative behavior, district public opinion, and electoral outcomes. We find that representatives who voted for John Quincy Adams in the House contest, yet were from districts supporting Andrew Jackson, were targeted for ouster and suffered a substantial vote-loss in the subsequent midterm election. We also find that the entry of a quality challenger had a sizeable impact on the fortunes of incumbent legislators. These results serve to confirm that representatives could be held accountable for their behavior in office during the antebellum era.
One of the most remarkable aspects of the 1992 Perot movement was its ability to mobilize thousands of activist volunteers. We draw upon studies of participation and the literature on third-party voting to suggest explanations for activist involvement for Perot. Our analysis makes use of a national sample of potential activists who telephoned Perot's "volunteer hotline" early in the 1992 campaign, and the 1992 American National Election Study. As the third-party literature leads us to expect, negative attitudes toward the institutions of government and the major party candidates (especially George Bush) were significant in stimulating the initial contact with Perot's organization. Active mobilization into the campaign among those who called Perot headquarters depended largely on a positive view of Perot, support for some issues on the candidate's agenda, and experience participating in politics prior to 1992. During the fall, however, the insurgency lost recruits due to the increasingly partisan nature of the contest and concerns about Perot's chances of winning. The general dynamic of declining support for third-party candidates in the partisan fall campaign appears to hold in the Perot case, although the decline in support among activists was nowhere near as dramatic as the decline in the general public.
With the advent of the public opinion poll, politicians began to have access to highly reliable information about the electorate's views on issues. Prior to this development, party leaders could only make educated guesses about public opinion. These guesses, however, were often incorrect, since they were based on unsystematic evidence. But armed with polls, parties should avoid such errors, approximating Downs' (1957) assumption of certainty. If so, rational parties should converge near the center of the distribution of public opinion. Or in other words, parties should no longer polarize on highly salient issues that confront the nation.This conclusion has important implications for the study of partisan realignments. The best work on the subject by scholars like Sundquist (1983) and Carmines and Stimson (1989) argue that one requirement for a realignment is that the parties must polarize on an issue of high salience to the public. Yet well-informed, rational parties should not engage in such behavior, suggesting that critical realignments may be things of the past. Note that partisan change still occurs—perhaps along the lines of Key's (1959) notion of secular realignment or Carmines' and Stimson's (1989) concept of “issue evolution.”