In breathless prose, an article in today's The New York Times points to research about trying to predict elections not by asking who people favor but instead asking them who is going to win (pdf of study here).
Oh jeez.
I'm happy to see someone doing this. Why? Because, dammit, I've written on this topic quite a few times. Most recently here. Also here, and here, and here, and here, and, oh hell, you get the idea. And those are just my blog posts. I'm also in a newspaper column on this topic and, dammit, I've published research on the topic -- including a big study this summer presented at a conference that looked at elections since 1952 and how well people predicted the winner. Punch line: people suck in close elections, are better when there's a bigger margin.
Oh jeez. And does the paper cite me in any way? Sigh. Of course not. Bitter much? Ah well, what would ya expect from Microsoft and economics guys? Basically sophisticated number crunching, and not a bit of theory.
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