I would like to challenge this community to make election predictions
and see whether we can do better or worse than other predictors.
Please send your responses to elections@longshortway.com (cc to editor1@kdnuggets.com) by Nov 5, 2012 11:59 pm ET.
Results will be final upon final election results. Feel free to also sponsor prizes.
Predict percentage of the vote that goes to Barack Obama v. Mitt Romney (excluding other candidates and invalid votes) for
(1) national vote (2) Ohio (3) Iowa (4) Colorado
optionally, you can also add
(5) Florida (6) Virginia (7) Michigan (8) New Hampshire (9) Nevada
(10) Wisconsin (11) Pennsylvania
please put ELECTION in the subject and have following lines 1. a vector of blank separated predictions (at least 4 numbers with any number of digits) 2. (optional) your name and affiliation that you agree to make public 3. (optional) your country, education level, industry, favorite analytics tool, favorite machine learning method 4. (optional) description of your methodology
for example:
50.0000 49.55 50.45 50.0
Scott Rasmussen USA, MS, polling, excel, least squares, calling random people on the phone
Results will be evaluated by the following metrics in 2 categories - 3 states and 10 states:
- difference in national vote
- sum of absolute differences in 3 (10) states
- sum of differences in 3 (10) states
We will include several published websites in the competition using their data as of 11:59pm on Nov 5.
Gregory PS, Editor: as of Oct 31, Nate Silver 538 blog estimates Obama share of National vote at 50.4%, Ohio: Obama +2.4, Iowa: Obama +1.7, Colorado: Obama +1.1