Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-2lccl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T14:30:06.628Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Postmortems of the 2010 Midterm Election Forecasts: Assessing The 2010 State Legislative Election Forecasting Models

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2011

Carl Klarner
Affiliation:
Indiana State University

Extract

This brief note reports the accuracy of my two forecasts for the 2010 state legislative elections, one made on July 22 and reported in the October 2010 issue of this journal (the “PS model”; Klarner 2010a), and the other made on September 18 and reported in the October issue of Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics (i.e., the “Forum model”; Klarner 2010b). Both models used presidential approval, the state of the economy, and midterm loss as national-level predictor variables, while the later forecast also used Gallup's generic ballot question asking respondents which party they would vote for in the upcoming U.S. House election. The PS model predicted the Republicans would pick up 11 chambers, while the Forum model forecast a 15-chamber pickup. In actuality, the Republicans picked up 21 chambers, in contrast to the average 3.2-net chamber shift in party control toward one party or the other from 1962 to 2008. While both forecasts understated the extent of the Republican wave, the July forecast especially did. Overall, the Forum forecast did a good job of predicting the Republican wave, calling about three-fourths of its magnitude.

Type
Spotlight
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abramowitz, Alan. 2010. “All Politics Is National: Using the Generic Ballot to Forecast the 2010 State Legislative Elections.” Sabato's Crystal Ball, July 29. http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/aia2010072902/.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobson, Louis. 2010. “2010 State Legislatures: Forecast Worsens for Democrats.” Governing, September 29. http://www.governing.com/blogs/politics/2010-state-legislatures-forecast-worsens-democrats.html#.Google Scholar
Klarner, Carl E. 2010a. “Forecasting the 2010 State Legislative Elections.” PS: Political Science and Politics 43 (4): 643–48.Google Scholar
Klarner, Carl E. 2010b. “Forecasting Control of State Governments and Redistricting Authority after the 2010 Elections.” Forum 8 (3).Google Scholar