The 2016 Pollyvote Popular Vote Forecast: A Preliminary Analysis

We assess how the PollyVote and its components performed in this election compared to the previous six (1992 to 2012). While always predicting that Hillary Clinton would win the popular vote, across the 100 days leading to the election on average the PollyVote overshot the mark by 1.9 percentage points, almost twice the MAE incurred in the previous six elections. This was because this year there was very little bracketing among the components. Citizen forecasts and econometric models performed best this year, while the Iowa Electronic Markets came in last. Across all elections from 1992 to 2016, the PollyVote error is only a little over one percentage point.