A month before the presidential election, Prof. Peter Enns, government, published a model with three other researchers that would correctly predict the results for all 50 U.S. states.
Besides correctly predicting the Electoral College results, the group’s forecast also projected that President-elect Donald Trump would win 50.3 percent of the popular vote — nearly the same as Trump’s actual win of 49.97 percent of the popular vote, with over 99 percent of the results inputted as of Monday evening.
As far as Enns can tell, the model, for which he was the lead researcher, “was the most accurate.”
“I haven’t heard of any forecasts that got every Electoral College vote correct and also got within one percentage point of the popular vote,” Enns said.
Enns also led a forecast for the 2020 presidential election that correctly predicted President Joe Biden’s win and the results in every state except Georgia.
Enns said the model’s “primary innovation” was to measure presidential approval ratings and economic conditions for each state, rather than for the nation as a whole.
The researchers gathered national survey data on economic conditions and presidential approval ratings from at least 100 days before the election, then recalibrated the data to represent the presidential approval ratings of different demographic groups in each state. They used the mathematical technique of multilevel regression with poststratification — a method that corrects estimates based on differences between a known population and a target population.
Enn’s original forecast found that Biden had less than a one-tenth chance of winning the presidency. After Vice President Kamala Harris replaced Biden in the presidential race, Enns adjusted for Harris’ approval rates and found she had a “substantially higher” chance of one-fourth.
“[This] still indicated that Harris faced an uphill battle,” Enns said. “[Given this context,] Harris should have distinguished herself more from Biden and further defined her unique vision.”
This sentiment was echoed by Prof. Tracy Mitrano J.D. ’95, information science, who said Biden committed a “tactical mistake” by dropping out of the race too late and not giving Harris enough time to clarify her policies.
Mitrano, who unsuccessfully ran for New York’s 23rd Congressional District in 2018 and 2020, said that interacting with voters in a traditionally red district made her understand that “the Democratic Party is not speaking to people who feel as if they’ve been left behind.”
Mitrano said that Harris made a mistake by targeting the middle class instead of the working class, who are less likely to have college degrees and have been left behind by “the transition from an industrial economy to an information economy,” referring to the transition from an economy driven by manufactured goods to one driven by services and intellectual capital.
“In an industrial economy, someone working in an automobile factory could live a good enough life,” Mitrano said. “In an information economy, an employer won’t talk to even the greatest guy in the world if he doesn’t have a college degree.”
She gave an example of Harris’ proposed policy of providing up to $25k in down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers, which Mitrano said would have only appealed to the middle class that “would have voted for her anyway.”
Prof. Kaushik Basu, economics, emphasized “behavioral economics” as “a reminder that human beings are not perfect machines, but psychologically geared.”
Basu said that citizens’ political engagement has shaped out to be similar to following a sports team.
“People often back a political party not to improve their well-being, but because the party’s victory is the target,” Basu said.
Mitrano and Basu also pointed to inflation as an important reason for the Democratic Party’s loss.
“Millions of families couldn’t afford to put food on the table,” Mitrano said, referring to the 25 percent increase in food prices from before COVID-19. “Those concerns of the working class were real, and [the Democrats] weren’t listening.”
Mitrano said that Harris could have differentiated herself from the Biden administration by announcing that she would have the Federal Trade Commission investigate whether the price increases of products in grocery chains matched their overall costs.
“Inflation is the only economic indicator where you don’t have to open the newspaper to know,” Basu said. He said inflation “enraged” people who thought President Biden’s administration could “switch inflation on and off.”
Prof. Douglas Kriner, government, also noted the economy as a key issue in the election. Kriner emphasized retrospective voting — which refers to citizens selecting a president by asking themselves if they are “better or worse off than they were four years ago.”
“47 percent of Americans said they were financially worse off than four years ago,” Kriner said. “it would have been difficult for any Democrat to win.”
Yuhan Huang ’28 is a Sun contributor and can be reached at [email protected].