PLYMOUTH, MA, November 02, 2012 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Vote expectation surveys are the untold underdogs story but yet the most accurate of all the five election forecasting methods available: vote intention polls, prediction markets, expert judgment, and econometric models. Just ask the audience at the TV show Who Wants to be a Millionaire. An analysis by the blog asmartbear shows that the studio audience predicted the correct answer 91% of the time compared to 65% of the time by the expert friends. Or even ask the happy investors who invested in cheap index funds like Vanguard which for the most part outperformed the managed funds that were more expensive. So why would researchers ignore the cheaper and more accurate forecasting method? Great question but no taker on this question says Jaga, the creator of the website willobamaorromneywin.com. He looked at the questions asked by the major pollsters and they basically looked like this:
Do you approve / disapprove the job Barack Obama is doing as president?
Do you approve / disapprove the job Barack Obama is doing in handling of the economy?
Do you approve / disapprove the job Barack Obama is doing in handling foreign policy?
If election for President were held today, for whom would you vote?
Opinion polls focus on what the electorate thinks of the candidate with some even asking 'who is Mitt Romney'? . If we are in the forecasting or prediction business especially in the presidential elections, the most important question should be 'Who do you think will win the election'? Experts even suggest not trying to predict the outcome of the elections using polls. Jaga has looked at all the polls including: RealClearPolitics Poll, Associated Press, Rasmussen Reports, IBD/TIPP, Gallup, ABC News/ Washington Post, Politico, NBC, CBS, and FOX. The only poll that asks this question is a CNN poll which predicts President Obama to win. Why aren't the rest of the pollsters or even the news media asking that question? This is where I look to the Chuck Todds and the Rachel Maddows to point this out.
Could the reason be that simplicity is not good for the news cycle? Could it be that asking who you think will win is the equivalent of going to the last page of thrilling nonfiction book and all the news pollsters want is we appreciate the journey and not the destination? Or could it be that the electorates who are being sold the prediction service are also being up sold with bells and whistles legitimizing their pay grade postponing the answers to who will win the election for November 5th?
Willobamaorromneywin.com has decided to do something about it and put out a poll that will ask that important question for November 6th. To make it more interesting, and even more accurate, the website has decided to add political ad buying to act as a hedge or to counter balance voter turnout which sometime skews the voter expectation survey results ,especially if the sample size is not large enough or random enough. Willobamaorromneywin.com is hoping many people will take the survey and more random people will be aware of it. Jaga believes people don't trust the simplicity of the surveys to solve complex problems and he wants to disprove that. In doing so he will be in tandem with Albert Einstein who is reputed to have said that 'everything should be made to be as simple as possible but not simpler'. Some voters are trying to figure out how to vote given the confusion that's out there with voter fraud and voter ID issues. The last thing they need to add to the confusion are confusing polls.
On a different but yet somber note, the country cannot ignore what's happening out there with Hurricane Sandy. For Jaga this is not just a national tragedy but also a personal one because his mother lives in New Jersey and is still without power and means of communication. She is OK and Jaga is grateful for that and he is now pledging some of the proceeds from the campaign ad buying to go to Red Cross or other charities that the money can be used best.
To take the survey and help improve the prediction click here. Please give your answer as truthfully as possible.
Website: http://www.willobamaorromneywin.com
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