No one came closer to predicting the outcome of the 2004 U. S. presidential election than the team at politicalforecasting.com, also called pollyvote.com. They tell us how they did it and whether they think they can do it again. Copyright International Institute of Forecasters, 2005

Scott and Alfred describe Allan Lichtman's Keys Model as an example of an index method of forecasting, which assigns ratings of favorable, unfavorable, or indeterminate to influencing variables. They describe how index methods have been applied in other decision-making contexts, and they discuss...