Prior research found that people’s assessments of relative competence predicted the outcome of Senate and Congressional races. We hypothesized that snap judgments of "facial competence" would provide useful forecasts of the popular vote in presidential primaries before the candidates become...

Ideally, presidential elections should be decided based on how the candidates would handle issues facing the country. If so, knowledge about the voters’ perception of the candidates should help to forecast election outcomes. We make two forecasts of the winner of the popular vote in the U.S....

We have examined the frequency of replications published in the two leading forecasting journals, the International Journal of Forecasting (IJF) and the Journal of Forecasting (JoF). Replications in the IJF and JoF between 1996 and 2008 comprised 8.4% of the empirical papers. Various other areas...

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...

The authors report the results of several forecasting experiments they conducted with university students and experts, producing some amazing results. Copyright International Institute of Forecasters, 2005

When financial columnist James Surowiecki wrote The Wisdom of Crowds, he wished to explain the successes and failures of markets (an example of a "crowd") and to understand why the average opinion of a crowd is frequently more accurate than the opinions of most of its individual members. In this...

Using findings from empirical-based comparisons, the author presents nine generalizations that can improve forecast accuracy. These are often ignored by organizations, so that attention to them offers substantial opportunities for gain. Copyright International Institute of Forecasters, 2005

Better forecasts of decisions in conflict situations, such as occur in business, politics, and war, can help protagonists achieve better outcomes. It is common advice to “stand in the other person’s shoes” when involved in a conflict, a procedure we refer to as “role thinking.” We...