Rethinking prediction: Were you still up when Bob called it for Kerry?

Discusses, in the context of the 2004 U.S. presidential election the difficulties of predicting human behaviour, why we expect too much of research data, and why polls and surveys are imperfect instruments.

Rethinking Prediction: Were You Still Up When Bob Called It For Kerry?

Mark Earls Ogilvy Group London

 INTRODUCTION

This paper was inspired by my own rather embarrassing failure to predict the outcome of the US Presidential correctly, despite my professional and personal interest in the subject. In particular, it focuses on how I laid aside all I know about the predictive limits of opinion polls, how I ignored the signals from...

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