Blog Posts by David Rothschild and Chris Wilson

  • Signal forecast goes 50 for 50 with Florida outstanding

    By David Rothschild and Chris Wilson | The Signal – Wed, Nov 7, 2012

    Last February, the Signal predicted that President Barack Obama would win reelection with 303 electoral votes to his opponent's 235--a prediction we made before the Republican party had chosen the identity of that challenger. This struck many people as absurd at the time: There were nine months of campaigning left, two conventions, several billion dollars worth of advertising, four debates, and untold bumps in the road for both sides.

    As of Wednesday afternoon, 50 of 51 of those predictions are correct. We predicted the Republican would win Florida, where Obama presently leads by about 50,000 votes separating the candidates in Florida. If Gov. Mitt Romney can make up that distance, the Signal will have gone a perfect 51 for 51.

    We point this out not to brag--mostly not to brag--but to say that it's a vindication for the big-picture view of presidential elections: That they are the product of a complex stew of social and economic forces, not a contest between candidates and campaigns.

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  • As goes February, so goes the nation

    By David Rothschild and Chris Wilson | The Signal – Wed, Oct 24, 2012

    Back in February, when the Signal predicted that President Barack Obama will win re-election with 303 electoral votes, we wrote that "while campaigns and candidates matter, they don't matter all that much. Despite the varying quality and positions of the campaigns and candidates over the last 10 presidential elections, variables beyond their immediate control describe the outcome very well."

    We won't know if our model of predicting elections is any good for another two weeks. We do know that it has held remarkably steady. The reams and reams of information about the election that have been revealed in the past eight months—for example, who the Republican candidate is—have barely shifted the political reality of the race. In fact, the only difference between February and now is that we think Virginia is now leaning in Mitt Romney's favor.

    To illustrate that point, we're publishing our predictions for every day since May 1 in the form of an interactive map where you can drag the timeline

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  • With dozens of scenarios, control of the Senate is a toss-up

    By David Rothschild and Chris Wilson | The Signal – Mon, Aug 13, 2012

    As political nail-biters go, the most interesting battle in the 2012 election does not involve anyone named Obama or Romney. While the general election is going to be decided in six or seven swing states that have a reasonable likelihood of going for either presidential candidate, control of the Senate rests in a much more complex tangle of eight or nine states. Right now, our model of polls, prediction markets and historical data suggests that Democrats have a 48.7 percent likelihood of retaining control of the upper body.

    The Democratic Party currently has 53 senators in its caucus to the Republican Party's 47 senators. But the way the cards fell with the 33 seats up for re-election this year was not kind to the incumbent party. Democrats are defending 23 seats while the Republicans are defending only 10 seats in this year's election. Stated another way, the Democrats have just 30 seats confirmed for the next session to the Republicans' 37 seats among the 67 total that aren't up for

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  • The Signal prediction: Obama maintains fragile hold on 303 electoral votes in November

    By David Rothschild and Chris Wilson | The Signal – Wed, Jul 18, 2012

    In February, when the Signal unveiled its model for predicting presidential elections, we wrote that, "while campaigns and candidates matter, they don't matter all that much. Despite the varying quality and positions of the campaigns and candidates over the last 10 presidential elections, variables beyond their immediate control describe the outcome very well."

    At the time, our model predicted that Barack Obama will win reelection with 303 electoral votes. In the past five months, as the campaigns have spent tens of millions of dollars on advertisements and fought tooth and nail for the smallest advantages, the model has remained steady. Only Virginia has switched columns at any point, wavering between camps as our predictions show an incredibly tight match there. At the moment, we have Obama eking out a victory in Virginia, keeping him at 303 electoral votes. Should he lose the state, he would retain the presidency with 290 votes to Mitt Romney's 248.

    We could be dead wrong, of

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