Don’t flip out over election forecasts

WE ARE now past Labour Day and in the homestretch of the 2024 campaign, and a lot of people are asking me and others in political polling and media: Who’s going to win in November? Is the race Donald Trump’s to lose? Can Kamala Harris turn her momentum into victory?

With people craving this peek into the future, the spotlight is intensifying on a part of my industry that isn’t especially well understood: election forecasters and their predictive models. This work is somewhat different from the polls that we all know so well, and I want to lay out what matters more about election forecasting, some of the reasons their predictive models can yield such differences (like predicting better chances for Trump in some models and better chances for Harris in others) and what I think people should keep in mind about forecasting and models so they don’t drive themselves crazy trying to game out the future over the next nine weeks.

First, the difference between polling and forecasting (and predictive models) boils down to this: Polls give you a snapshot of voter opinion at a particular moment. By contrast, election forecasters try to look ahead and assess the likelihood of a particular outcome.