Election predictions

[Dave Britten]

(11-08-2020 07:52 PM)robve Wrote:  I assume the model needs to show at least a 99% probability of winning by the leading candidate for the state to be called, or sufficiently close to 99%.

NBC mentioned on the air that they require 99.5% confidence from their models before they officially make any projections/calls. At one point on Friday (I think - the week has been kind of a blur), Chuck mentioned they were above 90% confidence on Biden winning PA, but they weren't officially calling it until they got to 99.5%.

I'm assuming other networks have something similar, though the exact confidence interval and specifics of the models no doubt vary, as not all the networks made the same projections at the same time, despite having the same vote data available. NBC and CNN always seemed to match very closely throughout the week, though. FOX News was something of an outlier with their very early AZ projection; I still don't see any projections for that state from other major news outlets, though I bet you could easily find some analysts and anchors willing to wager money on the outcome.

As for the specifics of the statistical models they're using, I can only assume it's quite a bit more complicated than z-scores on a normal distribution. There's a dizzying amount of variables in play.