The June issue of Inside
Research reports that an online poll by YouGov matched the final results of
the May 2 London mayoralty elections exactly.
Not only was it right on, it was the only major poll to show Ken
Livingston, the eventual loser at 47 percent, behind. Everyone else had him winning. I will spare you the specifics of YouGov
founder Peter Kellner’s oozing comment on his willingness to help his
competitors figure out where they went wrong.
The same issue had a short piece detailing just how long
predictive markets have been around. For
the benefit of the uninitiated, this is an approach trumpeted by James Surowiecki in The Wisdom of Crowds arguing, among
other things, that people are sometimes better at predicting the behavior of
other large groups of people than they are their own. In other words, results from a survey that
asks people to predict the likely success of a new product may be more accurate
than a survey of those same people that asks about the likelihood they will
purchase the product. In another
variant, polls of casual experts who follow a certain topic can sometimes be
uncannily accurate about future public behavior on that topic. (Our own Theo Downes-LeGuin has been experimenting in this area with surprising or disturbing results, depending on
your point of view.) The specific item
noted in Inside Research piece is a
recent article in The Wall Street Journal
(April 28) by Gordon Crovitz arguing that analysis of betting behaviors on
election outcomes is a better predictor than political polls, and he apparently
has some data to back that up. (Unfortunately, WJS has yet to catch the wave and so you can only access their articles if you pony up for a subscription.)