more on Lynn Landes' analysis of the 2002 Elections from RISKS

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Vaughan Pratt <pratt () CS Stanford EDU>
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2002 10:04:12 -0800
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: <[IP]> Lynn Landes' analysis of the 2002 Elections from RISKS

Dave,

Couldn't agree more with McClure's "rant" assessment of Landes, my
frustration with this election's outcome notwithstanding.

To add one more objection, the quote from Zogby International's John
Zogby,

> "I blew Illinois. I blew Colorado (and Georgia). And never in my life
> did I get New Hampshire wrong...but I blew that too." Or did he?

has a much less sinister explanation than vote rigging: the twin crashes
(9/11, economy) have so invalidated all trend lines as to set the fortune
telling business back to square one.

Ok, so now that Zogby's has a federal election outcome to go on they're back
in business and ready for 2004, right?

Wrong.

It takes two datapoints to construct a trendline.  Which means that we can't
hope for a return to the reliability of late 20th century forecasting until
2006.  And even then this is under the optimistic assumptions that the twin
crashes haven't greatly changed the differences between presidential and
congressional elections, and that the trends are linear enough to project
reliably from two elections.

Absent both those, the next congressional election we'll be able to call
with the reliability of 1998 will be 2014!

Vaughan Pratt



------ End of Forwarded Message

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