How earthquake science can predict presidential elections
AUG 28, 2008
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.022628
The Washington Post : While people who study elections usually scrutinize individual voters, politicians, advocacy groups, issues, campaign contributors and volunteers, historian Allan Lichtman and geophysicist Vladimir Keilis-Borok, decided to think about an election the same way geophysicists regard earthquakes. Getting too close to the phenomenon -- the views of individual voters and campaigners -- is like trying to study an earthquake by analyzing every single molecule of rock and soil.
“The systems that generate elections and earthquakes are complex systems,” said Keilis-Borok, who is now a professor of earth sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles. “They are not predictable by simple equations, but after coarse-graining -- averaging -- they become predictable.”
In a paper in the International Journal of Forecasting , Lichtman predicted a political earthquake this November: The incumbent party will crumble, and Sen. Barack Obama will be elected president.
© 2008 American Institute of Physics
