Over the past few weeks, I’ve been following the forecasts for the presidential race posted by Thomas Miller, a data scientist at Northwestern University. Miller bases his predictions not on the polls, but on prices displayed on what he deems America’s most trustworthy political betting site, PredictIt. Since June 8, Miller has been updating his forecast once a day. The new numbers are posted at midnight EST on his homepage, the Virtual Tout.
Alert to election watchers: On Oct. 29, Miller unveiled a new site that continuously displays the electoral vote count that the PredictIt odds suggest each candidate is winning. PredictIt updates its prices once a minute. Miller instantaneously translates those odds into a forecast for the number of electoral votes (EVs) that each candidate is winning. “We’re pretty much showing where the election is moving in real time,” he says. “It’s like having your own personal ticker tape for the presidential election.”
