Author Archive

Michael S. Lewis-Beck

Michael S. Lewis-Beck is F. Wendell Miller Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa. He has authored or co-authored over 330 articles and books, including Forecasting Elections.

In most democracies, opinion polls routinely ask voters how they intend to vote in an upcoming election. The press and other media use these poll results, specifically the aggregated percentage measures of voting intentions for candidate X, to indicate the likelihood of that candidate winning. While this approach is a practical means of predicting election outcomes, there is a lesser-known survey item that can also serve this purpose, namely questions about voter expectations rather than voter intentions. For example, “Who do you think will win?” rather than “Who are you going to vote for?” A growing body of research has examined the accuracy of voter expectations relative to voter intentions. The most comprehensive work on the subject, looking at more …