of Michigan colleague Justin Wolfers have been making the case that predicting the political future may come down to one simple question.

It’s not the poll response typically reported over and over during an election cycle. Since the 1930s, pollsters have been developing their forecasts primarily by asking one thing: If the election were held today,
cheap jordans
, who would you vote for? If the sample is both large and representative,
cheap retro jordans
, this “intention” question can work. It’s also tidy,
cheap wholesale jordans
, as Rothschild explained at this year’s New Horizons in Science meeting in Raleigh,
cheap jordans free shipping
, N.C. The raw numbers alone — X percent for Obama,
cheap real jordans
, Y percent for Romney — tell the story.

But the intention question gets at who a person would vote for today,
cheap jordan shoes
, which can be misleading the farther you are from the election. Incumbents, for example, tend to look worse in polls taken around Labor Day than on Election Day, notes Rothschild.

If pollsters are going to rely on a single question, it should not be about voter intentions,
cheap jordans online
, Rothschild and Wolfers argue in a recent National Bureau of Economic Research working paper. Pollsters should ask about expectations: Who do you think will win the election?

While the classic intention question reveals one data point — who the person being questioned plans to vote for — the answer to the expectation question is far richer. In addition to indicating how the person being questioned will vote,
http://cheapjordansstock.com
, that data point also incorporates information on how that person’s friends and family will vote. The answer may even encode how polled people and their social

http://www.koniecligi....hread.php?thread_id=11250

http://www.espirits.xf...orum_topic&topic=3653

http://www.elllo.org/graphics/