Following up on our poll-driven modeling election series, and my previous prediction that in this election cycle the poll-model system that seems to be in place will fail, it behooves us to at least consider what kind of modeling system we would replace the current system with. I should tell you upfront that I don’t have a final answer yet, but I am playing with some code. This is just a think out loud kind of situation.

I did mention that an agent-based model would be the most likely contender to replace a micro-simulation in my last piece. The advantage would be that you can instantiate an entire population of voters and give each agent in that population his/her [...]

My last article posted in June of 2016 talked about how in 2014 we will end up with a whole slew of new, sleek political models that will be able to “supposedly” predict the rise of Donald Trump. Tonight, as we watch the seemingly inevitable victory of Trump unfold, it’s becoming absolutely clear that the predictive and statistical poll-based models used by the most experienced professionals in the field are missing key components, or at minimum using bad training data.

Something is wrong with polling in general, the models that use the polling and the standard methodology in current use. In fact, up to 100 days prior to an election, [...]