# What formula could we best use to judge the winner of election predictions? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 10, 2016, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-formula-could-we-best-use-to-judge-the-winner-of-election-predictions/745699 "2016-02-10T11:06:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2016, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-formula-could-we-best-use-to-judge-the-winner-of-election-predictions/745699/1 "2016-02-10T11:06:26Z")
There have been some interesting threads started by Jonathan Chance on election predictions (such as here and here). Let’s assume we take only the top 3 predictions for each poster (to keep the maths simpler.) For example, we could have predictions like these examples for Iowa: Poster A Trump 38% Cruz 20% Rubio 15% Poster B Cruz 30% Trump 25% Bush 20% The actual result was: Cruz 28% Trump 24% Rubio 23% So we can make a formula for each poster’s prediction based on (say): - the difference between predictions and actual for the top three candidates (always take as positive) - a ‘penalty’ for each top three candidate missed (I’ll use 25%) - then take the total of the above two and subtract from 100 (just to give a positive result) Using my formula, the above two predictions would score: 100 - (14+8+8) = 70 for Poster A 100 - (2+1+25) = 72 for Poster B So B does slightly better, despite missing one of the top 3. What do you think of my formula? Have you got a better one?! If I get enough interest, I’ll have a go at ranking the posters for each State. 🆒