It has now become evident that either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton are going to occupy the oval office.
However, what is not clear is who will win the election and by what margin. This is a billion dollar question, given the amount of money that punters from all over the world have placed on either of these two presidential aspirants to win!
To start with, be wary of what the forecasters and pundits say, and more so those making conclusive predictions at this juncture.
Regardless of how experienced they are or their expertise in this field, their analysis is serious hazed and overlooking the uncertainty of the next president of the US in 2016. I strongly believe that a healthy dose of skepticism is needed right now.
Defining the Next American president odds
From my point of view, I analyze two critical areas when looking at the next American president odds: the model that is based on polls vs the mode referred to as the base-rate model.
In the model based on polls, the existing polls are summarized and adjusted by other factors including the company that conducted the survey or how effective the mode of collecting the information was.
On the other hand, the base-rate model usually includes the summary of the past election events and gives a rough idea on how the current election will unfold at the end.
These modes are the ones that are usually used by most companies to come up with the next American president odds and can both be expressed as probabilities.
Usually, the base rate models are used in the initial cycle of elections and as the election draws closer, the companies greatly depend on the model, which is based on polls.
Sounds okay, right?
However, the 2016 next American presidential race is hotly contested, making any of these two methods, or any other method in this case unreliable. Confused? Don’t be because I’m going to explain!
2015’s prediction on the next American President Odds
Back in 2015, the base rate models highly suggested that the 2016 next American president was going to come from a Republican party, so strong in fact that most of the blogs and newspapers were writing reasons why the Republicans were going to take over the oval office.
Most of the base rate models had a probability of 70% that the Republicans were actually going to win!
The base rate models didn’t consider the specifics of the running candidates, but instead they widely considered the underlying economic and political fundamentals as well as focusing on the likelihood of the government backed candidate winning the election.
Equally, the poll based models also indicated a strong win for Clinton come November 8. Truly, out of the 164 polls that were conducted in May 2015, only 18 indicated Trump on the lead! Such a huge difference right?
In fact, when these models were put in probability, this gave Hillary Clinton an 80-90% probability of winning. This coupled by the strong negative and harsh statements made by Trump made Hillary Clinton the favorite to win the election.
So how is the difference caused by the two outcome compensated for?
Usually, most of the polls companies and bookies would take the difference between the pole based model and the base rate model and getting an average. However, some tend to go for the polls based more given that the results are actually based on people’s thoughts and views.
However, others tend to go for the base rate, which have an experience of outperforming the poll based models. As such, they will give more weight to the base rate model since they’ve had a good record of delivering results.
According to the base rate model, the relative weight indicates an average of 55%, and odds of Clinton to win at 28%. When put on a polling data for Clinton vs Trump, the relative weight comes down to 45% and odds of Clinton wining to stand at a whooping 84%. This favours net American president odds for Clinton!
However, you shouldn’t be too fast to go for this choice. Given that the base rate and the polls base all use the same old cycle of choosing the next American president, I would say that they may not work in this case.
The 2016 election is such a disruptive election and that these methods should be thrown out through the window. I therefore strongly believe that Donald Trump still can clear the path and make his way to the oval office come November 8.
2016 a disruptive election?
According to most experienced punters and political analysists, they agree that 2016 is going to be a disruptive elections. While most of the next American president odds seem to point us to the right way, its going to be difficult to tell who really is going to win.
The next president odds during the outgoing president Obama highly favored him on becoming the POTUS, given the fact that even both ways of making the presidential elections predictions highly favoured him.
But this time things are totally different with the political sand shifting underfoot and the bigger percentage of the population being highly agitated: such situations usually occur whenever there is an economic or population turmoil.
In such a case, the ability to correctly predict on the outcome of the election is highly affected because such a behavior does not necessarily show how the future events. In other instances, such a turmoil might just be a temporary instability, which clears the way for disrupters.
I therefore strongly believe that the US 2016 presidential election is going to be a disrupter election, falling in a category that not even the next American president odds can really contribute to the final outcome!
