How elections forecasters became political ‘prophets’

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Before there was a FiveThirtyEight model or a New York Times election night needle, there was an economist named Louis Bean. He wrote the 1948 book “How to Predict Elections” and achieved a sort of fame for suggesting that contrary to conventional wisdom, Democratic President Harry Truman would defeat Republican Thomas Dewey. Bean was described as a “political prophet” for his on-target assessment. Today there are more of these “prophets” than ever. Yet these forecasters themselves are the first to push back on the characterization that they can tell you what’s going to happen in the future. One says that “a definitive prediction” is “usually a sign that someone’s a charlatan.”