Politimetrics is a research initiative from the Westminster Business School, University of Westminster. We aim to make voters benefit from the most up-to-date scientific tools, when they are making up their minds on who to vote for. The Internet now makes it possible for us to provide this service for free to a wider audience. 

Who is the best candidate?

One of the decision-making tools that Politimetrics takes from the fields of Statistics and Economics is the calculation of conditional probabilities.

Explanation

Polls and prediction markets usually give an information about who is most likely to win a political election. They however do not say anything about what matters most for the voters: what will happen after the election if such or such candidate win? 

Politimetrics.com goes beyond the usual information provided by polls and prediction market prices and computes conditional probabilities (for instance, the probability that ‘A’ will succeed if he/she is elected). In this way we can answer questions like:

• Who is the party candidate who would stand the most chances to win the presidency if designated as a candidate during the primaries?


• Who is the candidate to the presidency who would be most likely to conduct a successful economic policy if elected to the White House? 

To compute this information, Politimetrics.com uses prices from two prediction markets from our partner Intrade. For instance we compute the probability that Clinton will decrease the unemployment rate, by (roughly) dividing the price of the event "Clinton will be elected and she will decrease the unemployment rate" by the price of the event "Clinton will be elected". Technically, this gives us the conditional probability that "Clinton will decrease the unemployment rate IF she is elected". Comparing this to the same probability for other candidates allows voters to make more informed choices.

Online surveys and decision tools

Politimetrics will soon feature additional tools to help you to make your choice in the 2008 campaign.