Are the Forecast Models Just Plain Wrong?

Seth Masket: “I like to put together a little economic forecast model around this point in an election cycle. Not so much because I’m trying to predict what’ll happen — there are more sophisticated ways to do that — but because I want to get a sense of a baseline. That is, what are the fundamentals of this year? Once we know that, we can get a bit of a sense of how other variables — campaigning, candidate quality, etc. — are performing.”

“In 2022, however, what traditional forecast models are telling is wildly different from what everything else is telling us.”