About: Pollstradamus

Who?

This site sprung up in 2024 out of a love for data and electoral politics.

The supporters of the losing sides in 2016 and 2020 were both blindsided by their candidate's defeat. It was often because pundits and analysts told their side's supporters what they wanted to hear, pandering to their audience rather than to reality.

I set out in 2024 to lay the groundwork for being a third option for people, and that year, I beat out the giants in the field of American election forecasting, proving it could be done.

The Forecast

The centerpiece of this website is of course the electoral college forecast. But where does the underlying data come from to make this forecast?

A blend of voter registration data, recent election results, and polling from the state and national levels. Registration data, while always changing, will largely stay the same, as changes there tend to be gradual (At least, as in terms of the length of an election cycle). The primary data point that will be changing here are the state and national polling, which I’ll be updating daily as they are released.

In fulfillment of my goal of transparency and objectivism, I will tell you now that I do have certain criterion for a poll to be included. The foremost of which is that the poll must have publicly available crosstab data. Thankfully, very few polls fail to disclose this information, and the few that do not diclose come from firms with a strong partisan bent.

On that point, I will include polling from firms that are partisan aligned (ex: Cygnal (R), Public Policy Polling (D)) but will not include internal campaign polls, which tend to be released for political purposes and often do not disclose crosstab information anyway.