The News Alert: A Challenge to Moody’s Analytics and Reuters’ Computer Model-Predicting the 2016 Pr

A Predictive-Descriptive Artificial Intelligence-Based Expert computer system predicts a Democratic landslide victory in the race for the White House in 2016, whoever happens to be the Democratic candidate. The GOP would require a major and dramatic shift in the electorate to win the White House.

To win the 2016 U.S. presidential election, 270 electoral votes are required out of a total of 538 votes. The Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based, automated expert computer model predicts a potential Democrat win with 324 electoral votes, versus 214 for the Republicans. The AI-based computer model process the prediction in two phases. In phase one, the model predicts that 257 electoral votes can be confidently assigned to the Democratic candidate while 198-201 electoral votes can be confidently assigned to the Republican candidate. In phase two of the prediction, the remaining 80 electoral votes in five swing states were assigned based on the underlying patterns and statistics that have been learned by the computer and the probabilities that has been captured by the model

Without using the AI-based computer model, the current political alignment of the country predicts that 251 electoral votes can be confidently assigned to the Democratic candidate while 109 electoral votes to the Republican candidate. The remaining 181 electoral votes are assigned to a bigger pool of the so called swing states. Alternatively, our AI-based computer system with human expert intervention and interaction predicts a Democrat win with 315 electoral votes, to 223 votes for the Republicans.

In July 2015, Moody’s Analytics predicted a Democratic win with 270 electoral votes, to 268 for the Republicans, regardless of who wins either party's nomination. However, in their revised model in August, Moody’s suggested that a small change in the forecast data has swung the outcome from the statistical tie to a landslide win by the Democrats. Moody’s model that successfully predicts every election back to 1980, including a perfect electoral vote prediction in the 2012 election, predicts that a potential Democratic candidate will win in 2016 with 326 electoral votes and only 212 electoral votes for the Republicans. Moody’s will update its prediction each month in the run-up to November 2016. The updated Moody’s Analytics presidential election for October forecast cycle, predicts the Democrats having a distinct advantage with main focus on five swing states; Florida, Ohio, Colorado, New Hampshire and Virginia.

While Moody's Analytics election model predicts a Democratic electoral landslide in the 2016 presidential vote, a computer model built by Reuters predicts a Republican will most likely be moving into the White House in 2017. The Reuters’ data model takes into account historical trends as an important factor while the electoral system appears to be a factor ignored. In addition to the Reuters’ computer system and Moody’s Analytics, the PredictWise from Microsoft Research predicts a Democrat win the 2016 Presidential election in 2016 with 57% electoral votes (306 electoral votes), to 43% (232 electoral votes) for the Republicans. In contrast to the Reuters computer, both Moody’s and PredictiveWise predict a Democratic victory in 2016 and a quiet “rough tough hard Rodeo ride” for the Republican candidate.

We have simulated all the possible statistical scenarios, of the six potential Democratic nominees (Clinton, Sanders, Biden*, Webb, O’Malley, and Chafee) and the nine potential Republican nominees (Trump, Carson, Rubio, Bush, Fiorina, Cruz, Huckabee, Paul, and Kasich). As an average, our model predicts a Democrat win with 296 electoral votes, to 242 for the Republicans, with a potential Democrat landslide win, as high as 337 electoral votes for the Democrats and 201 electoral votes for the Republicans. In 2012, President Barak Obama won the 2012 presidential election with 332 electoral votes and only 206 electoral votes for the Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney.

According to the Moody’s, the key swing states for 2016 include Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. While Moody’s model predicts that three states account for the change in margin (with Ohio, Florida, and Colorado swinging from leaning Republican to leaning Democrat), the AI-based model predicts five possible potential swing states: Colorado, Florida, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia and possibly Arkansas (low probability). In addition, Moody’s model considers three of the candidates for the Republican nomination will influence the outcome in Ohio and/or Florida and potentially make the outcome of those important states even more unpredictable. In contrast, the AI-based model predicts that five potential Republican candidates and two potential Democratic candidates will influence the election in five potential swing states.

Furthermore, the AI-based computer model predicts three major factors for Democrats to win in a landslide, 1) the President Obama Effect, 2) the President Clinton Effect, 3) and the economy and the decline in the unemployment rate. The other potential factors that were considered in the human expert intervention computer model are: 1) the current and former governors in each swing state, 2) the most recent election for the U.S. Congress, 3) the unemployment rate trends (check out our analysis and AI-based model prediction for the 2025 by Counties at our blog) and, 4) the affiliation of the potential presidential nominee to the swing states or his/her views and background that may influence the states. All the factors were included into the AI-based expert computer model using an AI-based expert rule system. The main data used to build the core model of our AI-based expert computer system is the history of the presidential election and a few common sense rules extracted from basic general elections.

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