QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS WORKSHOP
Abstract: Many influential observers have forecast large partisan shifts in the US electorate based on demographic trends. Such forecasts are appealing because demographic trends are often predictable even over long horizons. We backtest demographic forecasts using data on U.S. elections since 1952. We envision a forecaster who fits a model using data from a given election and uses that model, in tandem with a projection of demographic trends, to predict future elections. Even a forecaster with perfect knowledge of future demographic trends would have performed poorly over this period—worse even than one who simply guesses that each election will have a 50-50 partisan split. Enriching the set of demographics available does not change this conclusion. Slow demographic change, unstable group preferences, and strategic party responses all help to explain why demography has not been destiny in U.S. politics. Link to the full paper.
Jesse Shapiro is the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration at Harvard University. Prior to joining Harvard University, Shapiro served as the Eastman Professor of Political Economy at Brown University and the Chookaszian Family Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Shapiro received a BA in economics in 2001 and a PhD in economics in 2005 from Harvard University. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, an Associate Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and a former editor of the Journal of Political Economy. He was a 2011-12 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, a 2017 Fellow of the Econometric Society, and a 2021 MacArthur Foundation Fellow.
This workshop is being held jointly with the Leitner Political Economy Seminar series.
The Quantitative Research Methods Workshop is being sponsored by the ISPS Center for the Study of American Politics and The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale with support from The Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Fund.