1. Even though any middle schooler with a calculator could have predicted the election 2 days ago, it seems that not many of them did - at least, if you judge based on the odds for a Democrat win you could get on InTrade and BetFair 2 days ago (65% and 75% respectively).
2. One neat thing about my model is that, in principle you can run it in "historical" mode and see what its predictions would have been at any given point in the past. So I can see what probability of a DEM win I would have assigned 2 months ago, and see if that's significantly different from the forecast from a more complex model.
1. Even though any middle schooler with a calculator could have predicted the election 2 days ago, it seems that not many of them did - at least, if you judge based on the odds for a Democrat win you could get on InTrade and BetFair 2 days ago (65% and 75% respectively).
2. One neat thing about my model is that, in principle you can run it in "historical" mode and see what its predictions would have been at any given point in the past. So I can see what probability of a DEM win I would have assigned 2 months ago, and see if that's significantly different from the forecast from a more complex model.