Another morning, another news cycle, another set of polls, another pundit-filled click-baited talking-headed Twitter-ranted day on cable news and the Internet. Enemy camps dig in, hoist their banners and ratchet up the intensity of the 2016 Presidential Election. Most observers and people who have voted in a presidential election or two agree that this time around, things are different.
But what isn’t different is that in November the United States will elect a new chief executive.
- People will go to the voting booths
- The popular vote will be tallied
- Those totals in each state will dictate the number of electoral college votes given to each candidate
- The electoral votes will be totalled
- Whoever reaches 270 electoral votes, wins
In other words, beneath all the noise is a mathematical equation—or a data model–that drives the story of the election. And where there is a data model, we at Trefis get excited.
Our technology transforms data models into experiences that lets you play “what-if” as much as you want. The visual interactive format works for any model, such as a company’s earnings , price elasticity , or Return on Investment.
We thought: What-if we transformed the election “equation” into the Trefis Interactive Experience?
Introducing our 2016 “What-if” Presidential Election Series
Welcome to our 2016 “What-if” Presidential Election Series. We’ll build election models that allow you to play political prognosticator and quantify “what-if” scenarios. Over the next several weeks we’ll use the Trefis Interactive Experience to quantify “what-if” scenarios regarding the Presidential race. Do you ever wonder if the predictions of the pundits are remotely possible? We do. We’ll show you what would have to actually happen for those “what-if’s” to hold water.
Keep in mind, our interest in doing this series is strictly in service of our business. We hope you read our posts, experience our technology and think about Trefis should a need arise in your business for one of our solutions. Trefis has no preferred candidate; we merely want to provoke some thought, show off our interface and have a little fun while doing it. Our base case data come from independent polling organizations such as www.270towin.com, and we will try to give equal billing to both the Republican and Democrat nominees. Our series will include third-parties where relevant as well.
Here’s what to expect from our election series:
- Each week, starting today, we will publish a “what-if” scenario to our blog. The blog will include a link to a model that will quantify the scenario using the Trefis Interactive Experience.
- When you land on the model page, you can immediately start playing “what-if.” Use your mouse to manipulate the visualization or directly type in new data to change the election results.
- If you want to save those “what-if” scenarios, you can create an account here or click on the “Sign In” button in the top navigation bar.
We’ll encourage your feedback on our blog, through social channels and via the “Contact Us” page. We’ll keep going in this fashion through November. The Monday prior to the election we’ll publish one more blog post and the week afterwards we’ll publish one or two posts about what we learned.
NOTE: Because our primary audiences are business people our visualization uses GREEN and RED (to represent profit/loss), rather than blue states versus red states. In our model, data associated with Trump will appear in green while Clinton’s appear in red.
Incidentally, if you have your own election model that you’d like us to feature, click here and we will try to get it into the mix.
We hope you enjoy our series these next few weeks.
For information on how our first election model works, click here.
To dig into our first “What-If” scenario, click here.