The Betfair Prof: "Can we predict elections from politicians' faces? It seems so!"

The Betfair Prof / Leighton Vaughan Williams / 01 July 2008 / Leave a Comment

This week the Betfair Prof, Leighton Vaughan Williams, tells us why it is possible to predict the outcome of the 2008 US Presidential Election from the candidates' faces. Who needs polls and prediction markets when you've got a team of school kids from Australia...?

One of the most interesting papers submitted to last week's international symposium on forecasting, organised by the International Institute of Forecasters, was titled 'Predicting Elections from Politicians' Faces'. I had the privilege of chairing the session at which this paper was presented by J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. The motivating factor behind this research was pre-existing work which demonstrated that voters' assessments of the relative competence of candidates have in the past acted as very good indicators of the success of the candidates in election face-offs.

Taking this one step further, Professor Armstrong and his co-authors, Kesten Green (Monash University, Australia), Randall Jones (University of Central Oklahoma) and Malcolm Wright (University of South Australia) came up with the idea of testing one very interesting hypothesis, that snap judgments of 'facial competence' would provide useful forecasts of the outcome of this year's Presidential election 'primaries'. To do this they obtained 'facial competence' ratings of 11 potential candidates for the Democratic nomination and 13 for the Republican nomination for the 2008 US Presidential election.

To ensure that it was all about faces and not issues, they relied on schoolboys and schoolgirls from Australia and New Zealand (who indicated no knowledge of the candidates) to do the rating, between May and August 2007. With no prompting, the youngsters rated Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama at the top of the field for the Democrats and John McCain at the head of the pack for the Republicans. Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson were rated as also-rans, trailing in ninth and tenth places respectively.

What makes these choices particularly instructive is that at the time Giuliani and Thompson were storming ahead in the polls and in the betting, with Senator McCain trailing badly. As we now know, Senators Obama and Clinton ended up in a two-person struggle to head the Democratic ticket while John McCain won the Republican nomination with something to spare. In other words, the schoolchildren from Australia and New Zealand knew something several months ago that neither the polls nor the betting markets seem to have picked up, i.e. the importance of how competent you look if you want to win an election.

The interesting question before us now is who will the general election. Will it be Barack Obama or will it be John McCain? Well, the polls are currently saying Obama, as is the Betfair market. That's all very well, of course, but perhaps more important is what those schoolkids from Down Under are saying. Well, as it happens they're saying much the same. The top six Democrats were rated as more competent than any of the Republicans by this 'expert' panel. All of which is to say that Senator Obama is currently leading his Republican opponent by more than just a head. He's also leading by a face!

Professor Leighton Vaughan Williams is the Director of the Political Forecasting Unit and Betting Research Unit of Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, and Editor of the Journal of Prediction Markets

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