In the media: New student club’s election forecasting featured on WFMZ-69 News

As part of its midterm election coverage, WFMZ-69 News on Oct. 27 featured a new student club and its work predicting the outcome of the 7th Congressional District race, one of the most closely watched political contests in the nation.

The Lafayette Applied Forecasting Community, advised by Mark Crain, William E. Simon Professor of Political Economy and chair of the policy studies program, helps students evaluate current events using prediction markets.

Drawing on past election returns, current voter registration data, and mail-in ballot returns, the LAFC team built a precinct-by-precinct picture of the race across all 370 precincts in the district. “The precinct- and municipal-level models give us a granular look at where both campaigns stand,” said Bode Brewer ’28, a club officer.

(L-R): Bode Brewer ’28, Bryan Kibet ’27, 69 News anchor/reporter Bo Koltnow, Aanika Patel ’27, Kayla Denis ’27, Kiley Meringer ’27, and Charlie Weinstein ’27. (Contributed photo)

The model shows where each candidate’s support is strongest, where turnout matters most, and how large a shift it would take to change the result. A swing of about 1.3 points in the two-party vote would flip the baseline, a margin well within the range of a normal midterm. In addition, the students analyzed more than 20,000 social media posts using sentiment analysis and opinion mining and considered the effects of other races on the ballot.