Tod Rap-CEO of Psephos-Psephology:the study of voting patterns

[kuozzman]

Rap is also of course, the founder of Triad GSI
http://www.democraticunderground.com/demopedia/index.php/Triad_GSI
New Triad Info:
http://ignorantusa.tripod.com/triad/

Psephology is the predictive or statistical study of elections. (From the ancient Greek psephos, 'pebble', which the Greeks used as ballots.)

Psephology: the study of voting patterns comes from the Greek word psephos, meaning pebble. In their ancient democracy, Athenians voted by casting pebbles into an urn.

Psephology is possible for a variety of reasons: the compilation of precinct voting returns for all elections going back many years, the publication of numerous public opinion polls asking similar questions on many different dates, and the public availability of campaign finance information. As a result of all these, and other factors, there are fewer and fewer election result surprises over time.

[seaclyr]

1. Hmm that's pretty interesting...

do you know if predictive analysis focuses primarily on outcome numbers or do they also study how numbers change over time to reach a final outcome? It seems that final numbers would be less difficult to fudge than the pattern that emerges over time. In other words it's relatively easy to know how many extra votes one would need to affect an election, it's harder to know when to feed them in to escape detection. Any thoughts?