Our New Year’s Day Forecast of Georgia Senate Runoffs

Elecurator developed a method to forecast the outcomes of the Senate runoff races in Georgia using social media data and voter turnout rates. The method relies on two sources of data: (1) the number of online posts about the four candidates in the runoffs as a proxy for voter engagement and (2) the expected voter turnout in the runoffs relative to the 2020 General Election in Georgia. Today’s forecast is based on both sources of data as of December 31, 2020. We will be monitoring both sources and updating our forecasts through the election day on January 5, 2021.

The charts show the average expected votes for each candidate and a 95% confidence band. So, in the Leoffler-Warnock chart, Warnock is expected to get 2540614 votes on the average but our analysis says that, with a 95% confidence, the number could be 2439372 on the lower end or 2641856 on the higher end.

We will be posting our next forecast on January 2, 2021!

These forecasts are being produced by Co-Principal Investigator Dr. Purush Papatla with assistance from Ling Tong, Doctoral Student in the College of Health Sciences, UW-Milwaukee.