This panel, moderated by Doug Usher of Forbes Tate Partners, focused on how to interpret polls, statistical models, and prediction markets in understanding elections.

Joe Lenski, SSRS Executive Vice President, discussed his approach to identifying emerging battleground states, while Columbia professor Andrew Gelman highlighted the inherent uncertainty and historical variability in close electoral races, emphasizing the limits of polling precision.

Panelists also explored how different tools complement one another. John Aristotle Phillips of Aristotle and PredictIt described prediction markets as valuable for quickly aggregating expectations, though less useful for explaining voter behavior. Kabir Khanna underscored the importance of clearly communicating forecasts, noting that probabilities are often misunderstood and can vary significantly depending on context.