Experts see Democrats’ lead widen

The Pollyvote team has completed its fourth survey of elections experts to forecast the 2016 presidential election. In the late March survey, conducted between March 28 and 31, 14 academics from a variety of colleges and universities responded.

For the first time in this election cycle, all responding experts expected a Democratic win, with forecasts of the popular vote ranging from a minimum of 50.8% to a maximum of 56.8%. The mean forecast is that the Democrats will garner 53.1% of the major-party vote (compared to 46.9% for the Republicans).

The predicted Democratic vote share is thus more than one percentage point higher than in the previous survey, conducted in late February, when the mean expert experts had predicted a vote share of 52.0% for the Democrats and 48.0% for the Republicans.

Polly thanks the experts who participated in this round, namely

• Randall Adkins (University of Nebraska Omaha)
• Lonna Rae Atkeson (University of New Mexico)
• Scott Blinder (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
• John Coleman (University of Minnesota)
• George Edwards (Texas A&M University)
• Sandy Maisel (Colby College)
• Michael Martinez (University of Florida)
• Thomas Patterson (Harvard University)
• Gerald Pomper (Rutgers University)
• David Redlawsk (Rutgers University)
• Larry Sabato (University of Virginia)
• Michael Tesler (University of California, Irvine)
• Charles Walcott (Virginia Tech)

and one expert who preferred to remain anonymous.