Team

Andreas Graefe (project lead)

Andreas Graefe (Ph.D., Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany) has joined the PollyVote project in 2007. Andreas is a professor of management at Macromedia University of Applied Sciences in Munich, Germany. Prior to that, he was a research fellow at LMU Munich, Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Andreas’ research is quantitative-empirical, interdisciplinary, and problem-oriented. He does not limit himself to a particular domain or method but looks across many domains and use different methods to address important problems. In the area of election studies, he has done extensive validation work on the benefits of combining forecasts, vote expectation surveys, and index models. Andreas also brought the PollyVote to Germany. For more information see his personal website.

Scott Armstrong

J. Scott Armstrong (Ph.D., MIT, 1968), Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, is one of the founders of the PollyVote. In addition, he is a founder of the Journal of Forecasting, the International Journal of Forecasting, and the International Symposium on Forecasting. He is the creator of forecastingprinciples.com and editor of Principles of Forecasting, an evidence-based summary of knowledge on forecasting. In 1996, he was selected as one of the first six “Honorary Fellows” by the International Institute of Forecasters. He was named by the Society of Marketing Advances as “Distinguished Marketing Scholar of 2000.” One of Wharton’s most prolific scholars, he is the most highly cited professor in the Marketing Department at Wharton. His current projects involve the application of scientific forecasting methods to climate change and the use of the index method to make predictions for situations with many variables and much knowledge (e.g., political elections and the effectiveness of advertisements). His book, Persuasive Advertising, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2010. It summarizes evidence-based knowledge on persuasion and it is supported by advertisingprinciples.com. For more information see Scott’s personal website.

Randy Jones

Randall J. Jones, Jr. (PhD University of Texas at Austin), Professor of Political Science at the University of Central Oklahoma, is one of the founders of the PollyVote. Randy was Chair of the political science department and served as Assistant Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. Jones’s current research interests relate to political forecasting, particularly predicting election outcomes. He also has published studies on forecasting political risks encountered by U. S. oil companies abroad. He is author of Who Will Be in the White House? Predicting Presidential Elections (Longman, 2002) and is co-editor of 21 Debated: Issues in World Politics (Prentice-Hall 2000, 2004). Jones chaired the organizing committee of the Political Forecasting Group, a Related Group of the American Political Science Association since 2006, and is currently the group’s Secretary-Treasurer. He is a collaborator in the Special Interest Group PoliticalForecasting.com. Jones has been designated Oklahoma Political Science Scholar of the Year and Oklahoma Political Science Teacher of the Year, both awards of the Oklahoma Political Science Association, of which he has been president. At UCO Jones was named a Herbert Hauptman faculty research fellow and is director of the interdisciplinary minor in Global Studies. He previously served on the Board of Directors of the World Affairs Council of Central Oklahoma and of the United Nations Association, Oklahoma City chapter. For more information see Randy’s personal website.

Alfred Cuzán (Co-Founder, retired)

Alfred G. Cuzán, Distinguished University Professor at the University of West Florida, was one of the founders of the Pollyvote. Alfred received a Ph.D. in Political Science and Economics at Indiana University (Bloomington, Indiana) in 1975.  He has published many articles on American politics and policy, Latin American and Iberian politics, and political theory.  He retired from the PollyVote project in May of 2020 to focus on other projects. For more information see Alfred’s personal website.