FORECASTING TAIWAN’S PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS (2008 TO 2012) FROM PRE-ELECTION MEDIA POLLS: A “COVERAGE FORECASTING MODEL” CONSIDERED

DOI: 10.5176/2335-6618_1.1.2

Authors: Nien-Hsia Liu

Abstract:

In Taiwan, many politicians and journalists are accustomed to relying on pre-election media polls for their projections of presidential election outcomes. However, this approach always ignores the critical issue of noncoverage problems underlying telephone surveys, which are popular in Taiwan’s media polling industry. The study suggests that, in an effort to improve the prediction accuracy, election forecasting researchers should focus more on the exploration of the likely voting intention of various types of voters, including noncoverage
voters, refusal voters, undecided voters, and decided voters.

Keywords: media polls; election forecasting; telephone survey; noncoverage ;nonresponse; presidential election; Taiwan