News & Notes: Wang’s blog accurately predicts results of presidential election

In an election cycle marked by pundits and campaigns questioning the validity of polling data, the predictions compiled by University molecular biology and neuroscience professor Sam Wang marked a victory for the data analysts.

Wang runs a blog called the “Princeton Election Consortium,” which uses a process he calls the “meta-analysis of polls” to compile data from state polls to create a probability distribution of how many electoral votes each candidate would win.

Wang’s prediction on the popular vote — that President Barack Obama would win 51.1 percent to Gov. Mitt Romney’s 48.9 percent — turned out to be correct. He also correctly predicted the median result in all 50 states.

As early as August, Wang claimed that Obama’s chances of winning were more than 90 percent.

Expressing how confident he was with his predictions, Wang said on Nov. 3 that he would eat a bug if Romney won Minnesota, Pennsylvania or Ohio.