SPRUCE PINE, NC: Polling asks voters what they think. Datum Signals (datumsignals.com), launched today by Parallax Advisory LLC, forecasts elections from what voters actually do: observable behavior that doesn’t depend on who answers the phone.
In back-testing against past elections, the model scored in the 0.119 to 0.137 Brier range (a standard forecast accuracy measure where lower is better), matching or beating leading public forecasters.
How it works: Datum Signals tracks observable voter behavior rather than survey responses. A fast model follows week-to-week shifts in that behavior while a slow model anchors on fundamentals like incumbency and district history. The two are blended with an error structure that assumes misses correlate across similar states, so one bad assumption can’t quietly wreck the whole map. Outliers are trimmed before they can distort the forecast.
Who it’s for:
Newsrooms can use Datum Signals to pressure-test the polling narrative in the races they cover.
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