This is the first of a five-part election recap series.

After spending two years cataloging more than 150 election predictions made by various political pundits, now comes the fun part: report card time. 

Here is how the pundits fared, sorted by $1 Yield. For those new to the site, $1 Yield is the core metric we use to judge pundits; it measures the average payout (using consensus odds) had you placed $1 bets on each of the pundit’s calls. A yield of exactly $1.00, for instance, means the pundit’s predictions were no better or worse than the consensus view at the time. We have also included the boldest (most out-of-consensus) prognostication made by each pundit.

Pundit	# Calls	# Correct	$1 Yield	Boldest Call
Michael Tomasky	3	2	$2.07	Obama wins & Democrats win Senate & Republicans win House
Steven Rattner	2	2	$1.88	Obama wins (290+ electoral vote)
Eleanor Clift	5	4	$1.80	Senate: 54 Democrats
Chris Matthews	2	2	$1.67	Joe Manchin/Sherod Brown win
Michelle Goldberg	2	2	$1.59	Obama wins
Mark Shields	3	3	$1.50	Whoever wins Ohio wins the eleciton
Robert Reich	1	1	$1.27	Democrats win Senate
Chris Cillizza	6	4	$0.94	Senate: 51(D)-47(R)-2(I)
Howard Fineman	2	1	$0.85	Republicans pick up 8+ Senate seats
Clarence Page	2	1	$0.83	Obama wins (280)
Cokie Roberts	2	1	$0.83	Obama wins (294)
Matthew Dowd	2	1	$0.83	Obama wins (303)
Donna Brazile	2	1	$0.83	Obama wins (313)
Ezra Klein	2	1	$0.83	Obama wins (290 or 303)
Ronald Brownstein	2	1	$0.83	Obama wins (288)
Melissa Harris Perry	7	4	$0.81	Senate: 52(D)-46(R)-2(I)
Mort Zuckerman	5	3	$0.80	Obama's Hispanic support falls by 30 points
Juan Williams	8	4	$0.71	House: 231(R)-204(D)
Karl Rove	10	4	$0.64	Akin will lose by largest margin in recent history
Bill O'Reilly	7	3	$0.62	Romney wins New Hampshire
George Will	5	2	$0.59	Romney wins (321)
Jim Cramer	3	1	$0.56	Senate: 53(D), 45(R), 2(I)
Larry Sabato	3	1	$0.56	Senate: 53(D)-47(R)
Paul Begala	4	1	$0.42	Third-party candidate gets 7% of popular vote
Wayne Allyn Root	11	2	$0.22	Romney wins popular vote by 5-7 points
Dick Morris	17	2	$0.19	Romney wins by 4-8 percentage points
Pat Buchanan	7	1	$0.18	Romney wins all 11 states of the confederacy
Ann Coulter	2	0	$0.00	Romney wins (273+)
Bill Kristol	1	0	$0.00	Romney wins
Charles Krauthammer	1	0	$0.00	Romney wins
Glenn Beck	2	0	$0.00	Romney wins (321)
John Heilemann	1	0	$0.00	Election not declared on 11/7; Florida-style recounts
John McLaughlin	4	0	$0.00	Obama loses Wisconsin
Larry Kudlow	3	0	$0.00	Romney wins at least 52-48
Michael Barone	2	0	$0.00	Romney wins (315)
Newt Gingrich	4	0	$0.00	Romney: 53%+ of popular vote, 300+ electoral
Peggy Noonan	1	0	$0.00	Romney wins
Rich Lowry	2	0	$0.00	Akin loses, but by less than 5 points

Note: We are still waiting on a few more outcomes (e.g. final House tallies) and will update the data as these roll in.

While there were a handful of notable predictions that came true — which we will detail in an upcoming post — as a group the pundits performed woefully. Only 8 of the 38 pundits we tracked generated a yield higher than than $1.00. In other words, the majority of the pundits did worse than your “Average Joe.”

Average Pundit Performance (38 tracked)

Hit Rate (# correct calls divided by # calls made) = 41%

$1 Yield = $0.68

The rankings are largely a function of the pundit’s party affiliation, which is a sad commentary on the state of punditry. This is why keeping lifetime track records, as PunditTracker will do, will be critical as far as holding pundits accountable.

 

Coming up in the PT Election Series

Best & Worst Election Predictions

Worst Election Pundit

Nate Silver vs. Intrade

Updated Political Pundit Rankings

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