Predicting the results of upcoming 14th Malaysian General Election by Crowd Forecasting - First Forecast (BN: Parliamentary Seats = 100.9, No. of States to Hold = 7.2; PH: Parliamentary Seats = 121.1, No. of States to Hold = 5.8)

The upcoming 14th Malaysian General Election is widely regarded as the toughest Malaysian election since the country's founding. The election will be a showdown between current Prime Minister Najib Razak with his old mentor and the country’s most seasoned campaigner, Mahathir Mohamad.

People are looking for clues to predict the election results: from online polls, illegal bookies' odds to taxi drivers' hear-says. As unlikely as it seems, the wisdom of crowds does beat the wisdom of selected few elites in a certain field consistently.

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Wisdom of Crowds

Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton went to a country fair. Galton, a formidable scientist himself, asked people to guess the weight of an enormous ox. Most got it absurdly wrong, but the median guess of the 800-strong crowd was just 1 pound off the true weight of the ox, which for the record was 1198 pounds.

The forecasts of an individual may be horribly incorrect or they might be right on the dot, but the variability of individual performance makes it hard to know which individual to trust (think money managers). But if you aggregate the predictions of a crowd of people, you're much more likely to come up with a very strong forecast (think index funds). This is the rationale behind crowd forecasting.

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Using poll results on https://cforum3.cari.com.my/forum.php?mod=redirect&goto=findpost&ptid=4049600&pid=132277056, my first (very crude) forecasts on the main results regarding GE14 are as follow:

I) The number of parliamentary seats gained by Barisan Nasional:

Mean = 57.5
Geometric mean = 17.4973078
Harmonic Mean = 3.71797016
RMS = 76.0674043
RMC = 84.5223206

The crude poll results on this question were highly sentimentalized, therefore I decided to take 222 - (Forecasted No. of parliamentary seats gained by Pakatan Harapan, vide infra) = 100.9 as a crude estimate on the parliamentary seats gained by Barisan Nasional.

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II) The number of parliamentary seats gained by Pakatan Harapan:

Mean = 124.75
Geometric mean = 120.846538
Harmonic Mean = 117.700676
RMS = 129.564656
RMC = 135.30271

The poll results seemed reasonable with much less sentimental bias, hence I take the average of mean, geometric mean and harmonic mean = 121.1 as the forecasted no. of parliamentary seats to be gained by Pakatan Harapan

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III) The no. of state governments to be held by Barisan Nasional

Mean = 4.92
Geometric mean = 3.774607559
Harmonic Mean = 6.142837856
RMS = 6.115553941
RMC = 6.816166839

The poll results on Barisan Nasional, again, is highly sentimentalized. Therefore, I decided to take 13 - (Forecasted No. of state governments to be held by Pakatan Harapan, vide infra) = 7.2 as a crude estimate on the state governments to be held by Barisan Nasional.

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IV) The no. of state governments to be held by Pakatan Harapan

Mean = 6.333333333
Geometric mean = 5.556234037
Harmonic Mean = 5.530565924
RMS = 7.089376507
RMC = 7.747310895

The poll results seemed reasonable with much less sentimental bias, hence I take the average of mean, geometric mean and harmonic mean = 5.8 as the forecasted no. of state governments to be held by Pakatan Harapan.

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Conclusions

Below is a summary of my first (very crude) forecasts on the 14th Malaysian General Election main results based on crowd forecasting:

Barisan Nasional
Parliamentary Seats = 100.9
No. of States to Hold = 7.2

Pakatan Harapan
Parliamentary Seats = 121.1
No. of States to Hold = 5.8