My dad correctly predicted the Iowa caucus for the Democratics. From some conversations from a student Obama activists, Obama probably won because he had more people on the ground -- a lot more people. The polls as of yesterday still had put Hilary ahead, and the truth is, she probably still is. Her supporters just didn't go and vote like Obama's did.
The caucus results are more important right now than the polls because you can win more easily simply through voter turnout. Once you hit November, more people get out anyway, hence your ability to win by getting people out that normally would not goes down. At that point, polls matter quite a bit.
I have my own theory on predicting what party will win the Whitehouse, it's this: whichever party is more unified at its beginning. Basically, which party has the smaller spread in the caucuses. Unfortunately, I quickly found out this is hard to empirically verify.
I started by looking at numbers for the Iowa caucus, but can only find them back to 1972 for Democratics, and 1976 for Republicans. The other problem is that whenever an incumbent ran he ran unopposed (at least for all practical purposes). Hence, the theory only works on years when there wasn't an incumbent.
Since 1976 (when both numbers from Iowa were available) there has only been three such elections: 1976 (I don't count Ford as a real incumbent), 1988, and 2000. This is not enough data.
Of course there are other ways to find numbers, but its hard to find good numbers. I don't know where I can find poll results for a similar time period and if I could I'd probably have to pay for them, and even then I would have to find a way to compensate for different polling methods and confidence intervals (e.g., statistical problems).
So in the mean time I might have to find a new theory, at least if I want it to be empirical. I might still be right on this one, but it doesn't do a lot of good without the data to predict.
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