Psychologists pulled off what political pundits and polls did not do: predict the 2024 presidential election winner.
Earlier than a single poll was solid in 2024, researchers on the College of Pennsylvania say they already predicted Donald Trump because the winner by monitoring how optimistically every candidate defined dangerous information.
Whereas Trump’s tone grew more and more upbeat within the closing weeks of the marketing campaign, Kamala Harris’s stayed flat. That shift accurately forecast not simply that Trump would win, however by how a lot, in response to a brand new research from Penn’s Constructive Psychology Middle.
“Starting around October 10 or so, Trump started to get significantly more optimistic,” Martin Seligman, the research’s co-author and a professor of psychology at Penn, instructed The Publish. “By the 27th, it was a very large difference between Harris and Trump.”
The staff analyzed 1,389 explanations of adverse occasions — comparable to conflict, crime, or financial hardship — from each candidates. Their dataset drew from speeches, interviews, and their solely presidential debate, all delivered between early September and October 27.
Every rationalization was scored utilizing the CAVE methodology, or Content material Evaluation of Verbatim Explanations, a constructive psychology method that analyzes how folks clarify occasions in speech or writing. Researchers used it to measure optimism by assessing whether or not causes had been described as short-term, particular, and fixable.
The narrower and solvable the trigger, the extra “optimistic” the candidate’s message.
Trump referenced greater than 1,000 adverse points or occasions — over 4 occasions the quantity cited by Harris — typically blaming exterior forces whereas insisting the issues had been fixable, normally by himself, the research discovered.
Harris, in contrast, described deep, lasting threats with little sense of decision, Seligman mentioned.
To see whether or not another speech patterns might have predicted the outcomes, the researchers additionally checked out emotional tone, give attention to previous vs. future and language about management or duty. None of them tracked with the result. Optimism stood alone.
Seligman’s earlier analysis discovered that extra optimism predicted the winner in 9 out of the ten elections between 1948 and 1984.
After that, he suggested each political events on utilizing optimism of their campaigns. However when candidates started scripting faux optimism, he shelved the tactic.
He solely revived it this cycle as a result of Trump’s off-the-cuff model allowed for real-time evaluation.
The researchers encrypted their prediction earlier than Election Day and shared it with 4 exterior verifiers, together with Wall Avenue Journal reporters Lara Seligman — daughter of Martin Seligman — and Al Hunt, College of Washington political scientist Dan Chirot, and Hope Faculty psychologist Dave Myers, earlier than publishing the outcomes after the race.
“We’re the only people who predicted a Trump election, as far as I know,” Seligman mentioned.
A separate forecasting mannequin, based mostly on financial situations and presidential approval scores, was developed by Cornell College professor Peter Enns and in addition accurately predicted Trump’s win in all 50 states.
The findings recommend voters reply extra favorably to optimistic candidates who current issues as fixable quite than systemic — and that Trump’s tendency to “go off script” gave researchers an genuine glimpse of his true mindset, Seligman mentioned.
“When optimism is genuine, I think there’s a lot of reason to believe that the American public wants optimism and wants hope,” he mentioned. “It speaks to the general optimistic slant of American history.”
