USA Today (Oct. 18) -- How many times have you opened Facebook or Twitter, saw a post about a presidential candidate leading the polls and had whiplash because 12 other polls say something different? Election Analytics, run by computer science students at Illinois predicts election winners through combining multiple polls. According to the project’s website, the forecasts work by combining current polling data and results from the last presidential election to construct voter turnout models. By some measures, the Illinois website’s ability to predict elections accurately actually equals or beats that of other forecasting experts, like Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com. Also: WILL AM (Oct. 19), Chicago Inno (Oct. 10), Daily Illini (Oct. 10), News-Gazette (Oct. 18), ASEE FirstBell (Oct. 20).
Related story: Fox News (Champaign, Oct. 28) -- Analytics say Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is holding a commanding lead in the Electoral College over Republican nominee Donald Trump. A University of Illinois professor who developed a non-partisan website to crunch poll numbers, said it is 329 electoral votes to 208, in favor of Clinton.