Political Forecasting Quotes

I make a prediction here and now, and, my friends, I want you to watch the proceedings of Congress in these coming weeks of this extra session, or of the next regular session, to see whether I am right or not.

Adroit geo-strategists take new realities into account as they try to imagine how global politics will unfold. In the foreign policy business, however, inertia is a powerful force and 'adroit' a little-known concept.

I know a guy--a gambler who bets on politics. He made so much money betting on the Democrats that he became a Rep ublican.

The Secretary of State has always stood as much alone as the historian. Required to look far ahead and around him, he measures forces unknown to party managers, and has found Congress more or less hostile since Congress first sat.

Ronald Reagan knew audiences. It was a key element of his political genius. One of the things at which brilliant politicians are better than mediocre ones is smelling new public concerns over the horizon before they are picked up by polls - before the public even knows to call them 'issues' at all.

Being right too early is one of the most devastating things in politics

I'd rather be underestimated by the polltakers than by the voters.

Republican pundits always believe Republicans are going to win; Democratic pundits always believe Democrats are going to win.

The White House is saying Donald Trump has 'zero percent chance' of being elected. Isn't that a little high?

During the late war I had an infallible rule for deciding what Great Britain would do on every occasion. It was, to consider what they ought to do, and to take the reverse of that as what they would assuredly do, and I can say with truth that I was never deceived.

Unlike some, I don't claim to hold the mystic key to the future. But judging from past events, it seems to me that those who want to prophesy the imminent end of America's unique global role have a harder case to make than those who think we will limp on for a while, making a mess of things as usual.

There's a presumption that somehow you calculate beforehand whether something is going to be good politically or not. I simply don't.

At a time when politics has become an almost minute-by-minute spectacle, political thinkers who try to discern a sweeping interpretive pattern in current events or to predict where those events may be heading are likely to find their work evaluated in terms dismayingly like those applied to candidates and strategists. One wrong guess, or an abrupt change in the political weather, can make even an illuminating political book seem as irrelevant as a bungled campaign.

Never look past the next election, because if you do, you may not get past the next election.

In politics there is no use looking beyond the next fortnight.

A political genius is a man ... who has accidentally been on the winning side in the last campaign and is about to be on the losing side.

Any poll is a picture of an unfinished horse race except the Election Day polls.

The thing about politics is to plan 10 years ahead, and assume every year is your last.

I don't know if anybody can second-guess what they will do on Capitol Hill.

Punditry is like weather forecasting: the winds can shift without warning. I remember when nobody would bet a McDonald's Quarter Pounder that Bill Clinton would win the White House.

Electoral contests have nothing but polls, which is why people have grown so obsessed with them; we're desperate for an objective rendering of what is happening and what may happen.

I'm a bit of a political geek anyway, so you tend to write how you think the rhythms of an administration will go.

Political analysts tend to overinterpret the results of isolated elections.

They said a Republican could never win Michigan. I knew better, you knew better, and Donald Trump knew better. We all know - never underestimate Michigan.

I desire the undisguised opinion of some experienced and sagacious Pennsylvania politician, as to how the vote of that state, for governor, and president, is likely to go. In casting about for such a man, I have settled upon you; and I shall be much obliged if you will write me at Springfield, Illinois.