The Morgan poll, which has a poor recent record of predicting federal elections, showed Labor ahead with 53% on the weekend of 18-19 September.

The test was somewhat less successful in predicting elections for the House of Representatives, where 66.8 percent of the candidates who were considered more competent won.

Her father, Ray Fair, invented a semi-famous economic formula that has an impressive track record of predicting presidential elections.

The polls have been rated highly by Fivethirtyeight.com for accuracy in predicting primary and general elections.

For those who make their living predicting elections, it was a nail-biting night.

The speculators in the Iowa market have historically been more accurate than polls at predicting presidential elections, and they've been good leading indicators this year.

But after the failure of polls to fully predict elections in East Germany or Nicaragua, people here are reluctant to guess at the outcome.

It is common for political scientists to attempt to predict elections via Political Forecasting methods.

"I shouldn't be predicting French elections," Mr. Obama said after their meeting.

From 1960 to 1980, he helped design the polls that the NBC television network used to predict and analyze elections.