Dunwoody High School seniors Sam Mahle and Noah Covey put their heads together to create 50Fifty, a website that covers political races at all levels of government and makes election predictions.
“We also hope that 50Fifty will enable citizens who wish to get involved in activism to find the races in their states and other states where they can make the greatest impact,” said Covey.
The predictions for the 2018 midterms cover every national election, most statewide executive elections, and predictions for state senators and representatives.
A comprehensive forecast for every state senate and house seat in a general election has never been compiled before 50Fifty.
“We think it's important to help voters understand and learn more about the elections near them,” added Mahle.
50Fifty uses a machine learning model to generate its forecasts.
The model is trained against data going back nearly two decades, including past results, fundraising, incumbency, generic ballot, and demographics.
Users are able to easily find predictions for the elections on the ballot in their residential district on the “For You” page.
50Fifty also features nonpartisan stories by local writers analyzing specific elections, legislative bodies, and patterns in the data.
The idea for 50Fifty was originally conceived by Mahle, who is primarily working on designing the machine learning model.
Covey is spearheading the website design and development for the project.
They collaborated on the project for months prior to release.
