Nate Silver has 7 in 8 chance Dems take the house

[OnlinePoker]

Of course, he also had Hillary in a landslide, but that scummy election proved how hard these things are to predict now.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2018-midterm-election-forecast/house/

[cos dem]

1. Actually, I think he only had Clinton at 60%

[OnlinePoker]

3. 71.4 to 28.6

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/

[Blue_true]

7. That is not a landslide.

Clinton had a 3 or 4 chance of winning. 7 of 8 is a higher odd, 87.5%.

[OilemFirchen]

14. Those are odds on a single race.

From your link: Popular vote: Clinton 48.5%, Trump 44.9%.

Actual results: Clinton 48.2%, Trump 46.1%.

That's pretty damned accurate.

To make an adequate comparison, you'd have to look at the polling average for each race.

[jcgoldie]

26. And to Silver's credit... that was 25 points less than any other poll analysts had it

... including Wang who had her at 99.99%. Silver took a lot of grief for being to conservative leading up to election day because his model kept that percentage that low relatively speaking.

[Loki Liesmith]

30. Those are probabilities

Should I explain how they work? A 1/3 chance Trump would win is not indicative of a Hillary landslide.

[dubyadiprecession]

2. If Nate gets this election wrong...

His polling firm is toast!

[USALiberal]

6. He was not wrong in 2016! Nt

[Adrahil]

9. He doesn't run a polling firm.

Last edited Mon Nov 5, 2018, 06:51 PM - Edit history (1)

He has a model that takes in OTHER peoples' polling data and produces an aggregate result.

[Awsi Dooger]

13. If Nate got 2016 "right" he should have been booted out of his profession

There is no way a compiler could have had Trump ahead and likely to win, electorally or otherwise.

It is astonishing that people don't grasp that.

Nate summarized 2016 almost to perfection in the late going...Hillary lead but fragile and not nearly as lopsided as Obama in 2012 despite similar national margins. Nate said there were not only a high number of undecideds but if there was a polling error it would likely be in the same direction in key states and could push Trump over the top if the polling error was in his favor.

I would be going nuts if I were Nate Silver. He got everything correct while nutcases like Sam Wang were asserting 99.9%. Yet somehow the conventional wisdom goofs prefer to believe Nate Silver flubbed 2016.

[StevieM]

22. James Comey is the one who flubbed 2016. (eom)

[Awsi Dooger]

25. I agree

Comey dropped Hillary from 80-85% likely to 65-72% likely, and that is an entirely different range of probability.

We could have withstood poor turnout in key states as long as Comey hadn't screwed up the most important variable...preference

[cos dem]

34. And don't forget, dumbass won by essentially a fluke.

Razor thin margins in 3 key states gave him the EV. Clinton actually did win the popular vote in a landslide.
Nate's models try to predict the probability of a given outcome, by testing multiple different scenarios to see which ones are most likely. The EV scenario that actually won it for dumbass was in the mix, and he even pointed out it was higher than it probably should be, given we like to think of ourselves as a democracy.

I'd say his track record is excellent. Predicting 70/30 probability of a Clinton win is not getting it wrong. It says that, given multiple universes with the same conditions, Clinton should win 70% of the time, and dumbass 30%. We're just the unlucky ones to live in one of the 30% shithole universes.

[Loki Liesmith]

31. Nate doesn't have a polling firm

He is not a pollster.

[Me.]

4. Well To Be Fair, She Did Have The Votes

[Blue_true]

8. I think the busters and other idiots tripped her up.

There was also a large amount of liberal mysogony going on (even some liberal don't accept a woman as the most powerful person in the world). Those misguided liberal forces cost her in key states that she just lost, the Russians and Comey's ill timed email review notification, created last week headwinds that were just too strong for Hillary to overcome.

[Me.]

11. Also

Every time I hear that he was the lesser of 2 evils, as I heard today, I want to scream. And yes, misogyny. It is in the true tradition of declaring a strong woman a witch.

[Small-Axe]

17. "Corporate Whore"

That's the insult I continue to hear from the regressives who enabled Trump's win.

Lot's of misogyny and heavy doses of demagoguery.

Damn shame.

[Me.]

18. THIS

[StevieM]

21. The fake email scandal could never have taken root to nearly that degree if it was used against

a male candidate.

[Me.]

24. So True

They're yawning right through his phone scandal and giving away secrets in the Oval to his comrades.

[StevieM]

20. Comey was more important than any of those factors. He dominated that election from start to finish.

eom

[Baitball Blogger]

5. I've been waiting for his forecast to improve with the Senate statistics.

[Awsi Dooger]

28. Not going to happen

The senate remains a longshot. Don't let posters here pretend otherwise. There is one high profile poster here now touting senate chances who likewise in the final days of 2016 was dismissing any tight polls and insisting Hillary was actually ahead by at least 4-6.

I'm not saying there isn't some chance in the senate. 538 has bumped from 15% up to roughly 19% in recent days. That's where other models have been all along. Basically it requires a sweep of many razor tight races.

[Awsi Dooger]

29. Double post

Sorry...I received an error message as if the first one didn't go through

[Baitball Blogger]

33. No prob. Thanks for the info.

Still waiting. Hopeful, but not irrational.

[exboyfil]

10. I remember how many people road Nate Silver

about the 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 chance that Trump would win. Almost everyone else had Clinton in the 90s to win.

I have a tendency to trust Silver a little more than the others.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/sam-wang-princeton-election-consortium-poll-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-victory-a7399671.html

https://www.vox.com/2016/11/3/13147678/nate-silver-fivethirtyeight-trump-forecast

[maxsolomon]

12. I could give a fuck

I don't want to hear anything but the end results, and I'm not 100% sure I want to hear them either.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

15. The fact you use the terrm "landslide" in reference to Silver's 2016 polling...

... shows your lack of understanding what he does. You are not the only one.

It was never going to be a landslide. The polls in the battleground states were slim - and within the margin of error in some cases.

Per Silver, Trump had a 1 in 4 chance of winning.

[Awsi Dooger]

16. It will be interesting to see how close 538 comes to the House generic margin

Currently Nate Silver has it at 8.5% gap -- 50.6 to 42.1 -- while Real Clear politics is at Democrats +7.3.

The difference is adjustments. Nate amends polls based on the tendencies of the firm while RCP throws them up at face value. It can be tricky when dealing with adjustments. For example, 538 adjusts the Rasmussen generic ballot margin 3 points toward Democrats while the Trump approval adjustment with Rasmussen is 5 or 6 points lower. I think Nate would concede his generic model is in its infancy, and likewise the House and senate and governorship models. The models he is using now will be tinkered with prior to 2020.

The House generic polling hasn't been particularly accurate. The average error on RCP beginning in 2002 is 2.5%. In 2010 RCP badly overstated the GOP margin, finalizing at +9.4 when it ended up +6.8. It's easy to see what happened: All the double digit polls that don't resemble the real world shoved the number up to 9.4 in the final weeks. There were contributions from Rasmussen and others in the 10-15 range. Imagine how bad it would have been at +9.4, when Republicans managed +63 seats even with +6.8?

At least we are polling the generic ballot frequently by multiple companies as opposed to relying on polling in individual House districts, which are sporadic and unreliable to say the least. Generic margin is easily the greatest indicator, especially if the polling improves to determine what will play out. The 1994 red wave was a surprise largely because generic polling wasn't emphasized and the handful of polls that were done did not catch the Republican margin. I remember some polls a week or two out insisting that Democrats led. Only Gallup disagreed but they had it closer to even and not the +7.1 margin that played out, equating to 54 seats lost.

[crosinski]

19. As far over that half way point as we can push it!

And a good healthy margin so we can keep it for a while this time!

[JonLP24]

23. CNN says a GOP source says Trump's racist immigration rhetoric may have cost them election

I'm starting to feel better. I was getting worried last week with all the tied polls.

[marylandblue]

27. Even Republicans thought they would lose in 2016

Don't take anything for granted.

[Awsi Dooger]

32. Same with me

Independents were going the wrong way until the past 10 days or so. Luckily Trump kept talking. Never prevent a Republican from sounding like a Republican.

My belief is everything tends to drift back to the beginning. I think that largely happened in 2016 also. Late undecideds who always weren't thrilled with Hillary kept her in mind and considered voting for her, but retreated to their early instincts and went against her, even if that meant aligning with Donald Trump.

But that type quickly reversed course early in 2017 and has remained on our side