2016 Postmortem
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Can someone please tell me what is going on with Nate silver? He's got North Carolina Florida and Nevada pink now. Every report I've heard from early voting in Nevada suggest that Hillary has a huge firewall there. In fact I haven't seen any recent polls from Nevada that Silver should be adding into his aggregate. Can someone please explain what's going on with him?
Democat
(11,617 posts)Again?
cally
(21,594 posts)Im absolutely freaked by any poll that shows the race tightening. I have been here a long time
Democat
(11,617 posts)There are plenty of longtime DU members posting the same thing on other threads who can make a list, it's not difficult.
Letting them take over undermines the purpose of DU.
kevin881
(465 posts)Demsrule86
(68,578 posts)sort of post.
I've also been registered for over 10 years. I was here for the last several elections cycles, so I take exception to you inferring that I am a troll. That's just absurd. I don't post a lot but have made a few posts recently. I don't see why you just can't answer the question instead of accusing me of being a Republican.
BadDog40
(273 posts)and I've been registered 8 years.
Divine Discontent
(21,056 posts)would jump on anything you said that COULD (doesn't mean you meant it the way they twisted it) be used as a comment to imply you were against Dems or their view they were trying to push relentlessly in posts to anyone's reply that stated a differing viewpoint. Basically, they were being thread bullies.
You just learn to blow them off as people who are attached to their keyboards and are hypersensitive. No need to argue (most of the time) and upset yourself, or get them even more disturbed over nothing important that anyone will remember in a month, or even a few days!
Now, I just let it rip. I know who I am. I know my strong core liberal beliefs. All of us need to not worry about one or two folks griping. Just ignore them. There's nothing they can do to you if you're being a typical DUer just asking questions that interest you, or focusing on topics you want to discuss. Real trolls have a very distinct pattern, and people who know (like former mods who saw thousands of alerts), know when there's really one in the midst...
radius777
(3,635 posts)If you do a quick search of his/her posts (goto the search box and type in "Democat" you'll see that this person constantly is attacking other board members for being trolls.
Now, it is true that there are alot of trolls on the various message boards at this time of year, especially since the nominee is a Clinton, but many of the trolls are also high-count posters (i.e. left-wingers who hate the Clintons).
IOW, nobody should assume anyone is a troll, and if one has doubts, just do a search - it will be obvious.
kevin881
(465 posts)But he/she didn't reply.
kevin881
(465 posts)I would post more if "more active" members (not all, obv) didn't call people out for benign questions and accuse them of being trolls.
kstewart33
(6,551 posts)But I do wish that all true DUers would stop posting 'WTF 538' threads because they are not helpful.
We are Democrats. We worry. IMHO, it's in our DNA. So the last thing that our collective psychological wellbeing needs is more hand wringing about 538 or any poll that goes against the grain of what we are otherwise seeing.
I've stopped checking 538 and I am a Nate Silver fan. It just doesn't do me any good.
Let's stay positive, hope for the best, and wait for Tuesday.
Joe941
(2,848 posts)I'd just stay away altogether.
obamanut2012
(26,079 posts)And tells me his methodology has some possibly serious flaws.
Dem2
(8,168 posts)I don't know what to say. One of the other aggregators was wondering if he was double-counting polls (saw the tweet somewhere earlier.)
what he's doing, but whatever it is, it's killing me.
budkin
(6,703 posts)Also it accounts for more uncertainty.
Grey Lemercier
(1,429 posts)He is literally down to the outcome flipping to a Trump win if any, just one, of the following six states flip to the shitgibbon: CO, MI, WI, PA, NH, VA
I think he is being far, FAR too kind to Trump's chances.
jamese777
(546 posts)The CNN poll for Nevada through Nov. 1 has Trump up by 6 and the Survey Monkey poll through Nov 2 has Trump up by 1. The way Silver adjusts the polls based on their historical bias, Trump is leading in 6 Nevada polls and Clinton is leading in 3 polls with 1 poll tied.
If you look at his predictions for the individual states that Clinton needs to reach 270 Electoral votes, its still looking good for her to win a very close election:
HI, WA, OR, CA, NM, CO, IL, MN, WI, MI, PA, NY, VT, NH, ME, MA, RI, CT, NJ, DE, MD, VA & DC are what she needs to be at 273. Any other states, like FL, NC & NV would be gravy.
radius777
(3,635 posts)from looking at the early voting, the hispanic vote is being underestimated according to most models.
Other reports from other states in the past few days have also suggestd this, that polling is underestimating the hispanic vote, the female vote, and the Repub crossover vote - which could indicate a comfortable Hillary win if not a landslide.
Of course, GOTV, and take nothing for granted, but Nate Silver imo has lost alot of credibility in this election, as his numbers move around too much, unlike someone like Sam Wang, Nate Cohn and many other prediction guys whose numbers have been much more steady.
sunonmars
(8,656 posts)duffyduff
(3,251 posts)Hillary has been ahead for WEEKS.
JHan
(10,173 posts)His model is a mess - but next week we'll know for sure.
Divine Discontent
(21,056 posts)I think he'll try and adjust strongly back to Clinton if the final polls in a day or Monday show her holding a 5 point national lead.
kevin881
(465 posts)Response to kevin881 (Reply #19)
Name removed Message auto-removed
DLCWIdem
(1,580 posts)sunonmars
(8,656 posts)pat_k
(9,313 posts)The early vote totals favor registered Republicans. If "turnout" in early voting to date is used to project "turnout" going forward, more Repubs will turn out then Dems.
Now, all those Repubs aren't necessarily supporting Trump. To evaluate meaning of higher Repub turnout to results, need to know the portion of Dems who say hey are supporting someone other than Clinton, and the portion of Repubs who say they are supporting someone other than Trump.
I assume the former is smaller than the latter, and so would offset a higher registered Repub turnout, but haven't seen (or looked for) a poll that would provide this info. And of course, need to know how "no party" registration voters (aka independents), or other party registration voters are breaking.
I'm not saying he's right, but it is not unreasonable at this point to predict a higher Repub turnout. The meaning of that is unclear me. And the recent poll posted is close.
Persondem
(1,936 posts)Recently Trump has been doing better in polls so his numbers get inflated even more. Seems like the trend though is swinging back in Clinton's favor. I think all the other predictors still have Clinton's chances at 90% and better even with the FBI nonsense.
http://election.princeton.edu/category/2016-election/
jcgoldie
(11,631 posts)She's on the upswing again. I've defended 538 repeatedly here because the criticisms seem too reminiscent of 2012 Romney folks clamoring about "unskewing polls"... but the volatility of the model he's using now just really doesn't seem very useful for a predictive model.
MSMITH33156
(879 posts)Most are much more bullish on Hillary. This is the NY TIMES model which also has links to several other models.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential-polls-forecast.html
First, these are all statistical models based on assumptions and poll data. So no one is doing anything. They developed models, and now it's just math. They input poll numbers, and then run simulations on it (usually 10,000) where they simulate the election. The percentages are the number of times each state went to a candidate in those simulations, with the percentage chance of winning overall being the number of times a candidate eclipsed 270 Electoral Votes in those simulations.
The reason that is important is these are assumptions made months ago. No one is intentionally doing anything from a modeling standpoint to get clicks. Now, the polls might be and these models rely on polls, so you could have the same effect, but it's not Nate Silver or anyone else on the statistical modeling side doing it.
Now, why is Nate Silver's model showing a closer race? He's explained this several times but he much more closely correlates the states, where other models do so less. What does that mean? Here's a dumb/overly simplistic example....
Let's say the election comes down to Hillary needing to win either Ohio or Pennsylvania, and your percentages of Hillary winning the states are 50% in Ohio and 75% in Pennsylvania. And she only needs to win one.
Now, if you don't correlate the states at all and treat voting in each state as independent events, the chances that Hillary loses both states (meaning Trump wins) is 12.5%, so her win percentage would be 87.5%.
But, if you say the states are correlated, and that Ohio is basically a redder, more Republican version of Pennsylvania, meaning that if Hillary loses Pennsylvania, there is no way she is going to win Ohio, than the Pennsylvania percentage is really the only relevant one, so if Trump wins Pennsylvania (25%) then he also wins Ohio (because the universe where Pennsylvania goes red and Ohio blue does not exist) and the presidency, so that percentage is 25% and Hillary's win percentage is 75%.
The real models are SIGNIFICANTLY more complex than that, but that example is a simply way of looking at how 2 models can look at identical data and come up with pretty different percentages.
It's also why the 538 model is "more aggressive." If you highly correlate states, a bad poll in one state makes the win percentage go down in other states, and vice versa. Meaning you will see percentages drop and rise much more rapidly. If Hillary starts doing better in Ohio polling, for example, then her Pennsylvania percentage goes up without even waiting for a Pennsylvania poll. Most of the other models also have some form of correlation, but a much weaker relationship so you just don't see the big moves, and because there is less uncertainty when you have less correlation, her win percentage is much higher.
Finally, the whole map thing is misleading. For example, that NY Times link I posted has all the models with their state percentage, but if it is under 65% win for both candidates, they color it yellow, which is more indicative of toss-up. 538 uses a map and colors it shades depending on strength. The problem with that is that when states hover near 50% (which he currently has NC, FL and NV at), then it is easy for it to change colors and look like a swing when nothing actually changed, just because visually, it's striking. For example, right now, FL is 50.4% Trump in that model, but if they re-ran the simulators, out of 10,000, Hillary might win slightly more than 50, and then it would change colors, even without a data change.
radius777
(3,635 posts)if the model is too aggressive (with state correlations), you will get garbage swings, i.e. too much volatility.
IMO, 538 intentionally does it this way to generate clicks, it is a media company after all, and if Silver's model was steady and academic (like Sam Wang's or Larry Sabato's) then 538 wouldn't be the media darling it is (nothing to talk about).
left-of-center2012
(34,195 posts)The Nevada polls are under-counting the Hispanic vote, which should give me weight to Clinton.
regnaD kciN
(26,044 posts)
either 538 is right, or the various other modeling organizations (PEC, Upshot, HuffPost, DKos, all of which have Clinton's chances between 85%-99%) are right. What are the odds all four of those are wrong, and 538 alone right?
budkin
(6,703 posts)Because he's so paranoid about underestimating Trump