Nate Silver in September gave GOP donors a closed-door presentation.

[pnwmom]

Hmmm . . . I wonder if this has anything to do with his predictions being consistently lower than the other aggregators?

The NYTimes lists the predictions of multiple aggregators, including Silver, who gives Hillary a 65% chance of winning the nomination; the NYTimes, the next lowest prediction at 85%; and Professor Sam Wang of Princeton who, based on state polls, gives Hillary a 99% chance of winning. These multiple results and others are listed about halfway down the page on the first link, below.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/upshot/presidential-polls-forecast.html

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/295469-nate-silver-gives-gop-donors-a-closed-door-presentation

Nate Silver, the ESPN journalist behind the FiveThirtyEight website, gave a presentation on the 2016 battleground map to a group of powerful Republican donors in Manhattan last week.

Silver was paid to give the presentation by the American Opportunity Alliance, a group led by some of the biggest GOP donors in the country, including hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer and the Ricketts family, which owns the Chicago Cubs.

Silver’s closed-door session was part of a two-day confab, held Sept. 7–8 at Le Bernardin Prive, a private dining room inside a New York City restaurant run by celebrity chef Eric Ripert.

Upward of three dozen top donors attended the gathering, along with senior Republican Party officials and strategists. Silver’s presentation on Wednesday afternoon was a highlight of the two-day event, people at the event said.

SNIP

[dogindia]

2. not good. not good

sad if Silver has sold out. There are enough good polls that can counter him is true. Pathetic if so.

[brooklynite]

3. Answer: no

He has a model; it's been fairly accurate. The fact that he was paid to give an update is meaningless.

[pnwmom]

4. Sam Wang says it's too volatile and that it "double-counts" by the way

it includes both state and national polls. He prefers the NYTimes Upshot for national polls.

election.princeton.edu

If you want an estimate that uses national polls, see The Upshot. I’m a little concerned that FiveThirtyEight’s code double-counts (i.e. overcounts) the swings in national and state polls. They’ve been a bit underconfident and volatile.

[geek tragedy]

5. noisy, volatile model means more clicks nt

[radius777]

16. exactly, 538 is a media company,

i don't think Silver is partisan or bad in any way, but the media (of which he has become a major figure in now) wants a horserace. Many polling companies also are like this, drop out outlier polls to get conversation going, create horserace, etc.

A boring and stable prediction (i.e. Wang, Sabato, Cook) doesn't get people talking.

If the media told the truth about Comey's crap, that there really is nothing there, mainly about Weiner, etc, and the real story is a coup d'etat being attempted by the FBI to throw the election to Trump, he would be behind by 15 points by now and there would be nothing to watch, hence no ratings, no profits.

[geek tragedy]

17. it also fails to account for early votes.

No one thinks Trump is winning NV. No one.

But the polls indicate Trump has a chance there.

Silver's model isn't all that fantastic--pretty much averages the polls.

[bushisanidiot]

21. It could be that he needs to tweek his model. Outlier polls seem to get way too much influence.

Maybe he needs to adjust his ratings and weights.

[forjusticethunders]

6. Remember, the Shillver special sauce is nothing more than GIGO.

Just tweak the way you weigh the garbage and the nongarbage* and you can get whatever horse(shit)race you want.

*all public polls are "garbage" to an extent, even the best ones, due to undercounting POCs, not being able to account for GOP/evangelical women too scared to poll Hillary at the dinner table but not to vote her in secret, and the lack of targeted voter data compared to internal polling

[hack89]

7. He only makes big money if he is right

Why would he throw away his future like you are suggesting?

[sunonmars]

9. He got lucky once and most of his mojo is guesswork.

[hack89]

13. He has eight years of being right

His success rate is extremely high, especially in presidential elections. Don't know where you got tthis "lucky once" idea from.

[femmedem]

11. Nate Silver absolutely does not support Trump; called his campaign profoundly evil.

"One theme of this election in general is that it might advance a lot of conversations but it also proves how far society has to go. And that’s putting it politely. I’m not sure what words to use, but there’s something profoundly evil about the Trump campaign at this point, and the people he attracts to it. And I think that’s the right word to use."

From an October 14 podcast.

[budkin]

20. Who cares, they paid him for the presentation

Because they got burned in 2012

[NCTraveler]

23. Really makes sense.

Should have done it years ago. Not last month.

[NCTraveler]

22. Does Nate make his models public information? Nt