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Nate Silver issues "good news" for Harris on electoral college chances
(www.newsweek.com)
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this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024
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So the model image you posted above there says it's more likely that Trump wins the election than it is flipping two heads in a row while flipping a coin. This is saying it's less likely for Trump to win than Hillary to win, but something that could fairly easily happen still. These aren't poll numbers, where 70-30 would be a massive blow out. This is a 30% chance of winning for Trump, closer to a coin flip than a sure thing.
A lot of other models were saying something ridiculous like Clinton had 95% chance to win or something. Nate Silver's model seems better than others based on this, if anything.
The constant attacks on how 538's model performed in 2016 says more about statistics literacy than it does about the model.
There is plenty to criticize Nate Silver for. Take your pick. Personally, the political nihilism that's increasingly flirted with "anti-woke" sentiment is good enough for me. Some people might prefer taking issue with the degenerate gambling.
But his models, historically, have performed relatively well if you understand that they're models and not absolute predictors.
People forget that Clinton lost because of Comey's October revelation that the FBI was reopening the investigation into her emails.
I was assured for a solid 7 years that it was solely the fault of everyone who was even the slightest bit disappointed about the primaries.
I agree with your take on the old 538 model, but if you read Nate’s new substack it become pretty clear that he’s been ‘captured’. Almost all of his post seem to fairly anti-Harris in their biases and it feels like all of his writings are really meant for one person, that person being the owner of Polymarket who he has a very large consulting contract. What these biases are doing to the Model I don’t know but the new model at 538 which was built from the ground up by other statisticians consistently trends about 10-20% higher odds for Harris taking the election.
Oh, I don't disagree at all.
Like I said, Nate's definitely increasingly treaded into questionable territory in the past few years and I don't have a sense for whether it's impacted the model since I've honestly not been paying close attention to the horse race this cycle.
I was mostly pointing out that while the dude has almost always been a bad take generator, the 2016 model very arguably outperformed its contemporaries despite the popular view that they blew it. I wouldn't be shocked if Nate's sponsors and general ideological drift has impacted the model this cycle (*especially given Peter Thiel's involvement), but I don't have a strong sense for whether that's the case either. I also wouldn't be particularly surprised if he sufficiently separated the stats from the dumb ideas to produce a reasonable model either. I just don't have enough info to have formed an opinion there.
Looking at the historical election wins where president with lower popular vote won, trump clearly is outlier and either had outrageous luck (I doubt it) or help to push things just enough to get enough EC votes.
Of course this help, that he got in 2016 he still is getting right now so we should still assume odds will be in his favor and make won't get suspended and vote (the more people vote, the harder is to artificially affect the results).
Is this from FiveThirtyEight or Nate Silver?
I think Silver. Nate left FiveThirtyEight and now the site doesn't even publish any kind of predictive model.
When did Nate Leave 538? Screenshot was from before the 2016 election.
Nate left 538 about a year ago. He now publishes his own SubStack for subscription and does a lot of consulting, notably including a hefty contract with Peter Theil the well know billionaire and right wing power broker who pushed JD Vance to be the Vice Presidential candidate for Trump
I think it's more than ABC News fired Nate and most people involved with FiveThirtyEight. Happened awhile ago, at least a year or two ago.
I looked it up. Looks like he were with 538 from 2008-2023.
So to answer your original question, “It’s from 538 while Nate was still there” but I couldn’t say how directly involved he was with the models that backed this image from 2016. My assumption is that he would have been fairly deeply involved in the models though.
He founded 538, and was the primary person behind the models while he was there. Got passed around between the New York Times and ESPN and ABC.
He took the model with him when he left.
As another poster mentions, there is plenty to criticize him over. I'm not even sure about the model anymore, but it's not totally out of line from other models, either.