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‘People should be making their contingency plans, like, right away’: America’s leading forecaster on the chances of a Trump win (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/news

55 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Just how useful is a forecast in a knife-edge election like this one, anyway? Even the insight that it could go either way is useful, Silver argues. “One potential advantage of having a forecast that says … it’s 50/50, is that people should be making their contingency plans, like, right away. It doesn’t mean you need [to stockpile] ammo and peanut butter” – that giggle again – “but it means, you know: what’s your strategy to protect American institutions in the event of a Trump second term? Or, in 2028 [or] 2032, a Trump-like Republican who maybe is more effective than Trump? If I were a liberal donor, for example, I would want to begin funding now … to protect institutions in that eventuality, instead of giving another $100,000 to Kamala Harris, who has more money than she needs.”

And while he fears a Trump win – “There were a lot of guardrails in place last time that prevented complete and utter disaster, but those guardrails have been weakened, right?” – he warns against painting it as an existential threat to democracy, at least as a political strategy. “The notion of basically holding voters hostage in that sense is very unappealing … Biden was like: ‘OK, sure, I may be running for president until I’m 86 and can barely form a complete sentence, but if you don’t vote for me, the country gets it’ – that’s a very unappealing message to swing voters … whereas Harris brings more joyfulness and is obviously a very talented woman”. He worries, though, that she has “retained too many of the Biden people who thought it was a good idea to keep running [him]. I guess she kind of had to.”

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[–] PugJesus 57 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Nate Silver isn't worth listening to.

That being said, I have my contingency plans laid out.

[–] FlyingSquid 84 points 3 months ago (1 children)

There's also this:

instead of giving another $100,000 to Kamala Harris, who has more money than she needs.

Nate Silver knows how elections work. He knows there is no such thing as more money than you need in a presidential campaign. That's an astoundingly dishonest thing to say from someone like him.

[–] apfelwoiSchoppen 41 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I'll never trust that degenerate grifter anyways. When I heard he was so cocksure of his stats knowledge that he ~~lost~~ spent 10k a day on gambling, that's all I needed to never listen to him again.

At the end of the day, his prognostications are a very expensive coin flip.

Edit: see the strikethrough above.

[–] FlyingSquid 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I didn't hear the gambling thing about him but at this point, I'm not surprised.

[–] apfelwoiSchoppen 32 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah he's got a new book out which is very Tim Ferris adjacent talking about "professional risk takers" and how they risk it all to win big in their fields. Of course he talks about crypto and AI. He's a stooge.

His books blurb:

These professional risk-takers—poker players and hedge fund managers, crypto true believers and blue-chip art collectors—can teach us much about navigating the uncertainty of the twenty-first century. By immersing himself in the worlds of Doyle Brunson, Peter Thiel, Sam Bankman-Fried, Sam Altman, and many others, Silver offers insight into a range of issues that affect us all, from the frontiers of finance to the future of AI.

I don't have blue sky, but thought this thread was illustrative of the book: https://bsky.app/profile/davekarpf.bsky.social/post/3kzwvdiolld2a

[–] FlyingSquid 34 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Oh god, it's like a curated "people you should never listen to" list.

[–] Boozilla 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

On top of all this interesting and problematic stuff about Silver himself, I think polls are very unreliable here in the post-truth world. Playing spreadsheet games with multiple polls might be marginally better. But IMO the whole thing suffers from GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). People lie to pollsters for myriad reasons. And that's just the small population of people they can even get a response from.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

Also a lot of people just dont do polls, I have been practically spammed by polsters for the last few months via text and I shall continue to ignore them.

[–] themeatbridge 28 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Silver is using poll numbers from before the debate. It's not worthless, but it's outdated information.

But I want Democrats feeling the pressure and vote like Democracy depends on it, so I'm happy if he keeps fluffing that pillow.

[–] Webster 2 points 3 months ago

His model actually accounts for whether polls were taken before or after an event, and raises and lowers their impact and error margin based on that. Right up to the debate, his model was giving Kamala a <30% chance and it's only the inclusion of new polls since the debate that have moved her to 50%.