this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
47 points (79.0% liked)

politics

19232 readers
3964 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

On average, the D less R margin in the early vote mispredicted the final Clinton/Trump margin by 14 points! Pollsters get yelled at when their polls are off by even 3 points, and anything more than that is considered an absolute disaster. Imagine if a poll was off by 14 points: no one would ever listen to it again! And yet we get the same frankly amateurish analysis of the early vote in every election.

all 19 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] NineMileTower 23 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You mean the guy that profits off it being a close race wants me to think it's a close race?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What an odd take, and so orthogonal to what the article was about.

[–] NineMileTower 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don't know what this has to do with birds.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That would be "ornithological" :)

[–] NineMileTower 7 points 1 month ago

No, that's the tooth doctor.

[–] foggy 18 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Nate silver,

A man who gained his fame through truly superhuman statistical analyzes of sports events,

For some fucking reason, decided to go balls deep into politics and has been an absolute utter fucking failure ever since. 0% accuracy.

I have absolutely no interest in hearing anything this dipshit has to say about politics.

Give me a prediction on next year's March madness brackets, Nate. Stay in your fucking lane. Politics != Sports.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

2008

Silver's final 2008 presidential election forecast accurately predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, missing only the prediction for Indiana.

2010

His 2010 congressional mid-term predictions were not as accurate as those made in 2008, but were still within the reported confidence interval. Silver predicted a Republican pickup of 54 seats in the House of Representatives; the GOP won 63 seats. Of the 37 gubernatorial races, FiveThirtyEight correctly predicted the winner of 36.[71]

2012

At the conclusion of that day, when Mitt Romney had conceded to Barack Obama, Silver's model had correctly predicted the winner of every one of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.[79][80] Silver, along with at least three[81] academic-based analysts—Drew Linzer,[82] Simon Jackman,[83] and Josh Putnam[84]—who also aggregated pollsfrom multiple pollsters—thus was not only broadly correct about the election outcome, but also specifically predicted the outcomes for the nine swing states.[85]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nate_Silver

I'd list others but I doubt you'd read it anyway

[–] foggy 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

🙄

I think the youth call what you're doing "glizzy" or something?

Nate Silver’s Political Prediction Misses:

  • 2008 Democratic Primaries – Miscalculated early on, adjusted projections as race continued.
  • 2016 Republican Primaries – Low initial odds for Trump’s nomination.
  • 2016 Presidential Election – Predicted Clinton over Trump with 71.4%.
  • 2020 Presidential Election – Projected Biden 89% to win; closer in swing states.
  • 2018 Midterm Senate Races – Overestimated Democratic chances in key states.
  • 2014 Midterms – Underrated Republican gains, particularly in the Senate.

Nate Silver’s Sports Prediction Successes:

  • PECOTA Model – Accurate MLB player performance forecasting.
  • 2008 MLB Playoff Predictions – Success with playoff team forecasts.
  • March Madness – Generally accurate bracket predictions for early rounds.
  • 2012 MLB Season – High accuracy in team win predictions.
  • NBA Forecasts – Reliable win projections using Elo ratings.

You wanna keep going tit for tat, homie? It won't shake out in your favor. Let's see you show me some sports failures. I'll keep showing you successes.

You keep showing me political successes. I'll keep showing you failures.

Let's see who burns out first.

Ask his wife or kids. Or just check their social media.

The dude is talented. Not in politics.

[–] mildlyusedbrain 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I don't think you understand statistics well enough to speak on this.

2016 Presidential Election – Predicted Clinton over Trump with 71.4%.

The above for example was showing outcomes of simulations. Many polls reported way higher outcomes for Clinton and he was one of the few models showing a trump outcome and Trump's path to victory was in the simulation results. This wasn't a fail but a success of his model

Like when you are told that in a coin flip, heads is the outcome 51% of the time and hear every coin flip will be heads

[–] itsJoelle 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Do you mean “glazing”? Cause the homie reads as such.

I haven’t come across the term “glizzy” before so it might be new.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Weirdly antagonistic tone and not sure when Silver pissed in your Wheaties, but you obviously have a hang up about him. No desire to go tit for tat, other than to say he's been more reliably accurate over time than anyone else when it comes to politics. It's like baseball - if you lifetime hit for .300, everyone is going to know your name.

Also, the whole point of the article is that early voting patterns are not indicative of final results. That's not polling analysis or data modeling, that's just historical fact. I don't think Silver is perfect, and he's got problematic issues, but on this point he's just pointing out the thing the media ignores because it gives them headlines galore for the last two weeks before the election.

[–] flicker 9 points 1 month ago

I gotta weigh in on that "weirdly antagonistic tone," too. You literally said you'd list more but you doubted that person would read it? Just antagonistic all over.

You started it!

[–] jeffw 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

No offense but wtf Nate? Why would you use 2016 data when early voting was massively expanded since 2020?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

He literally talks about that at several points. 2020 is a horrible baseline for looking at anything analytically because it was such an outlier because of COVID. Too many other variables in 2020 for it to be applicable for anything

[–] Ultraviolet 2 points 1 month ago

Not just COVID, Trump's main strategy in 2020 was to turn "taking the pandemic seriously" into a partisan issue in order to make it so early and mail voting become disproportionately blue (there was no significant correlation in the past) while poisoning the well on those ballots' legitimacy.

[–] jacksilver 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah, but have we really returned to what 2016 was like? This is the issue with a lot of analysis like this, lots of internal bias in the underlying approach.

He could very well be right, but it's just as likely we're closer to 2020 than 2016. I know a lot of people that have gone to full mail-in-ballot (since covid) and I know others concerned the mail-is will be tampered with (given some have been set on fire). Not sure either of those things were in play back in 2016.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I think that's sort of the point - if 2016 was our last "normal" election and early voting wasn't prognosticative of election results then, there's no hope it would be anything other than more variable and chaotic now.

The point wasn't about a "return to normal" or else he would be saying it was an indicator.

[–] MediaBiasFactChecker -1 points 1 month ago

The news source of this post could not be identified. Please check the source yourself. Media Bias Fact Check | bot support