538 model & poll tracker thread

[WD]

Did they say it would be released on the 27th?

[ProgressiveModerate]

Did they say it would be released on the 27th?

Nope, just my guess

[jdk]

I actually have a theory on why Nate Silver is dragging his feet-

I'm sure his forecast has Biden somewhere around 90%- he doesn't want to release it now, and risk Trump  making a comeback and winning, and then he'd have to deal with all these idiots who will hammer him about being wrong because they don't understand how stuff like that works- thus he'll wait until either Trump narrows the gap or we get to the point where he has zero chance of winning

[WD]

I actually have a theory on why Nate Silver is dragging his feet-

I'm sure his forecast has Biden somewhere around 90%- he doesn't want to release it now, and risk Trump  making a comeback and winning, and then he'd have to deal with all these idiots who will hammer him about being wrong because they don't understand how stuff like that works- thus he'll wait until either Trump narrows the gap or we get to the point where he has zero chance of winning

If Silver is really doing that then he should be ashamed of himself. Taking criticism is part of his field of work.

[Alben Barkley]

I actually have a theory on why Nate Silver is dragging his feet-

I'm sure his forecast has Biden somewhere around 90%- he doesn't want to release it now, and risk Trump  making a comeback and winning, and then he'd have to deal with all these idiots who will hammer him about being wrong because they don't understand how stuff like that works- thus he'll wait until either Trump narrows the gap or we get to the point where he has zero chance of winning

If Silver is really doing that then he should be ashamed of himself. Taking criticism is part of his field of work.

He did this already in the primaries. After Super Tuesday it took him FOREVER to release the updated model showing Biden with a 99% chance of winning. And I have no doubt it was because he feared the wrath of the bros even though he was right.

[Panhandle Progressive]

I actually have a theory on why Nate Silver is dragging his feet-

or we get to the point where he (Trump) has zero chance of winning

This is what I believe will happen this election cycle. I don't see this race tightening dramatically, due to Trump's ineptness and lack of leadership on two of the major issues on American voters minds, the pandemic and race relations. Trump is trump is trump. In other words, he won't suddenly become an inspirational leader in the coming months, which is what it would take to win back voters. Nah, it's not too early to say, Trump doubled down on dumb and got burned. I mean the Quinnipiac poll a few days ago had Biden with a 15 point lead. FIFTEEN! Other recent quality polls have Biden with at least a double digit lead. Trump will become the first sitting president since George HW Bush in 1992 to fail to be re-elected, with a combination of repeatedly shooting himself in the foot and generally showing a lack of leadership on the major issues of the day. This isn't something that can shift dramatically over the next three and a half months. Not to mention, early voting will be HUGE this year and MANY MANY votes will be locked in long before election day, some states begin a month and a half out. This race will shift very little moving forward, and what little shift is left will continue to be gains by Biden.

[Epaminondas]

Good find, I expect you're right.

He did this already in the primaries. After Super Tuesday it took him FOREVER to release the updated model showing Biden with a 99% chance of winning. And I have no doubt it was because he feared the wrath of the bros even though he was right.

What malarkey, he updated within 2 days.
Grow up, outside of high school hanging on to grudges won't get you far.

[Donerail]

Silver has had no problem embarrassing himself by tweeting bad stats about COVID in the meantime, I don't think his personal reputation is what's causing the delay here.

[The Mikado]

A week from tomorrow makes sense as a launch date. A week from today is the 100 days until the election milestone, so the following Monday is a good start date for the model.

[here2view]

I think we'll probably see it next Monday. He released the 2012 one on June 7th and the 2016 one toward the end of June, so we're already getting pretty late.

[ProgressiveModerate]

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/

This link sends you to a blank page that is not an error page. Literally any other simillar link send you to an error page. It's the same address they used for the 2016 forecast, just swap 2016 with 2020. Keep an eye on the page, because we might be able to get an early glimpse of the forecasts in the works before it will be released on the 27th of July, but just a wild guess. Also, why would they make this page if they weren't going to release a forecast? This page didn't work on June 27th when I last tried it so clearly something is up. Also, the page has a reserved server too, which might indicate they'll be some simulator, or some function where a lot of information will need to be sent back and forth. Also, through inspecting the webpage I found:



Not sure what all the numbers mean; maybe those long numbers that start with 15 and 16 indicate Trump's chance are around 16%?

Today, rows 3 and 18 went away. Looking at the states listed, it seemed to align with the class 1 senate map from 2016. My guess is they will replace it with the states from the class 3 senate for 2020. Some of the other random numbers went away as well. Now it looks like:

[Orser67]

What you're seeing is JSON data. I'm not sure exactly what 538's structure looks like, but my guess is that they have one or more software developers who don't have much to do with the predictions/models but who are in charge of setting up the website and the UI. My guess is that the data you're seeing has nothing to do with the actual predictions, but is just test data used to verify that the website is working correctly. In other words, they're probably just trying to get the web page set up so that it's ready to go when Silver and et. al are ready to release it.

Source: am software engineer

[Lognog]

Just listened to the latest 538 podcast that released today. Nate wasn't on the show because "he is hard at work trying finish the election forecast"

maybe it could be arriving soon?

[Roblox]

Good find, I expect you're right.

He did this already in the primaries. After Super Tuesday it took him FOREVER to release the updated model showing Biden with a 99% chance of winning. And I have no doubt it was because he feared the wrath of the bros even though he was right.

What malarkey, he updated within 2 days.
Grow up, outside of high school hanging on to grudges won't get you far.

Hell I'm pretty sure the model started showing Biden winning more delegates headed into super Tuesday lol.

[wbrocks67]

Does anyone else feel like their national tracker is a bit jumpy? New Biden +7 and +8 polls this morning made their average drop nearly an entire point, yet when Biden got the +15 WaPo poll, it barely budged the average.  It feels like the good polls don't push it up nearly as much as the "lower" polls drop it.

Not to mention, yesterday, Trump was at 41.6%, then he got a Trump 38 and Trump 40 polls, but somehow his average got pushed *up* to 41.9%.... am I missing something?

[ProgressiveModerate]

Does anyone else feel like their national tracker is a bit jumpy? New Biden +7 and +8 polls this morning made their average drop nearly an entire point, yet when Biden got the +15 WaPo poll, it barely budged the average.  It feels like the good polls don't push it up nearly as much as the "lower" polls drop it.

Not to mention, yesterday, Trump was at 41.6%, then he got a Trump 38 and Trump 40 polls, but somehow his average got pushed *up* to 41.9%.... am I missing something?

Some of that is because last time those polls had him lower than 38-40, and since they trash the old version of a poll after the new version come out, it's possible that a number below the average could push the average up because it replaces an even lower number

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

One side effect of these trashy national polls we've gotten the last two days is that Trump's electoral college advantage is down to 1.0% (Biden up 7.9% nationally vs. 6.9% in the tipping point state).

[SnowLabrador]

The race is going to tighten more before November. The key thing to remember is that a close race favors Trump. Democrats tend to win in blowouts, whereas in close races where the ground game matters, the GOP does better.

[Beet]

The race is going to tighten more before November. The key thing to remember is that a close race favors Trump. Democrats tend to win in blowouts, whereas in close races where the ground game matters, the GOP does better.

Close races favor the GOP because of the Electoral College, not because of the ground game.

[Sir Mohamed]

Hope their election forecast gets released soon. As others said, Silver may be reluctant to so at the current state of the race because you must assume Biden as >90% chance of winning.

[wbrocks67]

Thanks to it being all online polls + Rasmussen, Biden's lead has dropped over 1% in the past day

[ProgressiveModerate]

1% is a pretty significant drop in 1 day. I wonder if this holds or if later this week there's polls that bring the average back up

[Bidenworth2020]

Thanks to it being all online polls + Rasmussen, Biden's lead has dropped over 1% in the past day

Trashmussen aside, Biden has dropped 2 points in both of the most reputable weekly tracking polls (MC and YouGov) and gained 2 points in the Ipsos/Reuters poll. I think Biden being down a point is probably accurate based off that.

[Skye]

We're getting closer to it folks!

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1286026030487162880

[Bomster]

Is Biden’s lead shrinking finally? I feel like this was inevitable, not even because Biden is a bad candidate or anything, it’s because hate for a president can only burn for so long before things normalize.