538 Model Megathread

[Crumpets]

It looks like they fixed the Trump-Obama state and Clinton-Romney state numbers. Now its:

Clinton wins at least one state Mitt Romney won in 2012 87.4%
Trump wins at least one state President Obama won in 2012 63.3%

[Crumpets]

For the first time in forever, Trump has passed 40% in 538's polls-plus model.

Projected as the favorite in both Ohio and Florida. That doesn't make any sense.

I think this model is too sensitive to trendlines for specific pollsters, namely Quinnipiac.

I also don't get why they don't seem to have taken into account the convention bounce they projected. If Trump wants to be on track to get a 50-50 finish, he should probably be up a point or two in the swing states right now at least.

[Crumpets]

A couple polls came out today that, while having Clinton in the lead, were less than glorious for her, yet the model doesn't seem to have budged since yesterday. Anyone know why?

[Crumpets]

By the way, since I'm bored, here's the 538 maps done Atlas-style.

Polls-plus probability:

Polls-plus winning percent:

Maybe I'll do another one minus third parties if I'm still bored later.

[Crumpets]

Can McMuffin/Clinton win Utah... would that close any feasible path for Trump to the presidency?

It seems 538 isn't including McMullen in their calculations. That might even be helping Trump in their model af this point.

[Crumpets]

McMullin added to the Utah model!

[Crumpets]

Somebody did this earlier on, so I thought I'd make an update.

Using polls only:

Trump's 99.9th percentile:

Trump's 99th percentile:

Trump's 90th percentile:

Trump's 87th percentile (narrowest potential Trump win):

Clinton's 14th percentile (narrowest potential Clinton win):

Both candidates' 50th percentile:

Clinton's 87th percentile (this map is equally likely as a Trump win):

Clinton's 90th percentile:

Clinton's 99th percentile:

Clinton's 99.9th percentile:

[Crumpets]

Now I think about it, when Silver went on a mini-rant during a recent podcast, emphasising how big he thought Trump's chance of winning was, he sounded genuinely scared. I wonder if he sees it as part of his mission to get Democrats to take the threat seriously and go out and vote. If so, I can't help feeling there are better ways of doing it.

He applied punditry over his own model's numbers during the primary...

Not really.  He didn't have a model during the primaries.  The reason being, as he put it, modeling the primaries is too difficult.  Once we were deep into the primaries, he made some toy models based on the demographics of people who had voted so far, but by that time he was acknowledging that Trump was the favorite.

He didn't have a overall prediction model like the presidential race but he did have a per state model which took into account all the polls done for the state. And those numbers were right almost all the time and they predicted that Trump will take all the states that he did.

What he didnt account was the momentum that Trump gained from the lead and that the rest of GOP base eventually coalesced around him

And of course let's not forget his endorsement tracker model.

[Crumpets]

Clinton is up for the day in the nowcast for the first time since October 26th.

[Crumpets]

Here's what gets me about Nate Silver's model this year:

In 2008 and 2012, empirical data about the votes in each state, such as race, age, and voting registration, largely bore out what we were already seeing in the polls at the time. This year is different, and the data from early votes is suggesting that at least in some states, Clinton will overperform her polls. Everyone who has taken any kind of science class knows that when your hypothesis (i.e. this is a close race with Trump slightly favored in NV, FL, and NC) is not supported by hard data, it is NOT because the data is wrong, it is because your hypothesis is wrong. Nate should look at the early vote data and tweak his model, however slightly, for the fact that his model does not agree with empirical voting data with regards to turnout of unlikely voters.

[Crumpets]

I think Nate should let his model run through election night, changing each state's chances to 100% as the calls come in. It would be great to watch the probabilities over the course of the night like ESPN does for football games.

[Crumpets]

Clinton back over 70% in polls-plus.