538 senate model now out

[Landslide Lyndon]

Silver once again shows his hand. He says that this year his default will be the deluxe model for seemingly no other reason other than that it's the most favorable to Republicans.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Silver once again shows his hand. He says that this year his default will be the deluxe model for seemingly no other reason other than that it's the most favorable to Republicans.

Don't be such a hack. 538 always uses the fundamentals-inclusive model as its default. It did the same thing in 2018 and in fact that time it led to overestimating the Democrats (since most incumbents were Democrats that cycle). There's a legitimate criticism that his model weighs incumbency too heavily, but that's different from accusing Nate ing Silver of having a partisan agenda.

For the record, the 2018 model used the "Classic" model as its default. Their own coverage of their models two years ago was that the "Deluxe" was probably a slightly better forecast, but that they were defaulting the Classic because it was more reflective of 538's own data and didn't reach beyond the site. I don't think the change is a conspiracy, especially since they probably should have been going with the best model before anyway, but there's no doubt that they changed it up for this year.

Nobody says it's a conspiracy or he does it for partisan reasons. The guy is simply trying to cover his ass in case of a new 2016 or a new Florida 2018. It's the same reason why his presidential model and poll aggregate favor Trump this year.

[Landslide Lyndon]

You're both saying that Nate Silver is making his model worse in order to lean on the numbers and fabricate a good outcome for the Republicans when Silver himself has said that's absolutely not true. That's not conspiratorial thinking? I don't doubt that thought was put into switching the default model from Classic to Deluxe, but I doubt it was to collect brownie points from people who don't understand how percentages work.

You people need to understand that Silver isn't anymore an unknown nerd who crunches numbers for fun on Daily Kos. He is now a big-name data pundit with a big site and a bunch of people working for him. He took a lot of heat in 2016 and it's obvious that criticism stung him.
He didn't change his model to make it worse but to hedge his bets in case a black swan event happens again this year. Not to mention that a horserace narrative benefits him personally because it means more clicks for his site.