538 Model Megathread

[NOVA Green]

Polls Plus- 68.5% -31.5% (Clinton-Trump)
Polls Only-- 70.0%-30.0% (Clinton-Trump)
Nowcast- 74.3%- 25.7% (Clinton-Trump)

[NOVA Green]

Some improvement for Trump by a few points...

Polls Plus---  66.5- 33.5 Clinton
Polls Only--- 68.2-31.8 Clinton
Nowcast---  70.2-29.8 Clinton

[NOVA Green]

538 Model (Including the Fox Ntl and State Polls Today)


Polls Plus- 59.6- 40.3 Clinton
Polls Only- 60.3- 39.7 Clinton
Now-Cast-- 56.7-43.3 Clinton

Dramatic collapse in Clinton numbers, most significantly in the Now-Cast.

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I just made this list, showing the trendlines so far among states compared to the 2012 results (using the current 538 NowCast):


Utah: D+33.3%

Kansas: D+12.3%
Idaho: D+11.8%
Oklahoma: D+11.7%
Wyoming: D+10.3%

Texas: D+8.3%
Arkansas: D+8.2%
Kentucky: D+7.6%
West Virginia: D+7.6%
Arizona: D+6.6%
Nebraska: D+5.9%
South Dakota: D+5.7%

Alaska: D+4.5%
Georgia: D+4.3%
Montana: D+3.5%

North Carolina: D+3.0%
South Carolina: D+2.9%
Tennessee: D+2.7%
Missouri: D+2.6%
Virginia: D+2.5%
Louisiana: D+2.0%

Alabama: D+1.0%
North Dakota: D+0.7%
Florida: D+0.6%

Indiana: No change

Oregon: R+0.1%
Minnesota: R+0.3%
Pennsylvania: R+0.3%
Colorado: R+0.9%
New Hampshire: R+1.0%

Wisconsin: R+1.5%
Washington: R+1.8%
New Mexico: R+2.0%
California: R+2.1%
Mississippi: R+2.3%
Ohio: R+2.5%
Illinois: R+2.8%

Massachusetts: R+3.3%
Maryland: R+3.9%
Michigan: R+3.9%
Nevada: R+4.7%
Connecticut: R+4.9%

Iowa: R+6.3%
Maine: R+7.3%
Delaware: R+7.4%
New Jersey: R+8.2%

New York: R+10.5%
Vermont: R+12.5%
Hawaii: R+13.3%
Rhode Island: R+16.8%

D.C.: R+38.1%


PS: I've emboldened the top ten tipping point states as of today. That is, the ten states that comes the closest to the current center according to 538's "snake graph".

Some possible explanations for what these numbers basically are showing:

1) The impact of very strong numbers for third parties
2) The strong impact of undecided voters (most states will ultimately be less close than what they appear now)
3) The unusual strenght of Trump in northeastern states and Clinton's strenght in the South (with the exception of Mississippi)
4) The complete fallout of Trump in Mormon states like Utah, Idaho and Arizona and total collapse in the great plains states, which were Cruz's forte in the primaries
5) Clinton's strenght in most diverse states (again with the exception of Mississippi and the northeast), Trump's strenght in mostly white states
6) A less polarized electorate, driven by the fact that Trump is historically unpopular among Republicans, while Clinton is much less popular among Democrats than Obama was

I will try to update this list in a few weeks time, either after the first debate or the second debate I think. At the very least after the last debate.

This is great!

Thanks for running the numbers on this....

It helps explain some of the weird polling numbers we have seen this election season (Texas/Kansas much closer than usual, weird numbers from reliably Dem states in the Northeast/Central Atlantic, etc...).

Key problem for the Dems is that major Clinton gains are concentrated in heavily Republican states, whereas Trump seems be doing significantly better in "swing" or "battleground" states which is where the EVs are in the event of a squeaker election.

[NOVA Green]

Latest Updates (Haven't posted much for the past two days):

Polls Plus- 59.7-40.3 Hillary
Polls Only- 61.3-38.7 Hillary
Nowcast-  60.4-39.6 Hillary

Marginal improvements for Hillary on Polls-Plus and Polls-Only and a major increase for Hillary in the Nowcast.

[NOVA Green]

9/25:

PollsPlus- C- 57.6 %   T- 42.4%
Polls Only- C 58.1%- T- 41.9%
Nowcast- C- 56% T- 44%

[NOVA Green]

Nate's server must be having a virtual meltdown today caused by massive overheating as a result of a massive influx of junk data that his computer algorithms are not designed to handle.

Much like the brains of many of us on this forum that have an OCD order of excessive poll consumption, with a healthy pinch of over-analysis, and THE DATA DOES NOT COMPUTE!!!!

[NOVA Green]

^ You do realize stuff like that is based on the past relationship between poll results (including apparent outlier polls) and actual results?  He's not just making it up.  You can have a serious conversation about how to handle uncertainty, and how to weight new data vs. fundamental data, but it's kind of lame to criticize a counterintuitive model outcome without providing any real criticism of the underlying assumptions or methodology.

This reminds me of the people who argued "Nate wasn't wrong about Michigan...Sanders winning was just the 0.01% event actually occuring!" In other words, Nate and his model can never be wrong under any circumstances. How convenient.

As for the methodology, you don't need a Ph.D. in statistics or political science to realize that giving Donald Trump a 25% chance of winning the state of Rhode Island is absurd. Common sense certainly prevailed over all those complex models that showed a Romney landslide.

Spear---- Dude we didn't see eye-to-eye much at all during the Dem Primaries, and although Nate's model does over emphasize results from states that get rarely polled, there was a reality at the time where this polled occurred and the race was close to tied nationally, among one of Trump's best NE/CA groups Italian-Americans, along with many Bernie holdouts in a state where he won a huge upset during the primaries.

Obviously, the Bernie indies have come home, and the Anglo-Ethnic Europeans and WASPs are done briefly flirting with the Trump train.

Clinton has consolidated and expanded her base, and what was a real/surreal and ephemeral moment a month ago where Trump was keeping it much closer than expected because many Democrats couldn't support Clinton in RI, Indies were assessing the scene, and Republicans were sticking together in a state where only 25% of the population is registered Rep.

[NOVA Green]

So interestingly enough, Nate's model now has Clinton's chances of winning Alaska higher in all three models than her chances of winning Georgia....