538 model & poll tracker thread

[Pericles]

I don't mind the model as much as I mind the god awful appearance of it as a whole.

I actually like the winding path of electoral votes that visualises the idea of the tipping point state, and it probably is more effective at showing where the race stands than a map where the two sides are at roughly similar land area even if they are at very different levels of electoral votes.

[here2view]

I don't mind the model as much as I mind the god awful appearance of it as a whole.

I actually like the winding path of electoral votes that visualises the idea of the tipping point state, and it probably is more effective at showing where the race stands than a map where the two sides are at roughly similar land area even if they are at very different levels of electoral votes.

I like that too. They had something like that in their 2016 model I believe. But as a whole, I just find this model's look to be a little oversaturated. I'm also not a big fan of having to continuously scroll down to view different aspects of the model, I prefer tabs to take you to different pages instead (like in their 2016 one.) 

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

How do you access the national polling average? 

The design of this pretty awful for those who are actualy trying to find the data.

[ProgressiveModerate]

How do you access the national polling average? 

The design of this pretty awful for those who are actualy trying to find the data.

You have to download the spreadsheet linked at the bottom of the page.

[Alben Barkley]

I don't mind the model as much as I mind the god awful appearance of it as a whole.

I actually like the winding path of electoral votes that visualises the idea of the tipping point state, and it probably is more effective at showing where the race stands than a map where the two sides are at roughly similar land area even if they are at very different levels of electoral votes.

I like that too. They had something like that in their 2016 model I believe. But as a whole, I just find this model's look to be a little oversaturated. I'm also not a big fan of having to continuously scroll down to view different aspects of the model, I prefer tabs to take you to different pages instead (like in their 2016 one.) 

The 2016 model was better in literally every conceivable way. Most importantly, the structure of the model itself was superior. But also the UI was superior, the overall presentation was superior, and the fact that it had options for "polls-only" and "nowcast" was vastly superior. If they had those now I could just look at them and ignore Silver's Howard Hughes level insanity about measuring New York Times headlines to predict uncertainty.

[Alben Barkley]

Some of y'all are acting like Biden has a 15 point lead and that the election is tomorrow. The topline numbers of the model seem perfectly rational, and uncertainly inherently decreases the closer you get to the election.

1. Biden does have a 15 point lead, at least according to some polls. Fact is his overall lead is massive, historically speaking. Elections like 1984 are comparable. FiveThirtyEight themselves have reported on this before. Assuming this lead will shrink enough for Trump to win is not rational, when it could just as easily expand or stay steady. And there is historical precedent for ALL of those outcomes. Giving undue weight to what right now looks like the LEAST likely outcome -- a large Trump comeback -- is preposterous.

2. The election may not be tomorrow, but it's not in a year either. Allowing "uncertainty" to influence your model to THIS degree when people will start voting in about a month is insane. Never mind that both the polls of the election and of the incumbent's approval rating have been incredibly stable and there is little reason to believe that anything will magically change that all of a sudden. Trump is not a normal incumbent and never has been; people made up their minds about him a long time ago, one way or the other, and nothing is going to change that at the last minute. There are a lot fewer undecideds this year for a reason.

3. There is absolutely NOTHING "rational" about giving Biden the same odds now as you did Hillary on Election Day 2016, after the Comey letter. Biden is performing better than Hillary at her peak, as they also have commented on before. So why are they giving him the odds they gave her at her low point? It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and nothing anyone can say can make me change my mind about that. I don't care what kind of convoluted, ridiculous, post hoc "reasoning" (apparently involving measuring NYT headlines) Silver used to come up with these numbers -- it is beyond obvious that he deliberately rigged this model to way overcorrect for 2016 and be as conservative as possible.

It is not a coincidence, by the way, that the numbers on this model's release are the exact same as they were on Election Day 2016. It is clear that Silver went out of his way to force the model to spit out those particular numbers, and that may explain why it took so long to release it. Clearly it took quite some time and effort to convince a mathematical model to tell you what is obviously, objectively not true.

[Alben Barkley]

I don’t see how Silver can give Trump an almost 2/3rds chance to win Texas when the polling looks as bad for him as it does. Feels like he’s relying *way* too much on past fundamentals there.

It's actually over 2/3rds. It's the inverse of the overall number -- 71 Trump, 29 Biden.

This is obviously insane. Silver is saying a race that the polls clearly and consistently show is a complete toss-up is as safe for one candidate as the overall race is for the other candidate who has clearly and consistently had much bigger leads in the national polls.

The page says they actually account MORE for factors other than polls in coming to these numbers, which is a horrendous mistake. Texas is a state that's been trending D rapidly. Weighing how it voted in f--king 2012 heavier than you do the polls there today is utterly ludicrous.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

I don't mind the model as much as I mind the god awful appearance of it as a whole.

I actually like the winding path of electoral votes that visualises the idea of the tipping point state, and it probably is more effective at showing where the race stands than a map where the two sides are at roughly similar land area even if they are at very different levels of electoral votes.

I get your point, but there's nothing mentally easier than hovering over a map and seeing projected popular vote numbers by state pop up. I don't want to have to search and click all over the place just to see what % of the vote 538 thinks Biden is getting in AZ.

[Mr. Morden]

Take what happens if we lie to our model and tell it that the election is going to be held today. It spits out that Biden has a 93 percent chance of winning

That’s the relevant number then, Nate. It’s impossible to predict how things are going to change in the next three months (never mind voting starts in some key states in just one month), or if they are even going to change at all (race has overall been steady to this point, no reason to assume it will stop), so the only tangible factors to go on are what the data says now.

That doesn't make any sense.  The amount of time left before the election is absolutely relevant in determining the probability that the leading candidate will win.  If a football team is leading by 10 points with just 30 seconds left in the game, then obviously their probability of winning is much higher than if they're leading by 10 and it's only halftime.  In the former case, the team that's behind doesn't have enough time to catch up, but in the latter case they do.  So a given lead is more secure if the game is about to be over.  What's so different about polling?  In that case as well, the trailing candidate might still win, but only if there's enough time left in the race for the numbers to move.  How is that controversial?

[BlueSwan]

I don't mind the model as much as I mind the god awful appearance of it as a whole.

I actually like the winding path of electoral votes that visualises the idea of the tipping point state, and it probably is more effective at showing where the race stands than a map where the two sides are at roughly similar land area even if they are at very different levels of electoral votes.

I like that too. They had something like that in their 2016 model I believe. But as a whole, I just find this model's look to be a little oversaturated. I'm also not a big fan of having to continuously scroll down to view different aspects of the model, I prefer tabs to take you to different pages instead (like in their 2016 one.) 

The 2016 model was better in literally every conceivable way. Most importantly, the structure of the model itself was superior. But also the UI was superior, the overall presentation was superior, and the fact that it had options for "polls-only" and "nowcast" was vastly superior. If they had those now I could just look at them and ignore Silver's Howard Hughes level insanity about measuring New York Times headlines to predict uncertainty.

Yup. Silver is a great statistician, but at BEST an average pundit. While I enjoy punditry, I put next to no weight to what pundits actually say when it comes to predicting elections. In 2016 I consistently preferred looking at the polls-only model and the now-cast to the more convoluted model.

I just don't believe that one can accurately measure the impact of "fundamentals", donations and whatever. Focus on the polls, please.

Silver should just be honest here and state that the way things are right now, Biden is the overwhelming favourite and for Trump to win he would need either a major gamechanger (of which actually stealing the election is one) or the polls would have to be pretty systematically biased towards Biden. Both of which are possible, of course, but you can't really put a number on it.

[Sadader]

The arbitrary fudging to increase uncertainty is just silly

There’s literally an ~8% chance that the PV lies outside Biden -10% to +20% (!!!)

[Gustaf]

I'd be inclined to agree if it weren't for the fact that this thread sounded exactly the same 4 years ago and then Silver was right and Atlas was wrong.

[Skye]

Here they explain the design: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-we-designed-the-look-of-our-2020-forecast/?ex_cid=story-twitter

Ultimately, we chose a fairly simple structure for displaying the presidential forecast, leaving behind some of the more complicated user experiences. The final version is modular and the pieces of the forecast are visualized on cards. Each card gives the reader a different lens on the election. Some also offer a chance to explore deeper by switching tabs or hovering on elements like dots or lines. This structure also helped us nail our goal of designing for flexibility.

Still no explanation as to why there isn't a map though.

[tjstarling]

I'd be inclined to agree if it weren't for the fact that this thread sounded exactly the same 4 years ago and then Silver was right and Atlas was wrong.

The thing is, Silver wasn’t right, he was just the least wrong. And he’s spent four years trying to hold that over everyone else. Given current data, some posters above seem to not understand the distinction between forecasting an event today versus forecasting/predicting the future state of the world. However, I can’t help but feel Silver is trying to cover his a** here a bit in order to claim that his model was best even if it actually misses the mark substantially by using the blackbox of “uncertainty.” In November, say he gives Biden a 3 in 4 chance to win and Biden wins a ‘08 style landslide, he can say “oh we got the winner right but the uncertainty worked out in Biden’s favor.” Or if Trump wins at just a 1 in 4 chance, he can say “the uncertainty went in Trump’s favor, and our model factored that in better than everyone else’s” even though his prediction was technically quite off the mark.

[Gustaf]

I'd be inclined to agree if it weren't for the fact that this thread sounded exactly the same 4 years ago and then Silver was right and Atlas was wrong.

The thing is, Silver wasn’t right, he was just the least wrong. And he’s spent four years trying to hold that over everyone else. Given current data, some posters above seem to not understand the distinction between forecasting an event today versus forecasting/predicting the future state of the world. However, I can’t help but feel Silver is trying to cover his a** here a bit in order to claim that his model was best even if it actually misses the mark substantially by using the blackbox of “uncertainty.” In November, say he gives Biden a 3 in 4 chance to win and Biden wins a ‘08 style landslide, he can say “oh we got the winner right but the uncertainty worked out in Biden’s favor.” Or if Trump wins at just a 1 in 4 chance, he can say “the uncertainty went in Trump’s favor, and our model factored that in better than everyone else’s” even though his prediction was technically quite off the mark.

Well, that's why these prediction sites should be evaluated over longer periods of time. 538 did self-evaluation recently and found they were doing pretty well, IIRC.

Of course, this model is different from the previous ones and probably won't ever resurface since it's supposed to be corona-specific so it won't be possible in this case.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Some of y'all are acting like Biden has a 15 point lead and that the election is tomorrow. The topline numbers of the model seem perfectly rational, and uncertainly inherently decreases the closer you get to the election.

The RCP average on Trump's favorable/unfavorable is currently -14.6. Voting starts in three weeks, in North Carolina. Michigan and Pennsylvania will be voting before the third week of September. If Donald Trump is somehow going to turn this around, he is rapidly running out of time. (I'm not saying he can't, though I certainly hope he does not.)

[afleitch]

I mean, it's clear Trump will try and steal the election by 'vanishing' postal votes. It's why it's important for him to keep both the epidemic going and his base unafraid of it. So it's worth the model accounting for unpredictability.

You know he has no intention of leaving. Right?

[American2020]

North Carolina 08/13/2020

50% Trump
50% Biden

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

[The Mikado]

I'm not going to complain about any of the given results.

I just want to:



Make 538 Aesthetics Great Again.

[ProgressiveModerate]

I'm not going to complain about any of the given results.

I just want to:



Make 538 Aesthetics Great Again.

The 2008 model held up pretty well and had far less uncertainty. Only state that was outside the reasonable MOE were IN and NC, but that was a once in a haystack kind of event.

[pbrower2a]

Some of y'all are acting like Biden has a 15 point lead and that the election is tomorrow. The topline numbers of the model seem perfectly rational, and uncertainly inherently decreases the closer you get to the election.

15% leads are rare in Presidential politics, but they happen. This is on the scale of Reagan versus Mondale in the 1984 result, That's not to say that such will be the result, but

(1) Donald Trump is awful, as is approval numbers show.
(2) There are strong Republicans-for Biden and groups ordinarily associated with Republicans for Biden.
(3) Trump has done nothing to assuage people who found him abominable for his expressions of self. Usually a pol can convince many people that he isn't that bad if given a chance. Not this time!
(4) COVID-19 has killed like a bungled war, and Trump bungled that metaphoric war.
(5) Joe Biden is a known commodity.
(6) Joe Biden has nominated a VP who seems to have little baggage.

[The Mikado]

Could we please just have a f**king map on the front page like we did in 2008, 2012, and 2016? And much, much, much less bulls**t?

Jack Kersting's model is way prettier than this and he's just one teenager designing a website from scratch.

https://projects.jhkforecasts.com/presidential-forecast/

Less is more. Minimalism is always the way to go in website design, IMO.

I keep coming back to the 538 2008 model:



Why can't we just do this? That's all you need. Why is there all this extraneous stuff?

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

I'm not going to complain about any of the given results.

I just want to:



Make 538 Aesthetics Great Again.

The Sarah Palin bump was very strong early on. Pre Lehman Brothers collapse, the race was going to be very close. Obama was up by 2-3 points in the summer.

[Roblox]

538’s presentation really has gone down the drain since 2016. No reason to not keep a nowcast and a map at least.

[Figueira]

This map (269-269 tie) is showing up as one of their 100 example maps (which I'm guessing are randomly selected?).

Annoyingly, these maps don't show the separate EVs so you have to infer them based on the numbers, but I'm assuming NE-2 is voting D and ME-2 is voting R here, since their forecast gives NE-2 a higher chance of flipping.

Anyway, definitely not the 269-269 map I would expect.