538 model & poll tracker thread

[ProgressiveModerate]

Change Research shows Biden gaining two points in North Carolina compared to their last poll, but Trump's chances of winning the state go from tied to up 6?

Same reason I don't understand how his model has Trump winning 5 in Texas when we've gotten 75% of polls in the past 3 months saying the race is basically a dead heat.

It's all because of "fundementals", despite having nearly 200k deaths from COVID and high unemployment. He claims that polling will be weighted more as the election nears.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Trump's chances went up by 1.5% in my model too because of that stupid Rasmussen poll! However Trump's chances are still at 14.32%

[ProgressiveModerate]

The national polling average really dropped an *ENTIRE POINT* because of the Zogby poll. Really.

That MO Trafalgar poll also dropped a point off Biden's win %.

Which doesn't make any sense to me, considering that even before the Trafalgar R bias, Trump +11 there is not good at all for him after winning 18 in 2016. Then if you take into account the R bias of Trafalgar, you'd assume that poll actually looks VERY good for Biden. Yet it hurts him somehow? I literally do not understand this model, and how it appears that so many things somehow help Trump in it and so few hurt Trump.

The thing is that you're doing a bunch of analysis on that poll whereas the model just reads it straight up. The model doesn't correlate it with what that pollster polled in other states. Fact is the MO polling average was closer than 11% margin (roughly 7% according to my calculations) so this would push up Trump's chances in MO, as it did in my own model as well

[ProgressiveModerate]

And we've gotten Biden +12, Biden +13, and Biden +9 this morning, and it's still at Biden +8.0.

Once again, for whatever reason, it's as if good Biden polls don't help all that much, but a bad one hurts way more than the good ones help.

There was two new PA polls today with Biden +9. There was also a Biden +7 poll, Nate has Biden only up  4.7 in PA.

So, in spite of some favorable polls, Biden's lead went from 5.4 on Sunday to 4.6 today, mainly due to the national lead shrinking from 8 to 6.9. Shouldn't state polls cancel that out?

Also, Nate tried to say before that national polls don't have that much weight, but they clearly do. Even so, shouldn't that effect the *forecast* though? His state averages model should literally just be *averages* without any other f**kery going on. I want an RCP aggregator but just not sh**tty.

As far as I've understood there are no state averages.

There is a national polling average which is kind of its own thing. Then there are state projections based on polls and fundamentals for that state. There is also a national forecast that is created by aggregating the state forecasts.

The only role the national average plays is that it affects the impact of state polls. So Biden's current lead in Pennsylvania is weighted by polls there from say the last month and some fundamentals factor. If his national lead has gone down compared to 1 month ago his lead in a poll from a month ago is also adjusted down.

How big of an impact that is depends a bit, obviously. In general I'd guess a month old poll won't have much impact anyway, but now that we don't have that many polls in general I'm guessing it's more sensitive to those things.

Basically the lack of recent state polls will make the national environment have a larger influence because the polls were from longer ago.

[ProgressiveModerate]

So chance of Biden winning by double-digits (30%) is higher than Trump winning the EC (26%).

Huh.

The uncertainty seems way too high in the model. That's basically a 56% of an "unexpected" result either way. The chance of those events collectively should be more like 25% in my view.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Today we had three national polls which showed Biden ahead by 12, 10, and 9 points.
And yet 538's aggregate remains stuck at 7.5. I don't know about you but this starts to look absurd to me.

In defense of 538, those 3 polls showed good numbers for Biden in the previous poll.

[ProgressiveModerate]

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1304480539676639233

Something has to trend to the right and OR makes sense when you think about it. Biden is a poor fit for both the Progressive "woke" Portland area and cities like Eugene, but will also likely struggle in the Eastern part of the. Is OR still safe D? Yes. But the margin could definately be dissapointing. I wouldn't draw too many conclusions though until we get more polling out of OR.

[ProgressiveModerate]

https://twitter.com/natesilver538/status/1304852629282009088?s=21

This makes me think their senate model will have less uncertainty than the Presidential model.

Only 11/12 of these potential pickups have greater than 10% chance of flipping: AZ, CO, NC, ME, MT, IA, KS, AK, TX, SC, GA, and GA(S).

With the exception of KS, all these states have over a 10% chance of going blue on the Presidential level (in KS, Bollier is expected to outperform Marshall so her chances should be well above 10%).

[ProgressiveModerate]

There's no obsession with Trump winning Oregon. All they're doing is plugging in poll numbers and re-running the model, which, by the way, thinks a Trump win in Oregon is pretty unlikely.

There seems to be a lot of cases where Trump wins OR in a Biden landslide though

[ProgressiveModerate]

It's the clock ticking.  Nate posted a thread about this earlier today: https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1305145928257622016

A Fox News national poll showing Trump down 5 is one of his better results lately; keep in mind that Fox News polls hasn't had particularly good news for Trump so far this cycle. But a couple of things to keep in mind.

First, we've had very abundant polling over the past two weeks, both on the national level and also in many states. That makes any one poll less influential. If the race is tightening—or Biden's lead is expanding—the model will need to see that consistently over several polls.

Second, it's mid-September, which means the point where polls start to hone in on a more accurate result. So the mere passage of time helps Biden. This is especially so in our model since it expects the race to (slightly) tighten; so any day of non-tightening is good for Biden.

A slight complication is that we're coming out of the period where you could attribute Trump gains to a convention bounce, though we're not completely out of it yet. So if Trump has "permanently" chopped a point or so off Biden's lead (from 8/9 to 7/8) that's something for him.

Even so, Trump needs the race to tighten more quickly than that. A candidate with a 7-8 point deficit post-conventions is a heavier underdog than one with a 8-9 point deficit pre-conventions, because the reduction in uncertainty from the passage of time outweighs the small gain.

Trump would need the race to tighten about a point every 10 days on average to have a shot at winning. As time goes by, this seems increasingly unlikely.

[ProgressiveModerate]

I noticed in the current "cloud" figure of 100 sample elections that Biden wins >350 electoral votes about 37% of the time.  Trumps wins >350 electoral votes 1% of the time.  So many the uncertainty finally is contracting somewhat.

If you create a map where Biden wins everything in their "Very likely" category (95%+ chances) and Trump wins everything else, you end up with this:

362-176 Trump. It's on the verge of plummeting to 349-189 because Virginia is RIGHT on the cutoff line of that Very Likely category.

Why is VA safer than OR?

More polls, probably.

The more polls you have, the narrower the range of outcomes is. Simillar things happen in my model where states with little to no polling have a wider range of outcomes than the states with polling.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Idk if this is just me but I feel like ever since the conventions, the majority of blue bubbles are above Biden's actual % in the tracker and most the the red bubbles are below Trumps %. It kinda seems like there tracker is more reactive to polls that show "good news" for Trump, even if they aren't the most reputable pollsters. If you take out the lines and just look at the bubbles you would think Biden would be at more like 51.5% and Trump would be 42%.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Idk if this is just me but I feel like ever since the conventions, the majority of blue bubbles are above Biden's actual % in the tracker and most the the red bubbles are below Trumps %. It kinda seems like there tracker is more reactive to polls that show "good news" for Trump, even if they aren't the most reputable pollsters. If you take out the lines and just look at the bubbles you would think Biden would be at more like 51.5% and Trump would be 42%.

Better quality polls are showing a closer race and once again, Silver adjusts for shy Trump voters.

Really the only high quality national polls we've gotten that show a "close" race are Fox News and Emerson.

[ProgressiveModerate]

*Looks at AL*

Yep incumbency is weighted too heavily

[ProgressiveModerate]

You can clearly see that Trump’s line is above basically all the poll dots, and Biden’s below.

It's becoming more and more obvious that Silver has put his thumb on the scale. Every single Trump-friendly poll is given outsize influence, no matter how crappy or stale it is. At the same time polls that are favorable for Biden barely move the needle, even if they come from reputable firms.
This year there is barely a difference between RCP and 538 averages, and I don't think that's a coincidence.   

When I run a weighted poll average based on 538 polls, I get Biden 51.1 - Trump 43.2 (Biden +7.9). Something's weird with their polling average, since literally EVERY SINGLE RED DOT is on or below Trump's average in recent weeks, with very few exceptions.

[ProgressiveModerate]

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1306948970804117511

Saying Florida polls look "weak" when a Trump +1 state has recent polls as Biden +5, Biden +3, Biden +1, seems.... like really bad analysis.

Remember; a Biden lead less than 5 in any state means he's bound to lose because muh 2016. Anyone who disagrees with this is just wrong

[ProgressiveModerate]

Biden up a % point to 78% today.

I find it ironic how the day that Biden supporters freak out about 2 ABC polls is the same day Biden's chance shoots up.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Any good model SHOULD underestimate partisanship in safe states, since the distribution outcomes should be skewed towards the center (take NY, maybe on average Biden wins by 25%, but one standard deviation away would be 28% and 20%), with the mean being lower than the median, which is lower than the mode. If they're margins are based off the median or mean margin from their simulations, on average, the model should underestimate partisanship, right? Or is my logic flawed.

[ProgressiveModerate]

They now have Florida (barely) to the left of Arizona. Not sure if I agree.

it's because of the NYT poll from yesterday

[ProgressiveModerate]

I don't know why they're acting so confident.  They were wrong in 2016 and could definitely be wrong again.

They weren't technically wrong. Saying something has a 31% chance of happenning that actually does end up happenning isn't wrong, and vise-versa with 69%. Also; the certainty for their 2020 model is far lower than their 2016 model, and yet it outputs Biden as a clear favorite. Statistical models aren't meant to be prefect; they're supposed to show where a race stands based upon the available data and how the model interprets that data. In my view, at least statistical models are better than speculative models since they are based on cold hard facts, and in general, well put together statistical models tend to hold up better than speculative models.

[ProgressiveModerate]

I am so happy.

[ProgressiveModerate]

I don't know about anyone else, but the number I'm watching is the "Biden wins in a landslide" probability. It's been as high as 37, now back to 36.

If we keep getting polls like this from now until election day, it may approach 50.

Anything more than Biden + 7 and a D senate I'm happy with

[ProgressiveModerate]

I don't know about anyone else, but the number I'm watching is the "Biden wins in a landslide" probability. It's been as high as 37, now back to 36.

If we keep getting polls like this from now until election day, it may approach 50.

Anything more than Biden + 7 and a D senate I'm happy with

Dems are more likely to lose seats than not lose seats in 2022 so you want as much cushion as possible so judges can still get appointed after the first 2 years.

Very true. The more of a cushion the better, but not getting my hopes up too much yet.

[ProgressiveModerate]

I don't know about anyone else, but the number I'm watching is the "Biden wins in a landslide" probability. It's been as high as 37, now back to 36.

If we keep getting polls like this from now until election day, it may approach 50.

Anything more than Biden + 7 and a D senate I'm happy with

Dems are more likely to lose seats than not lose seats in 2022 so you want as much cushion as possible so judges can still get appointed after the first 2 years.

Except they’ll presumably get an extra 4 seat cushion from DC and PR statehood.

We'll have to see about that. The filibuster would prolly need to be removed to get DC passed at least, and I have a hard time seeing the filibuster going.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Looking at the national tracker, what is interesting is that most polls still lie slightly above Biden's line and slightly below Trump's line, with the outliers mostly pulling the average inwards. It seems like the majority of polls show Biden around 54 or 55% while most show Trump closer to 40 or 41%. Not saying that Biden's lead is 15% in reality, but just an interesting observation, which continues to be true ever since the convention.