538 model & poll tracker thread

[Andrew]

Silver doesn't want to be wrong that what taking him so long.

He has a model that estimates the probability of each candidate winning.  How can he be wrong?  I guess he could put one candidate at 100.0% and then have that candidate lose, but that’s really the only way—and he’s obviously not going to do that.

I’d say that the so-called delay is really just impatience by people wanting to see it.  He probably doesn’t have any kind of deadline beyond planning to release it when it’s ready to go.

[Andrew]

That one was ready in June.  This one is probably not ready yet.

[Andrew]

Yeah, Nate juiced this b/c he was scared after 2016. For sure.

Scared of what?  He produced a model in 2016 that said Trump had a reasonable chance of winning, and Trump won.  Then lots of people who don’t comprehend probability got upset.  Nothing very scary there.