538 model & poll tracker thread

[MATTROSE94]

With a little under a day and half to go until polls begin to close in Kentucky and Indiana, Trump has, for the first time this election, reached the single digits. His chances in the model sit at 9.

Donald Trump has a 100% chance of winning, especially when Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett rule that all mail-in ballots are unconstitutional and violate the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause on November 20.

[Horus]

With a little under a day and half to go until polls begin to close in Kentucky and Indiana, Trump has, for the first time this election, reached the single digits. His chances in the model sit at 9.

Donald Trump has a 100% chance of winning, especially when Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett rule that all mail-in ballots are unconstitutional and violate the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause on November 20.

This is also true.

[Inmate Trump]

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1322602104226283520

I’d be fine with this map.

[Angel of Death]

With a little under a day and half to go until polls begin to close in Kentucky and Indiana, Trump has, for the first time this election, reached the single digits. His chances in the model sit at 9.

He's about where Romney was at this point.

I'd focus on Biden's percentage instead, because Trump would likely be reelected in case of a 269-269 tie.

I mean probability

So do I. If you look at https://electionforecastjs.web.app/ you can see the percentages don't add up to 100%.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

It's a rounded 90, he's actually at 89.6 or so.  I think he needs to actually reach 90 to be "strongly favored."

By my calculations Biden is one "dot" away from "clearly favored."

This seems false, and now I am confused about 538's terminology.  
Here's the current front page projection:



Note that Trump only has 39 dots out of 396 total, yet Biden is still listed as only "favored" rather than "clearly favored".  I thought a candidate was "clearly favored" once they exceeded 90.0%.  But if Trump only has 39 dots, he should be just under 10%.  If he has exactly 10.0%, he would have 39.6 dots which should round up to 40, right?

[ultraviolet]

Tbh they probably just don’t want to say Biden is “clearly favored”

[soundchaser]

Tbh they probably just don’t want to say Biden is “clearly favored”

It's about math -- he was "clearly favored" earlier today and probably will be again once the Redfield & Wilton and Qriously polls get added in.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Tbh they probably just don’t want to say Biden is “clearly favored”

It's about math -- he was "clearly favored" earlier today and probably will be again once the Redfield & Wilton and Qriously polls get added in.

Right, but what about the math am I missing?  Over 90.0% should be "clearly favored", and 357/396 dots should definitely be over 90.0%.

Also, it appears those 2 polls have already been added.

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1323309179491274752

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1323309179491274752

Thanks!.. Reading that thread probably cleared up my confusion.

What I think is happening is that in order to be "clearly favored", a candidate needs to be >90.0% to win including the possibility of a tie.  
But the dot matrix doesn't allow for ties, and probably just excluded them from the calculations.

Going down several decimals, it looks like there is a 0.4% chance of an EC tie, in which case Biden might be 89.9% to win including ties, but appear to be 90.2% to win when you exclude ties in the dot matrix.

[emailking]

The dot matrix is rounded off. Favored vs. clearly favored isn't.

[Wisconsin+17]

After getting his ass whupped last election, Nate is going with Biden having a 90 percent chance of winning?

Wow. Crazy sauce.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

After getting his ass whupped last election, Nate is going with Biden having a 90 percent chance of winning?

Wow. Crazy sauce.

Nate actually didn't mark Clinton as a sure winner in 2016 and he never said Clinton had it in the bag. In 2020, he's cautioned that Trump can still win multiple times.

[ultraviolet]

After getting his ass whupped last election, Nate is going with Biden having a 90 percent chance of winning?

Wow. Crazy sauce.

It’s amazing that you’ve come on here for the last 9 years to make 6,000 low effort posts

[Wisconsin+17]

According to our forecast, Pennsylvania is the most likely tipping-point state, and a lot of Biden’s chances in the Electoral College hinge on what happens in Pennsylvania. He leads Trump there by about 5 points in our polling average, but it’s not as large a margin as Biden might like. Last week, we gamed out what would happen if Biden lost Pennsylvania but won other Midwestern states like Wisconsin. (TL;DR there’s no clear Plan B for Biden.)

it’s pretty unlikely that either of them will hit the 270 electoral votes needed to win

That doesn't sound like 90 percent to me. The problem is Silver's model.

[GeorgiaModerate]

After getting his ass whupped last election, Nate is going with Biden having a 90 percent chance of winning?

Wow. Crazy sauce.

Nate actually didn't mark Clinton as a sure winner in 2016 and he never said Clinton had it in the bag. In 2020, he's cautioned that Trump can still win multiple times.

Nate was among the most bullish forecasters on Trump.  His model had Clinton at 71% on Election Day and in the 60's a few days earlier.  A 30% chance (Trump's in 2016) is nothing to sneer at; it's the chance of a .300 hitter in baseball getting a hit in a particular at-bat.

(And it should be remembered that even 10% outcomes happen sometimes.  Ever had someone ask you to pick a number from 1 to 10, and you got it right?)

[Wisconsin+17]

Nate actually didn't mark Clinton as a sure winner in 2016 and he never said Clinton had it in the bag. In 2020, he's cautioned that Trump can still win multiple times.

It's obvious that there was a significant problem with his model in 2016. I would not be surprised by a 60 percent prediction for Biden in this election. That would seem reasonable and prudent to me.

But 90 percent against incumbancy advantage? Yeah, no.

Can you get anyone to put up a 10:1 bet against Trump, where a Trump election victory gets you 10x what you put down?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

After getting his ass whupped last election, Nate is going with Biden having a 90 percent chance of winning?

Wow. Crazy sauce.

Nate actually didn't mark Clinton as a sure winner in 2016 and he never said Clinton had it in the bag. In 2020, he's cautioned that Trump can still win multiple times.

Nate was among the most bullish forecasters on Trump.  His model had Clinton at 71% on Election Day and in the 60's a few days earlier.  A 30% chance (Trump's in 2016) is nothing to sneer at; it's the chance of a .300 hitter in baseball getting a hit in a particular at-bat.

(And it should be remembered that even 10% outcomes happen sometimes.  Ever had someone ask you to pick a number from 1 to 10, and you got it right?)

Exactly!
People just show how little they actually know about probability and models when they say this stuff.

[Wisconsin+17]

Nate was among the most bullish forecasters on Trump.

The problem is he was still wrong. It doesn't matter that he was less wrong than others who were further out - the problem is that his model was significantly wrong.

Now, there's lots of reasons for it (mostly due to GIGO effects involving bad polls), but given that his model failed last time around, would behoove Silver to correct those problems so that the next time around, his prediction would be more accurate.

His model had Clinton at 71% on Election Day and in the 60's a few days earlier.  A 30% chance (Trump's in 2016) is nothing to sneer at; it's the chance of a .300 hitter in baseball getting a hit in a particular at-bat.

Yep, he was still wrong though.

(And it should be remembered that even 10% outcomes happen sometimes.  Ever had someone ask you to pick a number from 1 to 10, and you got it right?)

Problem is that his model is demonstrating significant evidence of systematic bias. If you're running a machine that consistently veers one way, and only one way, that means that you've got a problem with the protocol that you are using. Until you go under the hood and fix the protocol, you will still veer to the same direction.

His own statement seems to indicate this is a 55-45 Biden election (PA is the only route for Biden), so if Biden is up in PA, then that's the only path for him. Trump has similar issues with Ohio + Florida.

You could even conclude that despite being down in the battlegrounds, that Trump has an advantage due to having multiple paths wrt wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Minnesota.  

[Wisconsin+17]

People just show how little they actually know about probability and models when they say this stuff.

So what are his error bars? How many standard deviations is he out? What happens if we feed different numbers into the machine - ie, assume a neutral electorate? What are his assumptions regarding states and their margins?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

People just show how little they actually know about probability and models when they say this stuff.

So what are his error bars? How many standard deviations is he out? What happens if we feed different numbers into the machine - ie, assume a neutral electorate? What are his assumptions regarding states and their margins?

I mean, you wouldn't be asking these questions if you followed the site and podcast more rigorously.
But Trump's chances go up to almost 70% if you give him PA.
If you give him Wisconsin it goes up even more.

[Stuart98]

Friendly reminder not to feed the trolls.

[Wisconsin+17]

For Florida he is assuming that Biden is +2.4 here.

Since Florida is an R+4 state, Nate is assuming a +6.4 Biden electorate nationally.

A D+2 electorate produces a Trump victory in Nate's model.

He's also assuming that Michigan, and Wisconsin are less favorable for Trump than Nevada (which seems wrong).

[ultraviolet]

You do you, we’ll find out soon enough

[GeorgiaModerate]

Nate was among the most bullish forecasters on Trump.

The problem is he was still wrong. It doesn't matter that he was less wrong than others who were further out - the problem is that his model was significantly wrong.

Now, there's lots of reasons for it (mostly due to GIGO effects involving bad polls), but given that his model failed last time around, would behoove Silver to correct those problems so that the next time around, his prediction would be more accurate.

His model had Clinton at 71% on Election Day and in the 60's a few days earlier.  A 30% chance (Trump's in 2016) is nothing to sneer at; it's the chance of a .300 hitter in baseball getting a hit in a particular at-bat.

Yep, he was still wrong though.

(And it should be remembered that even 10% outcomes happen sometimes.  Ever had someone ask you to pick a number from 1 to 10, and you got it right?)

Problem is that his model is demonstrating significant evidence of systematic bias. If you're running a machine that consistently veers one way, and only one way, that means that you've got a problem with the protocol that you are using. Until you go under the hood and fix the protocol, you will still veer to the same direction.

His own statement seems to indicate this is a 55-45 Biden election (PA is the only route for Biden), so if Biden is up in PA, then that's the only path for him. Trump has similar issues with Ohio + Florida.

You could even conclude that despite being down in the battlegrounds, that Trump has an advantage due to having multiple paths wrt wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Minnesota.  

Sigh.  These election models do not predict the outcome in a binary fashion; they map uncertainty.  For someone who claims to know so much about this, you should understand this.

You are one of the most willfully obtuse posters around.  I'll be glad when the election is over and you go back into your cave until the midterms.