Are tossups for cowards?
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  Are tossups for cowards?
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Author Topic: Are tossups for cowards?  (Read 12616 times)
AGA
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« on: October 31, 2020, 04:03:47 PM »

I've always thought rating a race as a tossup without any sort of actual prediction to be cowardly. It basically means you've given up on predicting the race. I prefer calling something Tilt D or Tilt R rather than a tossup. Do you agree?
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Kuumo
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« Reply #1 on: October 31, 2020, 05:27:24 PM »

I use toss-ups early on in an election cycle, but I change all remaining toss-ups to Tilt D or Tilt R before the election. Tilts are underrated.
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America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS
Solid4096
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« Reply #2 on: November 01, 2020, 05:05:58 AM »

Yes
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Figueira
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« Reply #3 on: November 01, 2020, 07:04:33 AM »

No, if you divide them into Tilt D and Tilt R, or you have a No Tossups map in addition to the regular one. But yeah, just calling a bunch of races "Tossup" with no further explanation is pretty silly.
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Chips
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« Reply #4 on: January 22, 2021, 05:33:14 PM »

Nah.
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Crucial_Waukesha
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« Reply #5 on: February 04, 2021, 04:26:30 PM »

I don't agree in general; I think Toss-up is often a more accurate prediction than Tilt D/R, actually.

A 53% or 47% chance of a candidate winning is, from a real-life perspective, basically a coin flip. If it's truly that close (i.e. not because of polling error), then it's being decided on turnout margins or small swings that are difficult to predict or model.

It seems much more reasonable to set the expectation that nobody really knows which way it'll go than to hazard a guess based on a single-digit polling advantage.

Caveat: if you're doing it for fun or as a challenge, then I'd agree that predicting Toss-up seems counterintuitive.
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Flyersfan232
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« Reply #6 on: February 14, 2021, 05:48:15 PM »

Or if In final prediction
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Torrain
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« Reply #7 on: February 15, 2021, 07:28:46 AM »

Tossup - tilt no.
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Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon
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« Reply #8 on: February 15, 2021, 10:12:14 PM »

Prior to the election, Nah. However, one should move all Toss-ups into Tilt/Lean by the morning of the election. No guts, no glory, and how much of a prediction is it really if you are leaving things in Toss-Up? 
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Orca
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« Reply #9 on: April 04, 2021, 11:52:04 AM »

I think it's fine to use tossups but I prefer maps with characterizations.
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Socani
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« Reply #10 on: May 09, 2021, 08:44:05 PM »

I don't think so, but people should really use Tilts instead of tossups for the last week of the campaigns.
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Chips
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« Reply #11 on: May 09, 2021, 10:10:11 PM »

I don't think so, but people should really use Tilts instead of tossups for the last week of the campaigns.
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Jamison5
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« Reply #12 on: May 10, 2021, 10:16:05 AM »

I do not use tossups. In 2020 I called all but 9 House races correctly, and I had seats wrong in both directions. The funny thing is that I got every seat that was within 1 point correct and 3 of the ones that I got wrong were by more than 5 points. I could have done better if I hadn't made a few mistakes.
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Buffalo Mayor Young Kim
LVScreenssuck
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« Reply #13 on: May 12, 2021, 12:12:58 PM »

Tilts are for cowards. It's saying that don't have the stones to say lean.
Toss-ups are perfectly valid

Likely isn't very useful eithe
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Hammy
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« Reply #14 on: May 15, 2021, 01:11:18 PM »

If you feel tossups are for cowards, then you're treating election predicting as some challenge of bravery--being bold purely for the sake of being bold, as if there's some prize at stake--rather than taking in real world data, and thus you are not actually making a prediction, but rather a bet.
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Nightcore Nationalist
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« Reply #15 on: May 18, 2021, 11:52:58 AM »

No.  Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and a toss up is just a toss up.  Granted, some people perhaps use it far too liberally when tilt or even lean would be the correct rank.
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Xing
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« Reply #16 on: May 19, 2021, 05:52:44 PM »

No, since you can acknowledge that a given race is essentially a coin flip, while still guessing who will actually win. I move all of my Toss-Ups to Tilt D/R close to the election, but not everyone needs to make that distinction, and not everyone considers Tilt D/R to be synonymous with Toss-Up.
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Chips
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« Reply #17 on: May 21, 2021, 10:53:45 PM »

No, since you can acknowledge that a given race is essentially a coin flip, while still guessing who will actually win. I move all of my Toss-Ups to Tilt D/R close to the election, but not everyone needs to make that distinction, and not everyone considers Tilt D/R to be synonymous with Toss-Up.

Same here.
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DS0816
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« Reply #18 on: May 24, 2021, 08:14:29 PM »

I've always thought rating a race as a tossup without any sort of actual prediction to be cowardly. It basically means you've given up on predicting the race. I prefer calling something Tilt D or Tilt R rather than a tossup. Do you agree?

If one uses “tossup” as a shield … yes.

People who follow electoral politics, and that includes people who post on this site, should be able to tell which of the two major U.S. political parties will win an upcoming U.S. presidential election cycle. This is especially the case in which there will be a White House party switch.

If one uses “tossup” for purpose of caution … it is OK if there is a long period between that time and the scheduled date of an upcoming U.S. presidential election.
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Ferguson97
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« Reply #19 on: June 16, 2021, 01:22:51 PM »

Yes.

If your map has Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina all as tossups, you're not actually making any sort of prediction. Oh you've got New Mexico going for Biden and Iowa going for a Republican? Very brave.
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Starry Eyed Jagaloon
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« Reply #20 on: June 29, 2021, 10:43:21 AM »

Absolutely not. In some races, it's genuinely impossible to tell which party is favored and there's no reason to fake certainty that doesn't exist. Tilts are pointless. That's what lean is for.

Of course, projections are pretty dumb in the first place and there's 1. no real reason to feel acclaimed/insightful after the fact if you were right because that isn't how probability works, 2. no reason to be absurdly personally invested in the slight nuances of random posters' projections and 3. no inherent courage in having a degree of certainty about any given race.
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OSR stands with Israel
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« Reply #21 on: June 29, 2021, 11:28:25 AM »

When I was doing a prediction map contest with some of my friends , a rule we had is your final prediction map was not allowed to have tossups .
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Schiff for Senate
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« Reply #22 on: July 21, 2021, 02:13:00 PM »

Depends. Directly preceding an election, people should avoid tossups (replacing them with tilts), but earlier in the cycle a couple of tossups are fine. What isn't fine is when any and all competitive races are rated tossup, and only the obvious ones aren't. Because the point of a prediction is to be specific. I can tell you the outcome of every single senate race in 2022 (which party wins, not the specific winner of the race), except for GA; NC; NV; AZ; NH; WI and PA - all the competitive elections. I'd be sure I was correct about the other ones. But my prediction would still be useless since it would be incomplete and avoid hazarding an even remotely audacious guess, and just stating the obvious (anyone can 'predict' that CA, OR, WA, CO, IL, MD, NY, CT, VT and NY will go blue and that UT, ID, ND, SD, KS, OK, AR, MO, LA, IN, KY, IA, OH, SC, AL and FL will go red - what matters is the residue of states, where the outcome isn't as obvious).
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Donerail
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« Reply #23 on: July 21, 2021, 02:55:28 PM »

"Tossup," "lean," "likely," these are all the tools of cowards — I shall not even speak of "tilts." I simply project, with 100% confidence, the precise outcome of every election. This is because I am clarevoyant.
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JustinSmith
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« Reply #24 on: September 29, 2021, 11:25:11 AM »

I wouldn't say it's cowardly, but the goal should be to refine predictions with as much certainty as possible, through accumulation of however much additional information is necessary.

Calling something a tossup is also the ultimate untestable statement. No matter who wins, the person making the claim can still say his estimate was right and luck just shifted on one side.
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