538 Model Megathread

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

This is my DON'T PANIC image of the day.

Momentum is not a thing, and despite things getting very close between Obama and Romney in mid-October, Obama cruised safely to victory.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

This is my DON'T PANIC image of the day.

Momentum is not a thing, and despite things getting very close between Obama and Romney in mid-October, Obama cruised safely to victory.

Mid-October this is Mid-September.

Yes, which means Clinton has more than twice as much time bounce back as Obama did four years ago.

This cycle, if Clinton is within a point of Trump on Oct. 12, the entire AF will be screaming that the sky is falling and it's all over.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

RNC Nate has somehow 'forgot to add in the Monmouth poll that has Clinton up 5 in Florida or the St Leo  poll. Of course Nate did remember to add in the Monmouth poll that has Trump up 8 in Iowa. Nate is looking much less credible this cycle.

they are there. The polls are sorted by weight not just age. Although the weighting is always a bit hard to figure out. There are five polls weighted higher than the Monmouth poll (which is the most recent and from a A+ rated pollster)

I'm guessing because at this point it's a statistical outlier.  That could change with another poll or two.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

I thought everything about Silver's most recent post...

fivethirtyeight.com/features/clintons-leading-in-exactly-the-states-she-needs-to-win/

...was spot-on, except for this puzzling line near the end: "She has one really good Electoral College path, but it’s only one path, instead of the robust electoral map that President Obama had in 2008 and 2012."

WTH? I mean, he JUST went into tremendous detail about how Clinton's closest state, New Hampshire, is safer than Trump's five closest states. And how states don't appear to be as well-correlated this election as they have been in the past.

So saying Clinton doesn't have a robust path is just silly...

Hes probably talking about the 272 freiwal.

Obama's 2012 freiwal was only 253 EV.

By this metric alone, Clinton's path is clealy easier.

All hail and bow down before the freiwal

Hillary Clinton builds the best freiwals.  And she's gonna make Trump pay for it.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Looking at Nate's probability spread, I'm trying to guess the most likely scenarios:

(Now-cast, and note that there is more than one path to any of these)

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

looks to me like 2012 + NC + AZ + NE2 is the single most likely result on here... that seems odd

Only in polls-only.  Now-cast has 2012+NC+NE2 (or other 348s), and polls-plus still has freiwal (or other 272s) as the most likely.

The reason bigger EV results spike is because we have a bunch of states that can move in concert. And the more of them flip, the more likely the next one along will flip.  If Clinton wins 2012+NC, her chances of winning AZ go up tremendously.  In fact, what polls-only is saying is that if Clinton gets at least 348 EVs, she is more likely to win AZ than to lose AZ.

If Clinton loses any of the "swing 5" (FL, NV, NC, IA, OH), her chances in AZ go way down.

Keep in mind as well, the chances of this scenario are only a bit over 1%.  The model has the chances of Clinton winning AZ at 21-28%.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

What's with the high interest in the now-cast? It's there as not much more than a curiosity and it oscillates too much.

When movement happens in the polls, the now-cast acts as a leading indicator.  It's not nearly as backward-looking as the other two models.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Ohio turns back blue on the nowcast

That's a bit bold of the model, considering that Trump has led 6 of 7 polls this month, except for one outlier at the beginning of September.  A 4-point lead nationally (according to the model) justifies contradicting that many state polls?

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Is North Carolina really going to vote to the left of Ohio and Iowa?

Iowa might vote to the right of Arizona and Georgia.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

In the Now-Cast, Trump has a better chance in Delaware (11.6%) than in Virginia (11.1%).

lol?

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

With the latest glorious Colorado polls integrated into the now-cast, Trump now is <20% across the the 272, with the exception of New Hampshire (ROFLcopter).

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

The Nowcast now has Arizona moving back into the battleground with a nearly 40% chance for Clinton to win it. Polls-only has Arizona at a 35% chance for Clinton. Watch this because the early vote starts there in 9-10 days and Clinton is setting up a real swing-state organization to bank early votes...

Does Clinton really have a substantial ground game in Arizona/Georgia, though? I thought she had given up on them in favor of maintaining the freiwal + the standard swing states.

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidential-campaign-tv-ads/
Still spending negligible amounts in them.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/trump-campaign-has-ground-game-problem/
Not a lot of field offices.



The state parties are doing more. It seems the Clinton campaign was just experimenting with AZ/GA.

I was thinking of dropping in on the Indiana office.  They keep bugging me to come in.

Dude on the phone had a Wisconsin accent and I called him on it correctly.  All of us Clintonistas are carpetbaggers, lol.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

BLUE ARIZONA ON NOWCAST!!
BLUE ARIZONA ON NOWCAST!!
BLUE ARIZONA ON NOWCAST!!
BLUE ARIZONA ON NOWCAST!!
BLUE ARIZONA ON NOWCAST!!
BLUE ARIZONA ON NOWCAST!!

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGG

Ok, I'm gonna calm my bits now.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

AK is now more likely to go to Hillary than GA on both polls plus and the nowcast and almost the same on polls only. Did I miss some Alaska polls?

If it's the Google Consumer Surveys s**t poll, I'll be very disappointed.  That POS has no business being included.  Other than that, correlation with Arizona?

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Emerson has a Republican bias because they only call landlines but still has Hillary up by 2 in AZ.

I doubt AZ will go blue in the end but she seems to be making progress.

We could see movement happen in either direction.  The range of possible outcomes is narrowing, however.  IN, MO, TX, SC, and MS were on the radar two months ago, but they've since fallen off.  I think GA may still be in the cards, but we haven't had post-debate (non-junk) polling.

Right now Clinton's ceiling is 2012 + NC, AZ, NE2, GA

I dare say Clinton's floor is the 272.  Though I can see 272-CO-PA-MI happening in an utter disaster scenario.  The window on that is closing rapidly, and might be closed permanently after the second debate.

The 538 model is of dubious use as long as it's using the junk Google surveys.  I'd like to see Nate defend them in an article.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Emerson has a Republican bias because they only call landlines but still has Hillary up by 2 in AZ.

I doubt AZ will go blue in the end but she seems to be making progress.

AZ and GA are not going to go blue. i think her resources are better spent in shoring up the firewall and trying to flip Ohio.

GA had an RCP average of Trump +4  during Clinton's September disaster, when national polling was even, or Trump was slightly ahead.  Since then there have been NO polls out of Georgia.  Don't write the state off until we get reliable post-debate polling.  If GA is R+4 and it's a 5-point race nationally, Clinton should take it, or at least come close.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

The 538 model is of dubious use as long as it's using the junk Google surveys.  I'd like to see Nate defend them in an article.

If the surveys aren't faked and if they provide numbers that are better than what you would obtain from random chance (they do), then it has use for a statistical model if given a proper weighting. This is true even if they are very inaccurate. He doesn't have to defend using them because it's just statistics. You could quibble with him about the weighting.

The data quality is poor, the likely voter screening is poor (it's self-reporting, not human-guided or at all scientific), and it's based on IP-location, which is deeply flawed.  Trump is up 8 points in Florida and Clinton is up 9 in Missouri?  Clinton up 29 in Maine and 3 in Indiana?  And only 1 nationally?  Meanwhile Clinton's +9 in Kansas is completely accounted for by the fact that IP geolocation defaults to the geographic center of the United States if no precise location can be found.

There's no justification for including this garbage.  At least not that I can see.  If Nate wants to defend it, I'm all ears.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Emerson has a Republican bias because they only call landlines but still has Hillary up by 2 in AZ.

I doubt AZ will go blue in the end but she seems to be making progress.

AZ and GA are not going to go blue. i think her resources are better spent in shoring up the firewall and trying to flip Ohio.

Just like how Republicans think PA is in play every four years.

AZ is just a noise. It's Democrat's wet dream though I'd love to be proven wrong.

AZ and GA went for Bill Clinton.  IN went for Obama.  These things aren't set in stone.

The Sunbelt will be unusually good for Hillary this year, offset by the Rust Belt being unusually bad.  This isn't a trend, just issues specific to this election cycle.  Where the new economy thrives, Hillary will do well.  Where the old economy sputters, Trump will find traction.  This is why Trump is doing relatively well in Ohio and Iowa, and Clinton is doing relatively well in Arizona and Georgia.

It's not a trend, it's new economy vs old.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Go to the current Polls-plus (ca. 7 am Oct. 7).

Trump has a 25.6% chance of winning New Hampshire and breaking into Clinton's 272.  But only a 24.7% chance of winning.  That's beautiful.  Basically, Trump needs to break down the freiwal more than Clinton actually needs the freiwal.  Because even with NH, Trump has to take FL, NC, and NV, and the correlation between NH and any of those is relatively low.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

God bless the freiwal! Such a beautiful freiwal, folks, like none you've ever seen. And it's going to grow BIGGER in the next few cycles, BELIEVE me.

So what are you saying ..... that the Firewall just got two feet higher ?

BUILD THAT WALL... BUILD THAT WALL!

We're gonna build a 322 EV freiwal.  AND WE'RE GONNA MAKE REINCE PRIEBUS PAY FOR IT!!

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

The Now-cast has one result (Clinton with 358 EV) now surpassing a 2% probability.  As Election Day draws nearer, certain "spikes" in the probability histogram will get taller in all three models.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Trump dropped down into the teens (19.1%) in the Polls-Plus forecast as of today for the first time ever!

I think he dipped below 20% a couple of times in the last several days.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Something to note: Polls-only has both ME and NE unified.  I'd be kind of disappointed if there's no CD split on either, TBH.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Nice to see that HP out of Rasmussen has moved the needle not a whit.  A C+ rated pollster with a +2 R house effect doesn't mean much to the model.

I hope Rasmussen tracks back to Clinton, but in the meantime the Trumpistas have a reason to claim he's in the lead.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

IA is now exactly tied in the now-cast.