538 Model Megathread

[The Other Castro]

It's a young model and extremely reactive to the polls right now, which there aren't enough of. Betting markets have been fairly stable for a while now. Give it time.

[The Other Castro]

He also has 57.5% chance of winning the presidency.

If it were held today.

[The Other Castro]

The Now-Cast now shows a 270-268 Trump win if you assign all state to their most likely outcomes, with ME-2 giving Trump the win.

[The Other Castro]

The Nowcast now has NE-2 at Clinton +0.2%

[The Other Castro]

Nowcast now has Clinton leading in AZ, GA, and SC (!)

[The Other Castro]

Polls-plus is up to 30%!!  Polls-only and Nowcast are 26 and 27, respectively.  The surge is real, and it wouldn't surprise me if Trump takes the lead soon!!

That's not how that works. That's not how any of this works.

[The Other Castro]

McMullin's chance of winning Utah is now over 30% in the Nowcast.

[The Other Castro]

Do we generally view Nate's model as more reliable than the others?

Garbage in, garbage out is how I'm viewing his model right now.

[The Other Castro]

Now I think about it, when Silver went on a mini-rant during a recent podcast, emphasising how big he thought Trump's chance of winning was, he sounded genuinely scared. I wonder if he sees it as part of his mission to get Democrats to take the threat seriously and go out and vote. If so, I can't help feeling there are better ways of doing it.

He applied punditry over his own model's numbers during the primary and is now overcompensating for it. The model is still accurate IMO

The model is accurate for what would be implied by some of the polls inputted. The problem is that most of the polls we've gotten recently are trash so they have a much greater say in the result.

[The Other Castro]

RIP Nate Silver

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http://www.theonion.com/article/nate-silver-gunned-down-attempting-cross-mexican-b-54595

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Lol

[The Other Castro]

Ryan GrimVerified account
‏@ryangrim
@NateSilver538 Sick burn, non-bro.

AWWWWWSHEEEEEEEEEET it's on.


NERD FIGHT!

[The Other Castro]

Tapping out due to drowning in dogsweat, Nate Silver calls in his wingman Harry Enten:

(((Harry Enten))) ‏@ForecasterEnten  12s13 seconds ago
You can agree or disagree with the model. (I have some qualms myself.) But it's empirical & tested. To say otherwise is idiotic.

[The Other Castro]

Now Nate is trying to pin the Great Recession on Ryan Grim. Truly a sight to behold.

Nate Silver Verified account
‏@NateSilver538
Not just an issue in elections models. Failure to understand how risks are correlated is part of what led to the 2007/8 financial crisis.

[The Other Castro]

Ok yeah Ryan was kind of wrong on some things, though I still don't really agree with Nate's adjusted polling methods.

[The Other Castro]

And Matthew Dowd enters the mix! We got a ballgame folks:

Nate SilverVerified account
‏@NateSilver538
The problem is that we're doing this in a world where people—like @ryangrim—don't actually give a sh**t about evidence and proof.

To Nate:
Ryan Grim ‏@ryangrim  1m1 minute ago
@NateSilver538 ur trend line adjustment was certainly theoretically defensible 18 mos. ago, but you can't ignore the wild effect it has had

To Nate:
Matthew Dowd ‏@matthewjdowd  3m3 minutes ago
@NateSilver538 @goodnewsgoddess @ryangrim couldn't that be said of you Nate in the GOP primary? Data said trump would win then.

To Ryan:
Nate Silver ‏@NateSilver538  2m2 minutes ago
@ryangrim: Very professional of you not bother asking me for comment ahead of time. So unbelievably lazy.

[The Other Castro]

I love a good statistician nerd fight. Meanwhile Harry Enten is just chillin:

(((Harry Enten))) ‏@ForecasterEnten  13m13 minutes ago
So many subtweets to be had.

[The Other Castro]

Now Jon Lovett and Dave Wasserman get into it.

Jon LovettVerified account
‏@jonlovett
I criticize forecasts all the time, but hard to come up with a worse way to criticize the Silver model than the argument in this piece.

Dave Wasserman ‏@Redistrict  43s43 seconds ago
Dave Wasserman Retweeted Nate Silver
Remember when same thinking led HuffPo to decide in 7/15 to cover Trump in Entertainment section, not Politics?

Ryan Grim is probably feeling some regret now.

[The Other Castro]

Ryan Grim ‏@ryangrim  20m20 minutes ago
@NateSilver538 the piece links to your public reasoning. Happy to add any further explanation you want in there

Nate Silver ‏@NateSilver538  4m4 minutes ago
@ryangrim: The article made clear you have **no f**ing idea** what you're talking about. That's why you contract people **ahead of time**.

Ok chill there a bit maybe.

[The Other Castro]

Ugh now I'm in the awkward position of hoping Clinton loses North Carolina just to keep everyone from going OMG HE DID IT AGAIN! 50/50 STATES!!!!!!!1!

[The Other Castro]

Ugh now I'm in the awkward position of hoping Clinton loses North Carolina just to keep everyone from going OMG HE DID IT AGAIN! 50/50 STATES!!!!!!!1!

Ohio!

That would be the ideal separator, though it's probably easier to lose NC than to win OH. This is all in jest so whatever.

[The Other Castro]

Because I was very close to giving Florida to Trump in my final map, which would have meant getting one less state wrong. My trust in his model was the reason I kept it in Hillary's column.

He used the same polls that others used, but was much more cautious than many other projectors at the time. The model was heavily dependent on polls, and if the polls aren't good then the model isn't going to be as accurate. For what he had to work with, he did relatively well.