FiveThirtyEight (Nate Silver) is back.

[Angel of Death]

Link for the lazy.

Couldn't think of an ideal board to put this in, so I settled for the most active one.

[hopper]

I thought we would miss the Presidential Polls for 2016 or Nate Cohn would take over for him over at the New York Times.

[traininthedistance]

I like the Isaiah Berlin shout-out in their new logo.

[Antonio the Sixth]

It's such a shame he won't be focusing on politics anymore.

[Warren 4 Secretary of Everything]

It's such a shame he won't be focusing on politics anymore.

He'll still cover it, just not like an addict anymore.

[Potatoe]

Return of a Legend!

[Хahar 🤔]

It's such a shame he won't be focusing on politics anymore.

I'm glad he'll finally be focusing his attention on relevant things that people care about.

[DINGO Joe]

It's such a shame he won't be focusing on politics anymore.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

It's such a shame he won't be focusing on politics anymore.

I'm glad he'll finally be focusing his attention on relevant things that people care about.

Lol...

[publicunofficial]

It's such a shame he won't be focusing on politics anymore.

He's still covering it, just with a smaller focus.


Mostly because

A) Sports is more fun to talk about
B) We're still 2 years off from the only race anyone actually cares about.

[Niemeyerite]

It's such a shame he won't be focusing on politics anymore.

He'll still cover it, just not like an addict anymore.

I think he'll still be an addict

BTW, Clinton96, I've sent you a PM. Did you just ignore it or didn't read it???

[Adam Griffin]

This is bullsh**t. It's bad enough that I actually have to click on a link from the main page to see political-related analysis, but when I do, there aren't even any charts, graphs or maps readily in view. Go DIAF, 538.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

IIRC he got his start in baseball statistics, so this makes sense.

[Хahar 🤔]

He did. I for one knew about PECOTA long before 538 was ever a thing.

[Nichlemn]

Kind of pity as I don't really care about sports, especially American ones. Never mind though, the site looks like it'll have more content in all areas so it's not really at the expense of anything.

[Antonio the Sixth]

It's such a shame he won't be focusing on politics anymore.

I'm glad he'll finally be focusing his attention on relevant things that people care about.

I don't give a sh*t about what other people care about. I'm a politics nerd and I care about politics, and 538 was one of the few websites that matched my interests.

[LeBron]

Our new Keith Olbermann. Switching from the invigorating world of politics (though Olbermann was technically fired) to focus on batting averages, touchdowns, the draft, endzones and all that other crap that nobody cares about. It's terrible. He would rather jump the bandwagon than write about what actually is important.

I'm just reading through some of these recent political articles of his and not only are there fewer of them, but he just doesn't seem that interested in writing about any of it since he's mainly just elaborating on a bunch of polls and data and not even going in depth. We need more political articles AND more length and structure to them!

[Lurker]

It's such a shame he won't be focusing on politics anymore.

I'm glad he'll finally be focusing his attention on relevant things that people care about.

I don't give a sh*t about what other people care about. I'm a politics nerd and I care about politics, and 538 was one of the few websites that matched my interests.

Indeed. There's a million other sites for "Lifestyle" stuff and things like that. I am a sports fan, but 99% of the coverage will (understandably) focus on American sports, which Europeans care nothing about. 

[traininthedistance]

Our new Keith Olbermann. Switching from the invigorating world of politics (though Olbermann was technically fired) to focus on batting averages, touchdowns, the draft, endzones and all that other crap that nobody cares about. It's terrible. He would rather jump the bandwagon than write about what actually is important.

I'm just reading through some of these recent political articles of his and not only are there fewer of them, but he just doesn't seem that interested in writing about any of it since he's mainly just elaborating on a bunch of polls and data and not even going in depth. We need more political articles AND more length and structure to them!

Olbermann, like Silver, got his start in the world of sports and I would assume that's where both of their real passions lie.  If anything the political stuff was, for the both of them, the switch away from "invigorating" things.

If you read The Signal and the Noise, you'll note that Silver admits he didn't originally care thaaat much about politics and got into it partially because the bar for competing analysis was just so laughably low, that he could make a mark for the better while still only giving eighty percent.

Oh, and if you had any idea of what you're talking about you wouldn't be using "batting average" as an example here.  I don't follow baseball much and even I know the statheads have justly consigned it to the Stone Age.  

(Also, I'm pretty sure that even most lefties know by now that Olbermann is an imperious jerk not worth listening to; his departure from political commentary was no great loss.)

[Хahar 🤔]

(Also, I'm pretty sure that even most lefties know by now that Olbermann is an imperious jerk not worth listening to; his departure from political commentary was no great loss.)

Alas, his sports commentary is even worse. He's always had a remarkable way of making even opinions I agree with seem distasteful; fortunately when it comes to sports I rarely agree with him.

[hopper]

(Also, I'm pretty sure that even most lefties know by now that Olbermann is an imperious jerk not worth listening to; his departure from political commentary was no great loss.)

Alas, his sports commentary is even worse.

His show on New Years Day commentating on past bowl games was funny.

[Orser67]

I'm a sports and politics nerd so I don't mind the new focus. But I'm not impressed with the articles I've read so far. I understand that not everything has to be a long read, but all of the articles are laughably short. But hey, maybe they'll get longer/better. And also, maybe Fivethirtyeight's presence on ESPN.com will help more people get interested in politics.

[traininthedistance]

It's a bit underwhelming. I suppose I'll check back in a few weeks. It'd be a huge disappointment if there's nothing of interest going on here.

I think this analysis of Chavismo and its discontents should be plenty meaty and interesting for everyone here.  But I agree that there's a sadly higher proportion of fluff in the new site.

[pbrower2a]

Our new Keith Olbermann. Switching from the invigorating world of politics (though Olbermann was technically fired) to focus on batting averages, touchdowns, the draft, endzones and all that other crap that nobody cares about. It's terrible. He would rather jump the bandwagon than write about what actually is important.

I'm just reading through some of these recent political articles of his and not only are there fewer of them, but he just doesn't seem that interested in writing about any of it since he's mainly just elaborating on a bunch of polls and data and not even going in depth. We need more political articles AND more length and structure to them!

Olbermann, like Silver, got his start in the world of sports and I would assume that's where both of their real passions lie.  If anything the political stuff was, for the both of them, the switch away from "invigorating" things.

If you read The Signal and the Noise, you'll note that Silver admits he didn't originally care thaaat much about politics and got into it partially because the bar for competing analysis was just so laughably low, that he could make a mark for the better while still only giving eighty percent.

His 80% is far richer than many others' 100% (or for that matter, to use some barbarous talk from the sports world, "110%"). The bar was indeed low. I've learned a few things from Nate Silver, one of which is that 'seat-of-the-pants' analysis is unreliable. In 1992 I was surprised that Bill Clinton could win the Presidency because I knew that he was not going to win Texas as Jimmy Carter did, and I thought that Clinton reminded me much of Carter.

Most people discussing the 2012 Presidential election from the Right were proclaiming such bilge as "Obama is so horrible that I can't imagine how anyone could vote for him!" Replace that with "1984" and Ronald Reagan (!!!) and many were saying much the same only to be surprised after one after another state that 'could never fall for Reagan" did. In 1984 such was more excusable because polling was still primitive.

In 2012 I was telling people that Mitt Romney typically held about a 3% chance of winning the Presidential election based upon the dynamics of the time (electoral polarization of most states and random scatter of those few states that could decide the election) -- and that Romney had to win every one of those states to have a chance. Figuring for most of the year that all of the states in question were 50-50 propositions and that there was no way to win them all by tailoring a message to fit all of those states at once, I could simply take the number of such states (X) as a power of 0.50 and give Mitt Romney's chance of election as 0.5^X.

    

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Precisely. Batting average as a conventional assessment of the batting skills of a hitter says little about a player unless it is outside of a range from about .230 to .320. It is possible for someone to be one of the better hitters in the game while hitting .250 even if such is below average -- if one is hitting for power and drawing walks in huge numbers because walks put runners on base and extra-base hits do much more damage than do singles -- and for someone hitting .295 (far above average) to be of little value if a singles hitter who makes a huge number of baserunning mistakes and grounds into an inordinate number of double plays. Furthermore, there are park effects that establish that the usual .260 hitter for the Cubs or Red Sox is a substandard hitter while the usual .260 hitter for the Tigers or Dodgers is above average as a hitter.  

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Olbermann probably heard a bunch of right-wingers who get listened to despite being imperious jerks and figured that he could do it better. Liberals have even less tolerance for that stuff.

[pbrower2a]

So here's how I concluded that Romney was a longshot in August 2012:

red -- Romney sure thing
blue -- Obama sure thing
white -- pure toss-up
gray -- insufficient polling

Barack Obama was one state away from closing the election, and the five states in white could each do so. As 50-50 propositions, random chance alone suggested that Barack Obama had 31 chances in 32 of being re-elected or nearly a 97% chance of winning.  The nature of the election had to change for Romney to have more than a long-shot chance, and the Obama campaign machine sealed the deal in Colorado, Ohio, and Virginia -- and Mitt Romney lost Florida (I think through some eleventh-hour Spanish-language ads that tried to link President Obama to vile dictators Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez but blew up instead). Obama ended up with four of the five.

States in gray? I just didn't see enough polling. Any one of those (except NE-02) would have decided the election, but he was not going to win Arizona without also winning Colorado, Indiana without winning Ohio, or Missouri without also winning Ohio, Virginia, or North Carolina.  

So what would force the opposite conclusion?

This:

Rick Scott has an economic miracle and is wildly popular -- and Obama is largely unwelcome in Florida. The automotive industry is in bad enough shape that Michigan is at risk of voting for anyone who promises to undo Obama's economic bungling... and Ohio is gone. There's a religious revival in Pennsylvania that convinces enough people that Barack Obama is the Antichrist that the state is at risk of going R for the first time since 1984. Virginia has reverted to its 'usual' pattern of voting for the Republican nominee for President, and North Carolina is long gone.  Things are close enough in New Hampshire that it's a 50-50 proposition again, and Barack Obama can't afford to lose the state. Because Iowa and Wisconsin are so similar to each other that they vote together about every time (the states were decided by a few thousand votes in 2004 and went opposite ways -- barely -- that year) I effectively treat Iowa and Wisconsin as one state -- and they aren't going very well for the President. Colorado is a Vegas crap-shoot that must go right.

Except for Wisconsin and Iowa which I treat as if one state (and if Obama loses either he loses the election).  

This time the 'inadequate polling' applies to Minnesota, which isn't going R unless Wisconsin and Iowa both do -- and in the last few days New Jersey, where President Obama has lost much credibility due to mishandling of Superstorm Sandy. If he loses New Jersey he also loses the election.

Five independent events (again I combine Iowa and Wisconsin) function as coin tosses. Does anyone want to bet on calling five heads coin tosses?

In this scenario, President Obama makes promises that few people believe that he can accomplish and begins to look like a dangerous radical who has given up the moderation that he ran on in 2008. Successful politicians incumbents on their records and win; unsuccessful incumbents run from their records and lose.