Nate Silver: "PPP is basically just duplicating polling averages".

[Lief 🗽]

Nate Silver is one of the biggest FFs among today's prominent political prognosticators. Right up there with Sean Trende.

No, no. Sean Trende actually has interesting and unique analysis. Nate Silver just popularized averaging polls.

[Tender Branson]

Nate Silver shouldn't bitch around and take some vacation before his head explodes.

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[Foucaulf]

I was going to say that Silver didn't allow for poll comparison to lagged averages in order to deduce a causal effect, but turns out he did (the y-axis is "deviation from trailing polling average"). I guess, to make a more accurate estimate of PPP's behaviour, you can estimate the effect on a time-series of PPP polls of time-series of lagged polls from other agencies.

The illiteracy in this thread is a sight to behold, though. Everyone knows that polling data have absurdly high non-response rates and is susceptible to questionable weighing, so why does no one seem to care - and even call out people who think this is a bad thing? Maybe it's because, if herding is true, the primary good dished out by pollsters is confirmation bias, which is what Atlas posters really want.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yes, the standard of ethics in the polling industry is so low that anyone - even if they are a prick or whatever - prepared to play watchdog deserves praise not condemnation.

[Boston Bread]

I think the reason PPP consistently stays the polling average is that most of the herding towards the mean at the end are done by swingy or junk polls to salvage their reputation while the more established ones are more consistent. Ras and Gravis actually recalled polls because they where outliers for heaven's sake! PPP is one of the better pollsters so I don't get the hate towards them.

[eric82oslo]

Nate Silver is one of the biggest FFs among today's prominent political prognosticators. Right up there with Sean Trende.

Sean Trende is a white supremacist, not a freedom fighter. I totally agree on Nate Silver though. More objective than Silver is very hard to get, if at all possible.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

So wait, is Nate Silver actually calling PPP out on fraud here?

[Recalcuate]

I don't know if Silver has a "beef" with PPP, per se. I think the article is mainly highlighting the herd mentality of pollsters as Election Day draws near to explain why you have some of the polling errors that they've had the last few cycles.

It also explains why the "Gold Standard" pollsters like Marquette in Wisconsin and Seltzer and Iowa that didn't follow the herd, were closer to the final results there for WI-Gov and IA-Senate.

[Slander and/or Libel]

What the heck is wrong with Silver? He seems to have an axe to grind with everyone. One day he trashes PPP, the next Sam Wang and who knows who will be next.

To be fair, in Sam Wang's case it was not Silver who started that "flame war". Wang had been trashing Silver long before the vice versa occured.

Silver's dislike of PPP is another matter though.

Not true, about Sam Wang. Wang disagreed with Silver's methodology (and others like it) and said so. That's very different from trashing him. In response, Silver put up a screed singling out Wang's approach as uniquely wrong among prognosticators.

[Slander and/or Libel]

I think the reason PPP consistently stays the polling average is that most of the herding towards the mean at the end are done by swingy or junk polls to salvage their reputation while the more established ones are more consistent. Ras and Gravis actually recalled polls because they where outliers for heaven's sake! PPP is one of the better pollsters so I don't get the hate towards them.

[SPC]

Nate Silver shouldn't bitch around and take some vacation before his head explodes.

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If anything, such a lack of noise in their polling would tend to corroborate Silver's hypothesis that PPP does some fudging to reduce perceived noise rather than refute it.

[eric82oslo]

What the heck is wrong with Silver? He seems to have an axe to grind with everyone. One day he trashes PPP, the next Sam Wang and who knows who will be next.

To be fair, in Sam Wang's case it was not Silver who started that "flame war". Wang had been trashing Silver long before the vice versa occured.

Silver's dislike of PPP is another matter though.

Not true, about Sam Wang. Wang disagreed with Silver's methodology (and others like it) and said so. That's very different from trashing him. In response, Silver put up a screed singling out Wang's approach as uniquely wrong among prognosticators.

I don't think Sam Wang has much credibility left when he claimed just months ago that it was almost 100% certain that Democrats would keep the Senate majority. I don't know why people keep defending Sam Wang like it was the most logical thing in the world. On the other hand, it's not much better to defend the Washington Post's model, which most of the season claimed that it was 94-95% likelihood of Republicans gaining the Senate majority. Sure, they were right in the end, yet that bold claim had no substance what so ever when it was laid out several months before the election, when Democrats were still leading in most congressional polls. Sure, Sam Wang is even much, much worse than Washington Post, yet they have both made an absolute ridicule of themselves all year long. All other models were about equally great though.

[SPC]

What the heck is wrong with Silver? He seems to have an axe to grind with everyone. One day he trashes PPP, the next Sam Wang and who knows who will be next.

To be fair, in Sam Wang's case it was not Silver who started that "flame war". Wang had been trashing Silver long before the vice versa occured.

Silver's dislike of PPP is another matter though.

Not true, about Sam Wang. Wang disagreed with Silver's methodology (and others like it) and said so. That's very different from trashing him. In response, Silver put up a screed singling out Wang's approach as uniquely wrong among prognosticators.

I don't think Sam Wang has much credibility left when he claimed just months ago that it was almost 100% certain that Democrats would keep the Senate majority. I don't know why people keep defending Sam Wang like it was the most logical thing in the world. On the other hand, it's not much better to defend the Washington Post's model, which most of the season claimed that it was 94-95% likelihood of Republicans gaining the Senate majority. Sure, they were right in the end, yet that bold claim had no substance what so ever when it was laid out several months before the election, when Democrats were still leading in most congressional polls. Sure, Sam Wang is even much, much worse than Washington Post, yet they have both made an absolute ridicule of themselves all year long. All other models were about equally great though.

Washington Post deserves props for everything except their >97% chance Hagan wins reelection.

[njwes]

Sam Wang was perhaps the worst of all the modelers and prognosticators this cycle. Not sure why criticism of him should be treated as some sort of iconoclasm (except for, you know, the obvious reason: hackish red avatars).

Re: Krugman, he is legitimately a mean-spirited asshole. Why shouldn't Silver defend his site from what he sees as unfair criticism?

[Vosem]

Nate Silver is one of the biggest FFs among today's prominent political prognosticators. Right up there with Sean Trende.

Sean Trende is a white supremacist, not a freedom fighter.

what is this

[Landslide Lyndon]

Re: Krugman, he is legitimately a mean-spirited asshole. Why shouldn't Silver defend his site from what he sees as unfair criticism?

Because Krugman's criticism was rather mild and because his opinion was pretty much in line with the majority of people who considered Silver's new site a big disappointment.