Even with a college degree, subliminally racist suburban white woman still worries about the value of her house if “they” move into the neighbourhood.
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lol, he’s gonna go full Qanon.
Does it though? Doesn’t the 70% chance hurt our turnout more?
Look at the fallout when Clinton lost. People went nuts on his model and all polling “because it was wrong”. It further eroded people’s faith in scientific polling.
People are terrible at understanding what “70% chance to win” means. I worry it hurts more than it helps.
If every model and pundit said 70/30, there would have been no outrage about “the polls” being wrong. People got mad because literally every other trusted source, model and pundit, was repeating “no shot, no shot, no shot” like a mantra in 2016. There’s a decent chance history repeats here, but it’s still better to have Nate’s dissenting voice than not. At least a few pundits may recognize that he was the closest last time and maybe they should consider what his model says.
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Fair. As I said he isn’t wrong. I’m just bracing for the inevitable failure of the whole world to understand what his model means.
How much does this model account for election fuckery?
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I looked. It accounts zero for that. That’s part of what makes it so nightmarish.
ETA: To be clear, I’m referring to things like GOP state and local officials fucking with the mail in ballots. No accounting for that. Bog standard GOP vote suppression like closing polling places in black neighborhoods are at least somewhat accounted for since past election results have been factored into the model.
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So by that math since neither me nor my wife are, then ANYONE we meet is (duh cause we are 2 so any 3rd person makes 1/3).
What about people I meet in online forums? Oh my god. YOU MONSTERS!!!
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This isn’t quite right. 
Yeah I agree with this. Qanon is laughably ridiculous from the outside, but might actually have the greatest chance of putting us all in camps/cages since we’re all - from that theory’s perspective - evil pedophile enablers.
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The Booker thing has me heated. It was bad enough but to specifically call him out? Fuck off. I forget what documentary this story was in but I found it posted on his Facebook. I don’t think him mentioning Cory Booker was an accident.
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It looks like Nate took out thew Now-Cast version of his model I think he used to call it, the one where you could see the difference in the projection between what the model says are the odds with the election on election day vs. what the model would say if election day were today and the polls looked like they do right now, which I really liked. It’s responsible and valuable to bake-in a bunch of uncertainty to the model, because a lot can change in the next few months, but I also like seeing a clearer picture of “what’s the state of the race right now, averaged in a responsible manner?”
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He’s actually wise to do it this way. You know what the Nowcast would say. Biden ~100% because he’s currently dominating the swing state polls. If 538 publishes that, the media runs a million “Election Guru Nate Silver Gives Biden 99%” stories and people retweet the screenshot of the Nowcast out of context, which depresses turnout and, if Biden loses, undermines faith in polling and probably statistics generally.
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No but we’re close to it in terms of time. Things are going to get much worse very quickly.
I want Nate and everyone else saying Trump is the favorite. Nate is a douche bag but thats a separate conversation.
Eh…not so sure about this.
If the polls have Biden +14 or something like that, it makes election fuckery much more difficult.
If the polls say Biden +1, the value of fucking with ballots goes up astronomically.
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Sir, you’re forgetting the “Fuck you stop me” cheat code. We’re more likely to get strongly worded letters than an any actually action if there’s a large variance between the polls and results.
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I think I understand your reasoning, but I’m not sure it applies this time.
A healthy lead can depress turnout in an election where voters would prefer not to participate. I don’t think that’s the situation we’re in for 2020. Voters are excited to get this piece of shit out of office. A small cadre are excited to keep him in. Together, this motivates anti-Trump voters to run up the score and deliver a crushing victory.
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There hasn’t been a presidential election in America with a turnout of more than 60% since the early 70s. If this situation doesn’t get people voting and Trump wins then that tells me that America doesn’t deserve democracy.
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