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theflyingexecutive posted:I love when he and his lackeys hide behind the "systemic polling error" but there are basically zero polls estimating D and LPV turnout like we've seen in EV so far, so any error would be in hrc's favor. That's why his "lackeys" in 538's editorial content say that Clinton is more likely to win than what the model projects. The number of dog poo poo polls being thrown into the model and new Hispanic voters being tossed out by most LV screens is something they constantly talk about. The problem with Nate's model isn't anything to do with whether or not he uses a trend line adjustment or anything else in that stupid HuffPo article. The key mistake Silver made that everything else stems from is that he assumes more data is better than less data even if the data is of dubious quality. He makes the assumption that polls with poor methodology can somehow be accounted for and averaged out. In the past when there were more polls and overall quality was better he was correct. The nature of the polls this cycle is very different, though. He also should understand that more can be wrong with a poll than just lean. He assumes that data can be derived from changes in polls even if those polls have poor methodology as long as the poor methodology is consistent. He assumes you can derive good conclusions from poor measurements. He's wrong and I think next cycle he becomes more choosy about which polls he chooses to include in the model. It seems like he probably makes this assumption because he comes from the sports world. In sports you don't usually have problems with measurement like this. The stats are the stats and the leagues keep track of them. You can trust the measurements. There are very minor issues with stuff like balls versus strikes, but those can in fact be averaged out since umpires are highly trained and most often not acting in bad faith. Pollsters are not like umpires or referees. ErIog has issued a correction as of 09:09 on Nov 7, 2016 |
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Nov 7, 2016 08:58
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theflyingexecutive posted:I agree with everything you've posted and I agree that his model's #1 source of error is input sanitization. I listen to every 538 podcast and read every article; every writer is couching their Clinton prediction with a "trump could win with significant and systemic polling error". This is technically a true statement but the chances for such an error benefitting trump over Clinton are minuscule I agree with you and I think Nate's lackeys would agree with you too. I just don't see how to code "Yo there's going to be historic Latino turnout" into the model he made months ago. Like you could assume that might happen based on Trump's rhetoric, but to put any kind of numbers on it for each state would be complete out-of-thin-air guesses. Turnout, in general, seems like it's incredibly hard to predict. Trump is also putting a big strain on it since Nate's model is tacitly assuming Trump has, on average, a similar GOTV operation to past presidential candidates even though it's clear he doesn't. That could also have been predicted, but again we have no way to know to what degree that affects different states. I feel like Nate's model has some problems, but it's also running into the buzzsaw of this election being an outlier. I think we will probably end up seeing Clinton outperform her polls in all the key states while Trump broadly underperforms his polls in every state. It's just tough to know what that's going to be like. So Nate's model is assuming that polling error is equally likely in either direction which I think from an objective numerical standpoint is the best it can do (though, admittedly, the model's fundamentals could be stronger). I wish people would use the model as it was intended to be used, as part of the basis for conclusions about the outcome of the election along with other information. Instead people really want the model to be an all-encompassing oracle rather than a tool for making sense of public polling. I blame Silver for that a bit because his PollsPlus forecast expands the scope of what the forecast is beyond what it should be so people start assuming things like turnout are taken into account in a detailed way when it's really just Polls+DubiousEconomicCorrelations ErIog has issued a correction as of 09:35 on Nov 7, 2016 |
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Nov 7, 2016 09:31
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exquisite tea posted:I think "this election is an outlier" is a dumb defense and I wish Nate would stop using it. We have so few elections that all of them will seem to be outliers, statistically speaking. I feel like candidates with record-setting unfavorables and one candidate having no GOTV to speak of makes the "this election is an outlier" defense a pretty good one. Supercar Gautier posted:When the models converge, does that mean they all get as volatile as the now-cast, or does it mean the now-cast becomes as stable as the others? Because some New Hampshire polls just single-handedly bumped up Clinton's national odds by 2%. Could be interesting to see what the final massive poll dump does to Nate's model. NowCast is just, "if the election were held today with all the current polls." That's why it's so volatile. On election day the NowCast and default view will be 100% the same. ErIog has issued a correction as of 09:43 on Nov 7, 2016 |
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Nov 7, 2016 09:38
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Convergence doesn't mean they all become volatile. It's the opposite. They all stop assuming that a November surprise could happen, and so whatever forecasting they're doing gets mostly taken out of the equation because all the data that can be known from public polling about the election will be known. Basically, as we get closer to the election the possibility space for swings gets smaller to the point where after they stop putting polls in on election day it's very close to zero. So they probably won't swing very much unless the polls themselves swing a loving ton.
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Nov 7, 2016 09:43
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exquisite tea posted:Now in defiance of all polls showing Clinton ahead of even the margins Obama needed to decisively win re-election in 2012, his model is hyping up the possibility of a Trump win. I don't think it's impossible, but it should give anybody who has followed 538 over the past three election cycles pause. It seems pretty reasonable to me. Seems like he got lucky with an okay model in 2008. 2012 was pretty average as far as elections go. Republican wave in 2010 was a little crazy, 2014 was pretty average. 2016 is the first time it's really come up against a big challenge. I guess I've never considered Silver to be the complete amazing genius that I guess a lot of other people considered him to be. So his model's performance this cycle has struck me as completely expected. So it's hard for me to understand why people are having such an off the loving wall reaction to the ESPN data journalism's take on the US election.
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Nov 7, 2016 09:47
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exquisite tea posted:Like I'm pretty sure if you knew nothing about the favorables/unfavorables of the candidates and wiped their names from the electoral map, it would look like a pretty much Generic R vs. D ballot with some electoral realignment among college-educated + non-college educated whites and women. I 100% agree with this.
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Nov 7, 2016 09:49
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Supercar Gautier posted:Wouldn't the lack of forecasting mean they're more likely to swing in whichever direction the polls do? The now-cast is the one that has always assumed there's no time left, which is why it's been the most reactive one. It depends on the specific model, but when you stop accounting for time left you also remove acceleration from the equation. So if Hillary is up 2 points more in the aggregate tomorrow than she was yesterday, they're not going to assume that upward swing will continue on Wednesday because the election already happened. That's what makes some of the models very volatile when the candidates are within MoE or slightly outside the MoE in favour of the other candidate that was out of favor. They have a tendency to assume the race is swinging when it might not be. They're not going to do that on election day.
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Nov 7, 2016 11:14
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Sebadoh Gigante posted:So are shy Trumpsters really a thing? No, close states are close. Trump didn't immediately crumble the second returns started coming in so now the rest of the media is shook. For people who have been worried about the lack of uncertainty in some of the other models this is exactly as it should be. This is exactly what a +4% sub 50% popular vote win looks like. When Hillary wins with ~300 EV's it's going to be hilarious when everybody forgets there was 2-3 hours where everyone stopped making GBS threads on Nate Silver and then they'll go back to making GBS threads on him. edit because 270-to-win is poo poo: If Hillary gets the states she's >70% likely to win she only needs a single one of the swing states that are too close to call to push her over 270. This is why they are called swing states, lol. ErIog has issued a correction as of 04:01 on Nov 9, 2016 |
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Nov 9, 2016 03:48
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Zo posted:Lmbo Yeah, feeling less good about that, but if she can pull through with a few coin flips in the swing states that were still too close to call but she also needs to pick up NV and AZ for that to work. So yeah, I'm pretty shook. ErIog has issued a correction as of 05:13 on Nov 9, 2016 |
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Nov 9, 2016 05:11
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Oil! posted:I think 538 will live on, but possibly somewhere else. ESPN is trying to cut costs, but it is a part of the Disney empire, which means that they could be moved and downsized into the ABC political crew. By having the most uncertainty and most "accurate" forecast, they have a higher chance of survival than the people that had 90-95+% certainty at other orgs that didn't have their own names on it. The Ringer should buy them and fold them into Keepin' it 1600. Let's complete the cycle.
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Nov 9, 2016 07:53
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I ate the only probation in the history of this pre-9/11 regged account defending Nate Silver's uncertainty and I now feel less bad about doing so. On the other hand.. literally loving weeping in the arms of my wife over the America I knew being dead and buried by a Cheeto Fascist hatemonger. Was shook for weeks over this poo poo. Nearly lost friends who told me I was overreacting. Suddenly, today, for some reason they're not telling me that. Wonder why. Literally not an ounce of hyperbole, this feels like 9/11 happened again while my dad died on the same day. Every time I get a 10 minute reprieve not thinking about it, it comes flooding back like trauma. Gotta get used to the fact that things are very different now. Gotta get used to the fact that thousands will most likely die when they repeal Obamacare. 9/11 killed 3,000. Repealing Obamacare kills 80,000 people, by conservative estimates, if repealed first thing during a Trump presidency. Oh wait, there's more! They control all levels of government now. So any good thing Obama ever did never loving happened. Obama's post-presidency "lets skullfuck gerrymandering" tour is also now completely dead in the water. ErIog has issued a correction as of 17:25 on Nov 9, 2016 |
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Nov 9, 2016 17:18
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PerniciousKnid posted:I feel like a lot of people are swinging from "polls can tell us who will win in three months with uncanny accuracy" to "polls are worthless garbage" as though there's no in-between. The thing I think is most loving toxic about what happened here is saying, "wow gosh all these polls were pretty hosed.." and then like 2 seconds later, "well black people didn't show up and white women voted for Trump." Too many Dems are spending a lot of time parsing bullshit polls to figure out who they can blame for this happening. Not shockingly the blame game ends with the arrow pointing in the general direction of "minorities." If they directed some of the energy outward at the GOP stooges for abetting him, media for elevating him like he was a real candidate from the second he came down the escalator, and literally all of the bad actors who conspired to get him elected then maybe we have a shot of stopping him. Instead everyone's pickin' up their BB guns and ready for the circular firing squad. NYT loving partnered with Clinton Cash guy over bullshit claims about the Clinton Foundation. Their behavior here is the same kind of behavior that led us into the Iraq war. ErIog has issued a correction as of 04:53 on Nov 10, 2016 |
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Nov 10, 2016 04:47
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Fangz posted:Nate has a pretty good post up on that: Yeah.. well aware and I like Nate, but like.. 2% is not the story of this loving election. Turnout is and the polls got the turnout way wrong, and exit polls have always been problematic. So.. yeah he did a better job parsing the polls and pointing out flaws in them. It's a big loving leap to start making conclusions about that stuff less than the margin of error, but a lot of people seem very motivated to do so. People want a blame narrative. Blaming Trump or blaming whites who tacitly endorsed Trump by staying home isn't enough for some people. We gotta start shaming women voters or minority voters or other voters who bothered to loving show up. I'm sorry, but I can't blame them. They showed up. They did their part. This is on white people who voted FOR Trump and for people who didn't find the racist fascist horrifying enough to go loving vote against him.
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Nov 10, 2016 14:20
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FMguru posted:but I'm not sure that's going to be much of a selling point to his bosses at ESPN/ABC/Disney - "I was the only poll aggregator in the media who was right about how worthless all this polling stuff you pay us to do actually is" isn't a very strong pitch. People keep saying this gleefully like it means Silver won't be around covering elections. His operation is pretty cheap. If they have to they'll keep him, jettison everybody else, and fold him into their stable of bloggers, albeit slightly more highly paid and probably with a team of his own come elections in 2020. Or he walks and does it on his own again like he did when he was first starting out. Or The Ringer hires him. The pieces of FiveThirtyEight that are expensive are the salaries of the rest of the editorial team. I think Silver's probably going to be able to continue drawing a decent living doing data journalism while trying to educate lay people about uncertainty. He's been at a different outlet each presidential election cycle. Who knows maybe WaPo buys 538. ErIog has issued a correction as of 04:24 on Nov 11, 2016 |
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Nov 11, 2016 04:21
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Lutha Mahtin posted:yeah i think displaying a probabilistic forecast as a single topline figure of "100% divided among these candidates" is not the best way to get across what your prediction is actually saying. 538's simulations obviously had a chunk of results in which the dice came up trump in some of the key states he ended up winning, such as in the midwest and upper midwest. imo it doesn't get across to the reader very well why they are giving X% of win to this candidate, based on their current display systems, compared to something (e.g.) where they broke it down and showed key state groupings that, if they all fall one way or the other, would spell victory for one candidate or the other I think they could do a better job visually displaying the results of the model, but it's not like the information you're talking about was hidden or nonexistent. They did lots of editorial content that explained it. They did multiple podcasts specifically about the model on top of talking about the results of the model on their other weekly elections podcast. I'm not accusing you of this, but it seems like people are now trying to justify to themselves why they didn't believe 538 and pointing the finger at some sort of weird messaging problem with 538 rather than back at themselves for not listening to what 538 editorial along with other people on this forum were trying to tell them about the polling and statistics.
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Nov 12, 2016 06:20
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Supercar Gautier posted:I think the part they didn't like was, the animation that the NYT chose used the metaphor of a set of rapidly twitching pressure gauges, on a night when people's nerves were completely shot. People were talking poo poo about that stuff very early in the night even when everybody thought it was going to be a Clinton landslide. It also just seemed extraordinarily click-baity like they were trying to inject more excitement and juice more excitement out of a night when anybody who's interested in looking at their website is already pretty excited. It also gave a false impression of what their model was doing and made it seem like new information was coming in every millisecond when election night is a night where information just doesn't come in that fast. It felt like they handed all their poo poo off to a bunch of web and graphic designers who went loving nuts on it without any regard for the actual data. Vox Nihili posted:https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/797590844727554048 I like Harry Enten a lot, but this is some Monday-morning-quarterback bullshit. He needs to stay in his lane. She should have done those things probably. Comey letter still won Trump the election. VRA being gutted still won Trump the election. By going with this narrative he's papering over systemic flaws and unforeseen fuckery that led to disastrous consequences. ErIog has issued a correction as of 01:23 on Nov 13, 2016 |
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Nov 13, 2016 01:15
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Vox Nihili posted:The systemic flaws in public polling were not necessarily present in the campaign's data. Some insiders have already been talking about how the results weren't far from what their data indicated. I wasn't talking about systemic flaws in polling. I was talking about systemic flaws in the election itself. That's why I mentioned the FBI gently caress up and the VRA. I know it's easy to blame the top of the ticket because they're the top of the ticket, but I think there's probably more blame that should be directed at the DNC for not doing more earlier after the VRA got gutted. That's what I mean when I say Enten should stay in his lane. He knows polling and analytics. He knows gently caress all about campaigns and what could have been done differently to move those polls/analytics. He's also biasing his thinking towards the people who showed up to the polls without engaging with the fact that who showed up to the polls was precisely an issue and was a point of fuckery. So his opinion on this is accepting the framing that who showed up to the polls was legitimate. There were ~850 fewer polling places in the US for an electorate that continues to grow in size every election. It was harder to vote in 2016 than it was any previous modern election. That's significant. He doesn't care about that because his job requires him to accept that as a prior. It's a blind spot for him, and that's fine. There's other people covering that beat. He needs to recognize that's a blind spot and not spout off with some bullshit laying this entirely at the feet of Hillary's campaign like the other factors don't exist. ErIog has issued a correction as of 02:07 on Nov 13, 2016 |
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Nov 13, 2016 02:00
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Vox Nihili posted:So what? The campaign should be accounting for polling restrictions and focusing energy and resources where they need to be overcome. Oh okay, her campaign should have been able to immediately deduce what the impacts of the first presidential race minus VRA protections in 50 years is going to be and perform perfectly to combat them. Her campaign tried. The voter registration data was something people were pointing to in the weeks before the election as a reason for her inevitable victory. The idea that her GOTV didn't try like hell is ridiculous. Please educate yourself on voting restrictions and their impact on this election. Comey letter plus VRA being gutted handed it to Trump. Hillary being a good candidate rather than a Barack Obama level great candidate was a factor. I think that's a dumb way to look at it, though. ErIog has issued a correction as of 02:22 on Nov 13, 2016 |
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Nov 13, 2016 02:19
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Vox Nihili posted:Trying to shelter it from criticism is not helpful. How is endlessly bitching about Hillary helpful? The real work to be done in the future for Democrats has nothing to do with campaigning and everything to do with winning state/local races in order to help increase voter participation. Saying Hillary needed to visit Ohio more literally means nothing for 2020. The estimates are she'll win the popular vote by about 2 points. Hillary didn't have a messaging or campaigning problem. Those things could have been better, but they weren't bad. She had a turnout and voter participation problem exacerbated enough by voter suppression that it handed the election to Trump by razor thin margins in the swing states. ErIog has issued a correction as of 02:27 on Nov 13, 2016 |
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Nov 13, 2016 02:24
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Vox Nihili posted:Excellent message discipline, just excellent. We can tell message discipline was an important factor in this election as evidenced by the winner of the EC having excellent message discipline.  Only messaging problem Hillary had was she refused to kowtow to bigots like Trump did.
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Nov 13, 2016 02:29
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Cheatum the Evil Midget posted:Don't pollsters track population stability? The time to correct is as your models are loving up, not after they have just hosed up big time. A simple distribution would have told them that it had become a significant differentiator Population stability isn't really the key issue. The key issue is that nobody ever got around to figuring out who shows up on election day and why. Pollsters treat it like a black box. They modeled turnout based on 2012 and 2008. They were wrong, and being wrong with the turnout just by that little bit made them fail to see Trump narrowly swinging the EC. You can talk about mistakes with crosstabs, but the biggest problem with all of the polling was the confidence that the same people who showed up in '08 and '12 were going to show up again in '16.
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Dec 7, 2016 12:30
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Fangz posted:There aren't really any better assumptions that could be made. Dealing with that kind of issue can only be the job of the aggregators. Pollsters should be more honest about their error bars. For instance, specific whole numbers (the way most poll results get reported) have more precision than actually exists in the data the pollsters are drawing their numbers from. They report MoE, but even the MoE is being skewed by how they choose to model the electorate. This had the affect of creating essentially a systemic error across nearly all pollsters. If pollsters were being honest the polls for most of the race would have just been ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. So the better way to go would be to stop reporting single whole numbers as gospel. If everybody's worried about predicting turnout then how about instead of modeling turnout a single way and lying about the precision of their conclusions they run their numbers through multiple turnout models and, again, report the results as a range. I understand that predicting things is hard. My critique is more with modern pollsters' self-aggrandizing penchant for fake precision. We don't need "better," assumptions. We just need more honesty about the limits of the models these pollsters are using.
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Dec 8, 2016 01:56
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