4 reasons why you’re better off ignoring it.

On average, the D less R margin in the early vote mispredicted the final Clinton/Trump margin by 14 points! Pollsters get yelled at when their polls are off by even 3 points, and anything more than that is considered an absolute disaster. Imagine if a poll was off by 14 points: no one would ever listen to it again! And yet we get the same frankly amateurish analysis of the early vote in every election.

  • geekwithsoul@lemm.eeOPEnglish
    1610·
    22 days ago

    2008

    Silver’s final 2008 presidential election forecast accurately predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, missing only the prediction for Indiana.

    2010

    His 2010 congressional mid-term predictions were not as accurate as those made in 2008, but were still within the reported confidence interval. Silver predicted a Republican pickup of 54 seats in the House of Representatives; the GOP won 63 seats. Of the 37 gubernatorial races, FiveThirtyEight correctly predicted the winner of 36.[71]

    2012

    At the conclusion of that day, when Mitt Romney had conceded to Barack Obama, Silver’s model had correctly predicted the winner of every one of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.[79][80] Silver, along with at least three[81] academic-based analysts—Drew Linzer,[82] Simon Jackman,[83] and Josh Putnam[84]—who also aggregated pollsfrom multiple pollsters—thus was not only broadly correct about the election outcome, but also specifically predicted the outcomes for the nine swing states.[85]

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nate_Silver

    I’d list others but I doubt you’d read it anyway

    • foggy@lemmy.world
      179·
      22 days ago

      🙄

      I think the youth call what you’re doing “glizzy” or something?

      Nate Silver’s Political Prediction Misses:

      • 2008 Democratic Primaries – Miscalculated early on, adjusted projections as race continued.
      • 2016 Republican Primaries – Low initial odds for Trump’s nomination.
      • 2016 Presidential Election – Predicted Clinton over Trump with 71.4%.
      • 2020 Presidential Election – Projected Biden 89% to win; closer in swing states.
      • 2018 Midterm Senate Races – Overestimated Democratic chances in key states.
      • 2014 Midterms – Underrated Republican gains, particularly in the Senate.

      Nate Silver’s Sports Prediction Successes:

      • PECOTA Model – Accurate MLB player performance forecasting.
      • 2008 MLB Playoff Predictions – Success with playoff team forecasts.
      • March Madness – Generally accurate bracket predictions for early rounds.
      • 2012 MLB Season – High accuracy in team win predictions.
      • NBA Forecasts – Reliable win projections using Elo ratings.

      You wanna keep going tit for tat, homie? It won’t shake out in your favor. Let’s see you show me some sports failures. I’ll keep showing you successes.

      You keep showing me political successes. I’ll keep showing you failures.

      Let’s see who burns out first.

      Ask his wife or kids. Or just check their social media.

      The dude is talented. Not in politics.

      • mildlyusedbrain@lemmy.world
        32·
        22 days ago

        I don’t think you understand statistics well enough to speak on this.

        2016 Presidential Election – Predicted Clinton over Trump with 71.4%.

        The above for example was showing outcomes of simulations. Many polls reported way higher outcomes for Clinton and he was one of the few models showing a trump outcome and Trump’s path to victory was in the simulation results. This wasn’t a fail but a success of his model

        Like when you are told that in a coin flip, heads is the outcome 51% of the time and hear every coin flip will be heads

      • itsJoelle@lemmy.world
        1·
        22 days ago

        Do you mean “glazing”? Cause the homie reads as such.

        I haven’t come across the term “glizzy” before so it might be new.

      • geekwithsoul@lemm.eeOPEnglish
        1014·
        22 days ago

        Weirdly antagonistic tone and not sure when Silver pissed in your Wheaties, but you obviously have a hang up about him. No desire to go tit for tat, other than to say he’s been more reliably accurate over time than anyone else when it comes to politics. It’s like baseball - if you lifetime hit for .300, everyone is going to know your name.

        Also, the whole point of the article is that early voting patterns are not indicative of final results. That’s not polling analysis or data modeling, that’s just historical fact. I don’t think Silver is perfect, and he’s got problematic issues, but on this point he’s just pointing out the thing the media ignores because it gives them headlines galore for the last two weeks before the election.

        • flicker@lemmy.world
          112·
          22 days ago

          I gotta weigh in on that “weirdly antagonistic tone,” too. You literally said you’d list more but you doubted that person would read it? Just antagonistic all over.

          You started it!