run2death wrote:Are we really pretending that Silver's models are some complex codex that the average election/political junky doesn't get?
The question is really about the value you assign to the models.
I don't know enough about the specifics of his methodologies to comment intelligently on their relative complexity. I would say, however, that, assuming the same data used in Silver's models are available to any similarly quantitatively inclined election/political junky (certainly a non-trivial assumption), it's telling how consistently well Silver's models perform compared to his competitors. Who else does as well as he does (I'm not asking rhetorically; I don't know the pop pundit/modeler landscape well enough to know)?
run2death wrote:
FiveThirtyEight was wrong in all their "Lean D" Senate races and a couple of their "Likely D" Senate projections, I believe.
This just doesn't seem like the right was of looking at it. "Lean" and "Likely" mean it could go the other way, which is what happened. They don't make predictions, and they repeat daily that nothing is certain. It's just not a right/wrong thing.
run2death wrote:Every election junky I know has been following Silver since his 2008 predictions.
And to sum up my problems with his analysis in 2016. He (and to be fair, many/most people) kept saying "History shows us! History shows us!" when it was clear Trump's candidacy had been defying history for months.
run2death wrote:And to sum up my problems with his analysis in 2016. He (and to be fair, many/most people) kept saying "History shows us! History shows us!" when it was clear Trump's candidacy had been defying history for months.
I agree with you 100% regarding his 2016 primary "analysis" which was objectively bad; I disagree that he did that in the general.
Edit: or to the extent that he did so in the general it didn't negatively influence his model, which I think held up pretty well all things considered in such a unique election cycle.
"I want to see the whole picture--as nearly as I can. I don't want to put on the blinders of 'good and bad,' and limit my vision."-- In Dubious Battle
Chris_H_2 wrote:by the way, nancy pelosi couldn't wait 24 hours before throwing her hat in the ring for house speaker and reminding a lot of people that may have voted democrat this time around why they voted for trump in 2016. nice job.
Hey dude, I just wanted to take a moment to say I really like your style.
McParadigm wrote:We all love a Florida recount, right?
Edit: you’d probably love for me to put this in the right thread, too, but disappointments abound.
Some weird stuff going on; in Broward county, it appears that 25,000 people voted for someone for Senate but not for governor.
McParadigm wrote:We all love a Florida recount, right?
Edit: you’d probably love for me to put this in the right thread, too, but disappointments abound.
Some weird stuff going on; in Broward county, it appears that 25,000 people voted for someone for Senate but not for governor.
Sorry, that should be the other way around. Looks like 25,000 people voted for governor but not for Senate.
McParadigm wrote:We all love a Florida recount, right?
Edit: you’d probably love for me to put this in the right thread, too, but disappointments abound.
Some weird stuff going on; in Broward county, it appears that 25,000 people voted for someone for Senate but not for governor.
Sorry, that should be the other way around. Looks like 25,000 people voted for governor but not for Senate.
It's about 30,000 votes now. Nelson campaign wants them hand-counted in case there was a machine error. Others suggesting it may have been poor ballot design.
