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I meant false precision.
Again, the problem is the focus on "inside" information rather than accurate information.
The debate coverage is a great example. The first topic of conversation is which side's people are out there spinning more happily, not a serious discussion about points of fact or policy.
The focus is on scoops uber alles, rather than on what is actually happening--especially on the campaign trail. How many times are we told that so and so "won the week"? One of the things that Nate's analysis made very clear was that winning the week was meaningless. Pundits want to portray the race as constantly shifting and fluid. In actuality, the race was quite stable. There were two shifts: Obama's Convention and the 47% comments, and the first debate. That was it. Everything else was just ####### gravity.
I believe that's Nate's sole goal, too. I just don't believe he can accomplish it — i.e., I don't believe he, or anyone, can craft a model that's 100 percent bias-free. Nate's model isn't purely objective; he has to make all sorts of subjective assumptions on which the numbers depend, from which pollsters to use to the weighting of economic factors and all sorts of other things. And no matter how hard one tries, I doubt anyone has the ability to strip away 100 percent of their biases.
Which is why it's absurd to me that Nate Silver is getting criticized for giving a likelihood but RCP isn't for not.
So we need huge sample sizes in baseball, but in politics, a single election plus some post-election analysis is dispositive?
Nate's model doesn't account for October surprises, or an Election Day blizzard in Iowa, or the possibility of thousands of voters in Florida not properly punching or otherwise filling out their ballots, or a hundred other things that can affect election results. He's claiming four-decimal-point precision in an area in which it's impossible to be precise.
but certainly some form of tax will generate some amount of revenue
plus the cost savings of law enforcement, court work, prisons, blah, blah, blah
i say treat it as cigarettes and find out. we had prohibition for a decade or so. social experiment failed. oh well
we can't try?
One logical corollary of this position: legalize importation, subject to a tariff, and subject to Department of Agriculture inspections for purity, pests, and so on - the usual things they'd look for with any agricultural commodity. The thing I don't see clearly there is what the effect would be on Mexico. Probably in the short run the Mexican criminal organizations would continue to dominate the import/export business. But would that hold together in the long run? Anything the U.S. could do to weaken those criminal organizations would be to the benefit of Mexico.
I'm reasonably sure absolutely no one here thinks Nate is a genius. I think they think he is very, very good at his current job. A state that is not particularly unusual, and not a genius-level qualification.
We didn't need Nate's analysis for that; RCP and Pollster.com told us the same.
In theory, it should, insofar as his model is built from historical precedents of past elections. If I remember correctly, Bush under-performed his last-week polls by about 3 points; that should be a data point in Nate's model when it calculates what the probability is that Obama blows his current 2-point lead (or whatever Nate measures it as). Now, does it SUFFICIENTLY or ACCURATELY account for such possibilities? I don't know, but certainly it's the sort of thing that ought to distinguish between a poll aggregator like RCP and an election modeler like Nate.
Perhaps, but as you said, there's simply no way for Nate to accurately estimate the odds of a story like that popping up.
What were the odds of Mitt Romney's full tax returns and financial statements being leaked? What were the odds of an old Barry Soetoro arrest report popping up? What were the odds of the bin Laden death photos being leaked? We don't know, and Nate can't know.
Silver gives probabilities and projected popular votes for all 50 states and 33 senate races. There's plenty to judge his model on; it's certainly not just a binary Obama/Romney evaluation. If he nails the electoral vote while missing 10 states, that's a bad performance.
Comedy like that does not deserve to get lost in the flip.
But really the presidential election is virtually the whole ballgame.
I couldn't disagree more with this. Pundits have been lying to the public for as long as I can remember. Not being mistaken, but flatly lying. It's good to have the ######## stripped away from them. There is a 100% bias against making the election outcome seem predetermined or predictable. There's a focus on "inside" information over accurate information. There's a willingness to spin for various campaigns just to keep on getting access.
Win or lose, I hope Nate is successful at blowing up ######## mountain.
I think we may be just talking about a different set of pundits. I'm certainly not talking about the Sunday morning bloviators, if that's what you're thinking.
It isn't false certainty. In the sims he ran, Obama came up winning 84.6% of the time. That's a number. It's a model.
Steve, you can explain this elementary point a hundred more times, but they're never going to get it.
And on that note, in terms of validating his model: if Nate can correctly call all the states and the overall total, that tells us (to an extent) that his equations can translate the recent polls into results. But that does not validate his claim from July that Schlabotnik had a 71.4% chance of winning. (As a separate issue, that claim doesn't really make any conceptual sense. Bayes is rolling over in his grave. But that's a different issue.)
The debate coverage is a great example. The first topic of conversation is which side's people are out there spinning more happily, not a serious discussion about points of fact or policy.
The focus is on scoops uber alles, rather than on what is actually happening--especially on the campaign trail. How many times are we told that so and so "won the week"? One of the things that Nate's analysis made very clear was that winning the week was meaningless. Pundits want to portray the race as constantly shifting and fluid. In actuality, the race was quite stable. There were two shifts: Obama's Convention and the 47% comments, and the first debate. That was it. Everything else was just ####### gravity.
Okay, I just saw this. And if this is the sort of punditry you're talking about, I completely agree with your point.
No, we get it. We just know that it's impossible for Nate to know if the assumptions in his model are 100 percent accurate. It's simply not possible to prove or disprove that Mitt Romney had an 18.2 percent chance or a 26.5 percent chance or a 55.8 percent chance of winning the election as of May 12, 2012 (or September 2, 2012, or November 4, 2012).
That's silly. Everyone and their mother predicted Obama would win on election day in 2008. The reason Silver stood out is that he nailed 49 of 50 states (plus DC) and all of the senate races, with very small average errors for each state (smaller than Sam Wang's, for example).
What? No. I firmly believe - and have said it many times, to derision from Andy - that campaigns don't matter, that these day-to-day scores/gaffes that the media focus on have little if anything to do with the outcome. But "Nate's analysis" didn't show that; Nate's analysis showed that these things don't affect his model.
David, there's a difference between saying that "campaigns matter" and saying that every little stupid "event" or "gaffe" is of some monumental consequence. Some people try to use some sort of rigid economic formula (DJA; the unemployment rate; etc.) to predict the outcome, and Silver uses several economic indices in his model, but his "genius" (respectful eyeroll quotes) is that he's able to incorporate many factors from national polls to state polls to polling bias to economic events to a handful of other "events" such as the first debate, Sandy, etc., that might actually have affected the race. It's always going to be a work in progress, but so far he's certainly been holding his own.
No they don't get it, as JoeK so unwittingly shows in 2321, or they don't want to get it, doesn't really matter.
There are intelligent criticisms to be made of Silver's model, but that's not what we're getting, we're getting the same type of crap that creationists spew out when they think they are disproving evolution
Which means they get more into meth, cocaine, and heroin.
period. end of story
if he had tanked a good many gop members would have just walked away
i know this firsthand because i had to listen to it nonstop up to the debate
the governor ran a solid campaign.
That's fair.
But they will just move on to something else. The Cartels aren't in the business of selling MJ. They're in the business of selling contraband, and will just sell the next illegal/prohibited item that will net them revenue. We're already see this with them moving into the meth trade. And the human smuggling trade. I very much doubt that any sane country will legalize meth.
Why would you need to make it illegal to import? I don't understand McCoy's logic here at all-- maybe it's self-evident, but I'm missing it.
Just refreshed and saw this:
I am missing some of this conversation-- if there's legalization across the board, it seems like you're addressing all of these in one bundle. If we're only legalizing marijuana, we're gambling that cheap, legal and safe pot will be more appealing to people than expensive, illegal and potentially dangerous harder drugs. That's not an unsafe gamble, and certainly much better than the trainwreck that is the status quo.
Big time.
Perhaps, but the extent is unknown. If legal marijuana is heavily taxed, that will leave the cartels with pricing opportunities in their existing distribution channels. Take away the Hollywood and Wall Street types and the rich kids who will happily pay a higher price if it means no risk of legal problems and/or bad press, and I'm guessing most remaining drug users will probably be more concerned with getting the most marijuana for their money rather than complying with Uncle Sam's tax laws.
That aside, there's a huge network of people making big money from illegal drug sales. Those people aren't going to enroll in job training or go work at the mall. They'll have every incentive to undercut the legal market.
That's not entirely fair. Nate Silver is a celebrity in large part precisely because people are misunderstanding the nature of the model. And while he's done an admirable job of explaining the whole modeling limitation thing in his columns, the first thing people check on his blog are the three sets of numbers (odds, E[EV], E[PV]) above the graphs. He didn't have to set up his site that way, but he understands what sells blue jeans here.
Because of stuff like that, Nate Silver will come out of this smelling like a rose one way or the other. He's a smart, creative guy with good analytical skills. If Kevin ####### Hassett can be an economic adviser to the Romney campaign, then I'm sure there's good work waiting for Silver somewhere.
that was tremendous
Nate's model is unfalsifiable. People's religious-level belief in Nate's model is what's deserving of the "creationist" label.
why do you do this to me?????
"Barone the opinionator is a complete blowhard, but Barone the walking encyclopedia of congressional districts is a national resource. Those are not contradictory statements."
bravo.
I would be stunned if anyone who has actually seen Barone's discussions of Congressional history would be dismissive of it. But he is a very partisan blowhard in terms of predictions, as you note. And in 2012, that means he is to be pilloried for every fiber of his being.
I like to note that people are complicated - but not in today's political climate, and too often not here on BBTF. It's pretty sad.
State PPP RASColorado O+6 R+3
Florida O+1 R+2
Iowa O+2 R+1
Nevada O+4 O+2
New Hampshire O+2 O+2
North Carolina tie R+6
Ohio O+5 tie
Virginia O+4 R+2
Wisconsin O+3 tie
Thanks, I guess they haven't updated their map yet.
And I'm taking a lot of Vicodin. So I may not be coherent. Enjoy!
If anyone finds any others, let me know.
I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
The kidney stone OR the all-day election coverage.
That sounds like a good combination. I will be checking this thread frequently.
sorry there big fella
This (perhaps unintentionally) hints at two of the biggest questions about Nate's model in 2012:
1. Does Nate have access to Obama's internal polling, as he did in 2008?
2. If not, how much will that lack of access potentially hurt his projections?
Nate became a political star in 2008 based in large part on the notion that he was simply analyzing the same publicly available info. to which everyone else had access. That narrative ended up being false, as we now know Nate had an NDA with the Obama campaign that gave him access to high-quality polling info. to which no other analysts apparently had access.
Why is is unfalsifiable?
If he's wrong about a lot of the swing states, that would seem to suggest it has some "false" parts to it.
If the straight poll average does better than his formula, then that would suggest he's "false".
If he's off on a large portion of the states, but in the exact same direction/amount (say, O -0.5%), then he'll have to go through his numbers and find out why.
Unfalsifiable would be Dick Morris' prediction (using his "secret polls"). If he's right, fine. If he's wrong, then his "secret polls" were off, but we'll never see his numbers.
I couldn't recognize all the names, but in general it seems that the rightwingers are predicting a clear Romney win, and the socialists are predicting a clear Obama win.
Just like here on BTF.
Yeah I thought about that right after I hit submit. From what I understand he only got access to them at one point in time, but he did get quite a lot of them. And he doesn't have them now.
Not all the lefties here are predicting a clear Obama win, you doofus. And you'd have to ask Harvey specifically, but I don't think he's really touting a clear Romney win, either.
2. If not, how much will that lack of access potentially hurt his projections?
HTF could it hurt his projections? Seems like it would only help.
I'm pretty sure I never re-registered when I moved a few years back and even if I did it just doesn't seem worth the effort in a non-competitive state to go out of my way to try to vote.
Matt Dowd (a former Republican strategist) picked Obama 303, Romney 235.
He's not on speaking terms with Rove/Bush, but I don't think he's a Democrat at this point.
It's simply not possible to prove that Romney or Obama had X percent chance of winning as of May 12, 2012, or September 10, 2012, or even November 4, 2012. You can trust that the model was right, but you can't prove it.
***
If Nate doesn't have access to the highest-quality polling, as he did in 2008, then he's flying a little more blind compared to 2008.
Congratulations, you've debunked seeing into the future. As soon as Nate tries doing this, you're all set.
???
Nate doesn't make forecasts?
You say "socialists" like it's a bad thing?
In terms of bottom line and in terms of May 12th or September 10th, you're right, but Nate makes specific projections for every state (+DC) as well as for every Senate race. In 2010, I think he had specific predictions for governors' races, and, of course, in 2008, he had the same number of projections as he has here in 2012. Add those all up and that's something like 200 or so separate predictions. From that, you can start to get general ideas: of the candidates who Nate gave 70 - 80% odds of winning, how many actually won? What was his average error? I understand that in the grand scheme of things, nobody cares if Nate picks Romney to win Alabama by 26.4 points (that's what it says as I type this) and Romney really wins the state by 40 points or 10 points, but that's exactly the sort of thing one ought to look at in evaluating how good a job Nate Silver has done in his career (and in some ways, a state like Alabama is the true test for a lot of what Nate's doing: he shows exactly two polls there, both from the same firm, one in June and one in August; if Nate can get within a couple of points in a state like that on data that thin, that's impressive).
Pretty sure actual socialists generally dislike Obama too.
Not necessarily. Up here in Canuckistan, we're big fans of Obama.
:)
I've met a few people with strongly partisan views who actually don't bother to vote because their individual vote is so unlikely to affect the outcome. Free riders, you might say. Most non-voters are more politically disengaged, at least according to conventional wisdom. You can make a case that it's actually a good thing that a fair number of people don't think their lives will be affected much if the "wrong" party takes power.
At my work place, there was a guy who said he didn't vote in the last Canadian federal election. He made a big point about how it would be a waste of time (since the Conservatives were going to win anyways), and we were all suckers for lining up for 10 minutes to vote after work.
A few weeks later (after the Conservatives won), he wandered by a discussion a few of us were having about the federal government.
He started to rant about how "stupid" the Conservatives were, and one of my co-workers (who voted either Liberal or NDP or Green, I'm not positive) interrupted and said "You didn't vote, so why the #### should I care what you think about it?"
Icy silence.
Non-voter walked away.
I'm not as militant, but I have shut down someone who wanted to bad-mouth the Blue Jays, but claimed he didn't have a favourite team because he wasn't a fan.
So a professional weather forecaster who uses current conditions and past trends to figure out weather probabilities is just wasting everyone's time? Just look at the temperature today, and look at the temperature west of you, right?
WTF is your argument here? That Nate uses one number, instead of just letting people eyeball all the polls for themselves and make up their own number? It's actually not that easy to "eyeball" the polls and pick up on everything -- numerous polls, covering different times, over at least a dozen key states, with different margins for error, different state/pollster histories, etc. And how much those polls are likely to change in the time remaining between now and the election (and how likely one state's change may affect other states, or may be affected by national changes).
That too? I know they were mad that he praised Obama.
And since you're above it all, let me guess: you're abstaining from predictions? (Pardon me if I've missed it, this thread has been multiplying like gremlins lately)
Oh no
Well, I'm randomly in New Jersey again this week, and my flight home tomorrow lands about 6:00ish. I never got over to early voting, so there's a reasonable chance I don't get to the polls before 7:00 tomorrow night. So GA may have one less voter despite the fact that I'm obviously engaged politically.
(The only things I will really miss if I don't get there is; continuing my string of not missing elections, and voting on a charter school initiative on the GA ballot.)
bravo.
I would be stunned if anyone who has actually seen Barone's discussions of Congressional history would be dismissive of it. But he is a very partisan blowhard in terms of predictions, as you note. And in 2012, that means he is to be pilloried for every fiber of his being.
I had three separate book shops in the DC area between 1984 and 2006, and Barone used to come in a lot to the one I had in Georgetown, mostly to fill out his collection of 1930's state guides. I don't remember much of anything about his political opinions then, but in terms of political knowledge it was like talking baseball with a combination of Bill James and Fred Lieb. But two other writers, William Safire and Kevin Phillips, could have given him a pretty decent run for his money in terms of their knowledge of state and local politics almost down to the precinct level. People like that are always worth listening to no matter what you might think of their political opinions, which in Phillips' case changed a lot over the years.
I like to note that people are complicated - but not in today's political climate, and too often not here on BBTF. It's pretty sad.
Sometimes you just have to listen long enough for people to surprise you. I've been surprised here more than a few times.
91.4% Obama win. 314.4 EV's, 50.9-48.2 popular vote. If he wasn't all-in before, he is now.
A few weeks later (after the Conservatives won), he wandered by a discussion a few of us were having about the federal government.
He started to rant about how "stupid" the Conservatives were, and one of my co-workers (who voted either Liberal or NDP or Green, I'm not positive) interrupted and said "You didn't vote, so why the #### should I care what you think about it?"
My sentiments exactly, though it's multiplied a thousandfold when it's a Floridian who voted for Nader in 2000.
Just had an online chat with a former student who was a big Obama supporter (did a bunch of stuff to GOTV on campus) who is, in Florida, voting for Johnson, saying he can't stand Obama now. He spent some time in DC after graduation...no idea what got into him. Must make time for longer conversation.
Man, I was 99% confident of an Obama win in 2008 and I'm nowhere near 91% confident this time around. Looking forward to this being over. I've been invited to an election party tomorrow but I don't think I could enjoy it as my nerves will be on edge.
Right. Because voting for the guy that best represents your views is exactly like not voting at all.
If Al wanted those votes, he should have convinced the voters he was better than Nader. Shouldn't have been hard to do.
Nate is giving Romney a 13.5% chance of winning the popular vote, and a 5.4% chance of winning the popular vote but losing the election. So, he has Romney's odds of winning the election, if he wins the popular vote, at only 60%. I kind of get where that's coming from (it's the "national polls and state polls are both right and the national toss-up goes to Romney" scenario), but that's a pretty striking number.
A weather forecast that predicts what will happen tomorrow has actual real-world value. A weather forecast on February 5 that predicts there's a 16.2 percent chance of rain on November 6 doesn't have much value (although, of course, the latter forecast at least has a hundred years of history on which to base its odds, rather than ~10 unique elections).
Actually, it is, at least according to Nate. The central premise of Nate's anti-pundit stance is that elections are highly stable.
As people are noting, Nate is making two different predictions:
(1) that Obama will get (using Larry's updated numbers from 2378) 50.9% PV and 314.4 EV
(2) that Obama has a 91.4% chance of winning
#1 can be validated. #2 cannot be.
#2 cannot be validated now, and it certainly can't be validated for a random day during the campaign.
I have my suspicions about there being much of anything to this --
The supposed quote comes from an unnamed Romney staffer to HuffPost...
Now, Christie has a statement out saying that's a bunch of hogwash.
My guess is that HuffPo's "source" is Some Dude who volunteers for the campaign and just venting.
Although sympathetic to Jolly Old's umbrage, I agree with this substantially. Vote your mind and heart. And both the candidate who coveted the vote and the voter who didn't get his first or second choice should take the consequent regret as a learning experience. I voted for Nader, but Gore had no chance in my state, and if he had, I would have definitely voted for him.
There's your game-changer.
:-\
Yes, if only we had your depth. Sorry.
Right, you're abstaining from helping decide who will be president.
Ex-Veeps always get nominations (except poor Dan Quayle!) But failed VP candidates, not so good. Dole is the last one, and he wasn't really running as a former VP nominee by that point 20 years later. Mondale sort of, but he was both an ex-Veep and a failed VP nominee. Kennedy was a defeated VP nominee as he lost to Kefauver at the open convention but that just proves the point as supposedly Joe Sr wanted JFK to get enough votes to increase his profile but to lose so he wouldn't be saddled with a failed Stevenson campaign.
The last true failed VP candidate to become a presidential nominee, unless I'm mistaken, is FDR.
I haven't read a lot of these Silver-bashing columns, and now I'm glad of it. Damn, that reads like it could have been written by Murray Chass:
Nate Silver clearly needs to get his nose out of his spreadsheet and watch a campaign.
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