I'm not really invested in defending Nate Silver or in the results of the presidential election, I just think statistics are cool.

Being a liberal doesn't make you bad at stats. The degree to which 538's models reflect personal value judgments is almost certainly minimized, so dismissing them out of hand because they come from Nate Silver and use cutesy animal drawings doesn't really "own the libs."

"But 2016" they gave Trump more of a chance than anyone else did, and besides they've since updated their models to avoid those specific problems.

And, I'm sorry, even a really really shitty statistical model is going to be a better election predictor than your opinion on what the "mood on the street" is or whatever.

Of course, Trump's voter suppression campaign is a huge wild card in all of this.

  • cadence [they/them,she/her]
    1·
    4 years ago

    Being a liberal doesn’t make you bad at stats.

    Okay, but did you see this one? https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-donald-trump-isnt-a-real-candidate-in-one-chart/

    • vanityfairz [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I swear this is said to death on every Nate Bronze thread. stats and punditry are two different things.

      Two points on this article:

      1. Trump announced his candidacy on June 16, 2015, this was posted on the same day of jun. 16, 2015...I mean apart from Bill Mitchell, did ANYONE think that at this point think he was a serious candidate? He only started steam rolling polls by July 2015. This is literally preaching to the choir clickbait
      2. Favorability is probably a good campaign marker (that being said I haven't seen any article discussing it in detail) but Trumps ability to find and build a base even with massive unfavourability amongst the general population is probably what made him such a strong outlier contender for that election
    • CarlTheRedditor [he/him]
      3·
      4 years ago

      This is probably "patient zero" in terms of why everyone should ignore 538's punditry.