Same as 2016

  • CanYouFeelItMrKrabs [any, he/him]
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    4 years ago

    They gave Trump a 30% chance of winning when the NYT said 2%. I fail to see how 538 got owned

    Edit: Trump had a 10% chance of winning before the Comey letter. I think things changed a lot in the last week and other pollsters were slow to factor that in

    • DasKarlBarx [he/him,comrade/them]
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      4 years ago

      I meant more recently than 2016, they've largely been getting less correct in their predictions.

      Second to that, comparing them to NYT is probably unfair cus the NYT is more often incorrect than correct.

    • crispy_lol [he/him]
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      4 years ago

      I hate seeing people give them partial credit for being less wrong in 2016. It's their job to predict it, and they predicted wrong. "But they were 20% less wrong than other sites!" So what? I don't want to subscribe to the notion that their predictions work because they're less wrong but still wrong.

        • crispy_lol [he/him]
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          4 years ago

          It's incorrect because they didn't get it right. No one is saying 30% can't happen, but we're saying why are you putting value into the predictors if they consistently make predictors that turn out wrong.

          • EugeneDebs [he/him]
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            4 years ago

            If a weatherman says the chance of rain is 30%, and it rains, his forecast is not necessarily incorrect. You need repeated trials to confirm accuracy.

            If 10/10 times he predicts a 30% chance of rain it rains, then yeah, he's a bad forecaster.

            If 3/10 times he predicts 30% chance of rain it rains, then he's pretty accurate

            • Orannis62 [ze/hir]
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              4 years ago

              Then if we're talking about an event that will only happen in these circumstances one time, what exactly is the value of these types of predictions? They could have given Trump a 1% chance of winning and still said "well that's not impossible". That's not incorrect, but it sure sounds a lot like ass-covering and it makes you wonder why we even listen to this

              • CanYouFeelItMrKrabs [any, he/him]
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                4 years ago

                It's valuable because it's interesting. Might help you plan for future events. I might take an umbrella if there is a 30% chance of rain but not if there is a 1% chance

              • EugeneDebs [he/him]
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                4 years ago

                Keep in mind, it's not just a prediction of the overall result, they are also forecasting each state, D.C., and the popular vote, so it's more like an ensemble of 52 predictions, so you can also judge the accuracy of each of those forecasts as well.

          • PeterTheAverage [he/him]
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            4 years ago

            I don't really get this logic. If he had given Trump a 49.9% chance of winning would he have still been wrong?

            • crispy_lol [he/him]
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              4 years ago

              I mean, not really, but you're essentially saying "If he said it was 50-50 instead of likely Hillary would he have been wrong?" Well, no, but he didn't say that.

      • Liberalism [he/him,they/them]
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        4 years ago

        We can't even say they were wrong. Things with a 30 percent chance of happening happen all the time.

        How often? I can't say.