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Re: Nate Silver's House of Representatives Projections
Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2018 8:24 am
by silverscreenselect
Appa23 wrote:Bob78164 wrote:To be precise, Nate’s Classic model has the Democrat at 58% to win the seat, which Nate classifies as a toss-up. He’s probably projecting about a 1-point win. The way you wrote this, it looks like you think Nate is predicting (or projecting)that the Democrat will win by 16 points, and that’s not the case. —Bob
Well, I didn’t say that Silver was predicting a 16 point win. I understand probabilities ticeib. I know how to read, but I will let you know when I want you to interpret for me.
Still wrong based on the reality of the district and candidates, though. The results always are tight, but I would put Don Bacon as a 2-1 favorite right now, winning with about 52%.
Silver gives the Democrat a 4 in 7 chance of winning the district, which equates to roughly 58%. The projected vote total is 50.7-49.3 or 1.6%, and he rates the district as a toss-up. His definition of toss-up is a district that's less that a 60% chance of one party winning. Lean is 60-75%, Likely is 75-95% and Solid is over 95%. Based on that, he has 215 seats leaning or greater Democratic (218 are needed for control of the House), 205 leaning or greater Republican, and only 15 true tossups, including the Nebraska 2nd. So, if form holds, the Democrats would need to win only three of the tossups to gain control. The more interesting number are the "solid" districts, 190 Democrat vs. 133 Republican, meaning many more Republican seats are potentially in play than Democratic seats.
Nate will be updating his projections every day until the election. You can hover over a particular district to get his pick for that district, but that's rather awkward for the Nebraska Second, which is a geographically small district surrounded by larger ones.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/20 ... ast/house/
Re: Nate Silver's House of Representatives Projections
Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2018 9:46 am
by flockofseagulls104
What all these polls do not, and cannot, take into account is the MPM movement (Make Polls Meaningless). People who are fed up with being led by the nose by pollsters who have their own agendas, and who influence the outcomes by 'predicting' what the outcome will be are actively misleading pollsters when they are asked political questions. I don't know what percentage it affects, but I'll bet it's growing. I will participate if I ever get asked to participate in a political poll.
Re: Nate Silver's House of Representatives Projections
Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2018 10:06 am
by silverscreenselect
flockofseagulls104 wrote:What all these polls do not, and cannot, take into account is the MPM movement (Make Polls Meaningless). People who are fed up with being led by the nose by pollsters who have their own agendas, and who influence the outcomes by 'predicting' what the outcome will be are actively misleading pollsters when they are asked political questions. I don't know what percentage it affects, but I'll bet it's growing. I will participate if I ever get asked to participate in a political poll.
A great statement which shows how little you know about the business of polling. The "agenda" that pollsters have is to get hired to do more polls, and they don't do that by "predicting" the outcome. Some polls have been shown historically to have a bias in one direction or another (Rasmussen tends to show more Republican leaning results), but for the most part their criteria are consistent from one poll to the next. For every poll that gets released to the public (usually those that are commissioned by a media organization), they do a number of others that are private internal polls commissioned by individual candidates or parties. Those people want accurate information so they can determine future strategy, ad buys, etc. Many of these companies also do extensive marketing research polling for various organizations as well which is completely apolitical. These companies want accurate information not fluffing from suckup pollsters.
People do try to mislead polls (the Bradley effect) for various reasons, this MPM movement, like many of your movements, seems to be a movement of one.
Re: Nate Silver's House of Representatives Projections
Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2018 3:27 pm
by Bob78164
Appa23 wrote:Bob78164 wrote:Appa23 wrote:
That is clearly the case, looking at the fact that 538/Silver has the democrat as a 16 point favorite (58-42) in NE-2, beating the incumbent. When you put too large of an emphasis on generic ballots, national Trump fatigue, et al, you entirely miss the need to consider who actually lives in the area. While the NE-2 is the one Nebraska district that is fairly even in Republican and Democrat registrations, with a healthy number of independents, it largely skews to the conservative side of the spectrum. It is a major reason why the housing bubble and recession really did not hit here, and unemployment is consistently low. It is a population of level-headed, hard-working folks.
The Democratic Party candidate is the Nebraska version of Ocasio-Cortez's brand of socialism, right down to winning the primary as a political neophyte in a low turnout election against the "mainstream" candidate (and former one-term Congressman) due to grassroots efforts. So far, it is not playing well with the masses, although this race really is not getting much coverage right now.
So, 538's prediction is a pick up of 33 seats, at best.
To be precise, Nate’s Classic model has the Democrat at 58% to win the seat, which Nate classifies as a toss-up. He’s probably projecting about a 1-point win. The way you wrote this, it looks like you think Nate is predicting (or projecting) that the Democrat will win by 16 points, and that’s not the case. —Bob
Well, I didn’t say that Silver was predicting a 16 point win. I understand probabilities ticeib. I know how to read, but I will let you know when I want you to interpret for me.
Still wrong based on the reality of the district and candidates, though. The results always are tight, but I would put Don Bacon as a 2-1 favorite right now, winning with about 52%.
Nate's "official" forecast is the "classic" model because he thinks doing otherwise would sort of claim credit for other people's work. But he also has a "deluxe" model, which he says is the model he'd use if his life depended on getting it right. The deluxe model incorporates expert ratings and it has Bacon as a very slight favorite over his opponent, with a projected victory margin of less than one percent. --Bob
Re: Nate Silver's House of Representatives Projections
Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2018 6:43 pm
by Bob Juch
flockofseagulls104 wrote:What all these polls do not, and cannot, take into account is the MPM movement (Make Polls Meaningless). People who are fed up with being led by the nose by pollsters who have their own agendas, and who influence the outcomes by 'predicting' what the outcome will be are actively misleading pollsters when they are asked political questions. I don't know what percentage it affects, but I'll bet it's growing. I will participate if I ever get asked to participate in a political poll.
I hope it's true of the 43% who say Trump is doing a good job.
