U.S. election: How Nate Silver and two university profs went 50-0 in predictions

[trailmonkee]

Last edited Wed Nov 7, 2012, 05:29 PM - Edit history (1)

Source: Bloomberg

Nate Silver was right. The Gallup Poll was wrong.



Silver, the computer expert who gave Obama a 90 percent chance of winning re-election, predicted on his blog, FiveThirtyEight (for the number of seats in the Electoral College), that the president would receive 51 per cent of the popular vote as he called each of the 50 states, including all nine battlegrounds.

“Nate Silver, right,” said Bill Burton, who moved from the White House to the pro-Obama super-political action committee Priorities USA Action.

Gallup’s daily national tracking poll put Republican nominee Mitt Romney ahead by five points until it was suspended for Hurricane Sandy, and a final national survey released Nov. 5 gave the Republican a one-point advantage.

“These polls are designed only to measure what is happening at the time of that poll in terms of the national popular vote” and are not “designed to be predictive,” Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport said.

With the count in Florida still to be finished, Obama was leading Romney nationwide by two percentage points, 50 per cent to 48 per cent, the Associated Press reported, and won a decisive Electoral College victory.

Two university-based pollsters joined Silver in correctly predicting Obama’s win, and one of them will be dead-on about the electoral vote tally.

Read more: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/uselection/article/1284100--u-s-election-nate-silver-and-two-university-profs-go-50-0-in-predictions

[SoapBox]

1. Face it...

the guy is GOOD!

[Coyotl]

3. Face it also ...

Statistics is science. This is a huge victory, science over propaganda and delusion, spin and manipulation.

This is the triumph of reason over herding.

[Hutzpa]

10. Face it....

a huge victory over super pac money. Fucking billionaires.

[Coyotl]

18. Facebookit too

This is a victory for social media and the new media, for personal communication and rapid, reasoned discourse, for the quality of flotsam in an interactive world, a victory over the old top-down feeding of selected information with propagation of lies un-countered. The truth and the facts triumphed over the wish-washy white-washing with lies, untruths, and propaganda.

[Ligyron]

24. "... propagation of lies un-countered."

eloquently stated

[proverbialwisdom]

43. Good one, yeah!

[cprise]

44. But don't count on that happening ever again

Not with Citizens United.

Obama lost 3 percentage points with white voters this time around. It was because of the flood of neocon propaganda.

[samsingh]

2. gallup is a joke

[ffr]

11. Yup. About all they did was keep both sides motivated to vote.

[femrap]

39. I think it's

more about keeping the 2 candidate's campaigns pocketbooks open and spending all they have.

The MSM portrays it as a horse race so they can get more $$$. The pollsters get more $$$.

Nate looked at State Polls...and none of these others did??? WTF?

[1StrongBlackMan]

28. I wouldn't say Gallup is a joke, so much as ...

Gallup was fulfilling it's business mission, which is to provide contracted service to service its clients needs. In this case, as in previous years, Gallup's clients' needs were not so much the providing of accurate information, as to provide information that gave the appearance that this election was a horse-race; thereby, creating a sense of drama that drove ad buying from the clients.

In previous years, and until this election, it worked; but only because there was no recognized alternative source (not similarly serving Gallup's mission) by which to draw a comparison.

I suspect that in the near future, this business model ... "keep it close to drive ad buys" ... will change, as to do otherwise will serve to only make Gallup (and other polling outfits) look, at best incompetent, if not, silly.

[JenniferJuniper]

4. He blinded them with science

[AngryAmish]

47. No he did not. His predictions are everything science is not supposed to be.

He may be right. He may be wrong. But his methodology, while somewhat known, has not been subject to independent peer review (because it is proprietary) and then subject to independent confirmation.

But he certainly made himself a buttload of money.

[iandhr]

5. IF FL goes for Obama I would go 49-1

[JenniferJuniper]

6. Didn't he flip Florida pale blue near the end?

[Raster]

7. yes he did.

[iandhr]

9. Yeah

But I still had FL for Mitt.

[Democrats4All]

8. I got all 50 !

Man, how could a regular joe get all of them right and the paid pundits miss so bad. It really is basic math.

[caraher]

13. Because the pundits are know-nothings

They're on TV to get ratings, not to speak the truth. What sells is always, always, always the clash and the "tight race"

Whereas you have the intelligence to use our best tools to sort out reality...

[JackRiddler]

35. Pundits are less than regular joes.

It's their job to be wrong if that's what they're paid for.

[AllyCat]

12. This is what happens when we use SCIENCE, not ID or creationism

Better information brings better lives for all.

[tomm2thumbs]

14. Facts are stubborn things....

I think Nate, by actually reporting the facts, has on more than a dozen occasions salvaged DU's downward spiraling moods with the reintroduction of reality to discussions.

Perhaps this is a trend?

Thanks Nate -- for being real.

[Moostache]

15. Sadly, no one in the conserva-bubble will hear, read or understand this....

Silver was right because he can do the maths, something that 90% of Red State/Free Republic/Fox victims cannot do.

They are unmoved by facts and unfazed by cognitive dissonance. About the best thing I can say about the core republican voter is that they are getting older and heading for extinction whether they believe it or not.

[TrogL]

21. Can I quote you on that?

They are unmoved by facts and unfazed by cognitive dissonance.

Best one-sentence explanation of authoritarian thinking I've run across in ages.

[adieu]

16. Nate Silver's statistics

I wonder if it took into account possible election fraud events. We already know of the voter suppression tactics, although some voters were more determined to out last the suppression (god bless them). I was really fearful that Ohio and PA might go to Romney because of voter suppression and other tactics.

[SomeGuyInEagan]

27. Leading up to Tuesday, I wondered about that as well.

Tough to factor in election fraud (note that I did NOT write "voter" fraud) and voter suppression tactics into your algorithms.

Or, he's a witch (and I am fine with that).

[carolinayellowdog]

17. well earned respect after some undeserved disrespect

from the commentariat

[Bernardo de La Paz]

19. Nate beat not only Gallup but Rove, Rasmussen, Michael Barone & Dick Morris.

[rusty fender]

20. A dead rat could beat Dick Morris

[AAO]

31. I wish I could beat Dick Morris too!

[MuhkRahker]

22. Didn't he have FL or Romney?

Regardless, I can't believe he was so close when he was including so many right leaning polls from Ras, Gravis, ARG, Purple Strat and Gallap.

[XtopherXtopher]

29. no, he turned it light blue a couple of days before the election. nt

[imac567]

23. Nate was right! But... so where 4 other nerds and Intrade. Check it out here!

http://votamatic.org/

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/p/2012-electoral-college-map.html

http://election.princeton.edu/

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjAk1JUWDMyRdDQzLWJTdlppakNRNDlMakhhMGdGa0E#gid=3

http://electoralmap.net/2012/intrade.php

As soon as they call Florida, and they will, Votamatic and Frontloading will have nailed the EV right on the head! I haven't tallied who did best on the pop. vote as it hasn't finished yet, but it looks as though 2 of the models, (Nate included) will probably nail that too! ALSO, the amount of FB likes and twitter followers for both parties was in line with a study suggesting that candidates with the largest followings are more likely to win elections and guess who that was???
NERDS RULE!!! What an awesome age of technology we live in...

[Dawgs]

25. So was the average of all recent polls.

They match Nate Silver's prediction perfectly, including a tied Florida.

It really isn't that hard. It's just math.

[imac567]

26. Sometimes it's just the simple things...

like...math

[Jim Lane]

36. As well as a few you missed

I was following electoral-vote.com, which, like Silver, took state polls and aggregated them to call each state (although using a somewhat different formula from Silver's). I think Larry Sabato did the same on his site.

Even a conservative site, RealClearPolitics, got the Obama win right when it looked to the polls.

[imac567]

41. You're right! I did miss that one.

I couldn't keep up with all of them! Amazing isn't it? And Fox news wanted us to think (or not think) we could use information to suggest the outcome of an event that involves numbers...

[Cha]

30. And Sam Wang didn't have to eat any Bugs..which he said he would

if he were Wrong!



http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=229767

Thanks trailmonkee!

[XtopherXtopher]

34. I'd buy that poster! nt

[imac567]

42. That's good!!!

...math lol

[jnew1021]

32. Last Night

As whole (from the election to the vindication of Nate's predictions) represents the triumph of logic over ideology, moderates over extremists, data over "gut feeling", and FACTS over outright lies. I could not be happier, glad it's over.

[KANTANA]

40. I am so happy too.

Love your take. You nailed the whole thing in a few words! Brilliant. I will add, the triumph of good over evil.
Nate Silver has won my respect and loyalty.

[XtopherXtopher]

33. Reality crushes illusion once again.

I feel like I woke up today in a brand new world. Nate is my hero of the moment.

I remember when amongst friends and family I predicted an unstoppable Obama win and eventually an Obama presidency, immediately after that Iowa caucus. No one believed me then. Hillary was still the favorite at the time.

This time, I had Nate's numbers on my side, and still, when I talked to anyone, the unwarranted pessimism among liberals and the blind optimism among conservatives was too thick to cut through.

Here's hoping this vindication of a data-based viewpoint helps move people's attitudes in the right direction.

[outsideworld]

37. well deserved .

[tweeternik]

38. Thank you, Nate!

I'm cashing in on some nice bets based on your analysis!

[DCKit]

45. I knew he had it right the second they started calling him gay....

last resort. If I didn't already have the bestest husband in the world....

[iandhr]

46. Silver went 50-0. I went 49-1

[Glaisne]

48. This pretty much sums up the whole Nate Silver thing:

http://xkcd.com/54/