Nate Silver and Iowa primaries.

[PyaarRevolution]

Did he even have this in the cards? With his polling software? I'm really wondering what he said after the tie.

[PeaceNikki]

1. Have "this"? What's "this"? Clinton won.

[Jackie Wilson Said]

2. I was confused also. As I recall Nate predicted Clinton winning, which she did, barely.

[Beartracks]

7. Hm.

I still think Sanders' almost win is a bigger win for his campaign than Clinton's almost loss is for hers.

==================

[PeaceNikki]

9. Silver wasn't predicting who would ALMOST win. Or whose campaign would benefit more from that.

He predicted she'd win and she won.

[Beartracks]

17. Oh, I know.

I was merely posting my own thought, especially as it relates to what I think the OP meant by "this."

But, yeah, Silvers' prediction was accurate. Out of curiosity, though, I still wonder what his math showed.

==============

[DanTex]

3. He had Hillary winning. And Hillary won.

The margin was closer than his polling average, but he got the winner right.

[Dawgs]

4. Nate Silver is a snake oil salesman.

You shouldn't care what he thinks.

[PeaceNikki]

6. lol, he's a statistician.

[Dawgs]

21. Statistician that's a snake oil salesman. Nt

[TCJ70]

5. One thing that will quickly be pointed out to you...

...maybe not in so many words, is that he predicts outcomes, not results. It's a small difference. All he said is "Hillary will win". He doesn't predict percentage results, just the ultimate outcome. Given the actual results, he was REALLY close to being wrong, though.

[jeff47]

8. It's worse than that.

He predicted a chance that Clinton would win - 80% the week before, 60% the week of.

So even if Sanders had won, Silver had his 20%/40% chance to still say he was right.

[TCJ70]

10. I'm not saying it's not silly...

...he's definitely no one to pay attention to.

[jcgoldie]

11. You guys...

... aren't very good at math are you?

[Bluenorthwest]

20. I'm not at all good at math but I can count to two, the number of contests Nate gave probabilities

for in Iowa and when I count the number of contests in Iowa where his probabilities played out I only get to one. So in terms of the outcome in Iowa, he was half wrong. His rate of accuracy, 50%. It's not that impressive. Many people taking a pure guess did better than that.

And I am very good at words, Nate is not. His verbiage never even hinted at anything like a tie, never did he say 'too close to call' or indicate he saw a race so tight calling it was difficult. He gave her a big advantage when her advantage was clearly not all that large. And on the Republican side he botched the whole thing.

So his math stuff hit 50% right, 50% wrong. His verbals however offer nothing to spruce up that rather unimpressive half the time rate of success.

[Capt. Obvious]

13. He gives probabilities

e.g. Clinton has a 78% probability of winning Iowa.

[TCJ70]

14. That's what I said...

...he doesn't predict the results of a vote by percentage which goes to a candidate. He tries to predict the ultimate outcome.

[PyaarRevolution]

16. Thanks for the clarification.

When I started seeing the numbers, I thought the polling was for win percentage.

[Cali_Democrat]

12. There was no tie

Hillary won.

Nate silver was correct.

[Romulox]

15. Old Nate DID NOT predict a statistical dead heat. So he was wrong. nt

[kcjohn1]

18. Nate is useless

Until couple of days out. His projections don't mean anything its very close to the voting day.

For example he had Clinton with 75% chance of winning NH just a month ago. Now it's 90% for Bernie. What has occured in past month to justify huge swing? Nothing. He is just slow to recognize changing political conditions. It doesn't help that he doesn't want egg on his face given how kept saying Bernie has no chance.

[JudyM]

19. You can just go to his website. He was blogging about it that night and the next day

And I'm sure there's an article or two by now. Here ya go: http://fivethirtyeight.com