Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I don't think markets are perfectly rational (and have written a fair bit on that subject) but this is basically a market saying there's a 12% chance that the sky isn't blue. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Democrats will gain ground but doesn't look like their remote chances of winning Alaska are likely to come through. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@haralabob I'd have to see how the contract language is written. But the market prices are crazy and Nevada proves that. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There is literally free money sitting there but the market doesn't quite trust reality-based information sources enough to pick it up. It is disturbing. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It's actually kind of alarming how delusional prediction markets are. They give Trump a 12% chance of winning Nevada, a state that has been called for Biden and where he has a fairly large lead, and where there is no coup possibility since it's run by Democrats. https://t.co/syiUiMOBUe — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Anyway, it's sort of amazing about how many opinions people have—positive, negative, right, wrong—about a fairly esoteric algorithm that transforms poll results (quite accurately, I might add) into probabilities. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@ForecasterEnten Not everyone is from NYC Harry, where complaining is practically a compliment. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

If people complain when the polls get the *outcome* right but the *margin* wrong (as in e.g. WI this year) and they also complain when polls get the outcome wrong but the margin is very close (say, Brexit) then at some point you have to conclude that people just like to complain. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@LPDonovan CA has started to eat through its ballots fairly quickly. Still a lot out in NY and IL, though conflicting reports as to exactly how many. I had Biden winning by +4.3 eventually when I made some guesstimates this morning, anywhere from high 3's to low 5's wouldn't shock me tho. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@jdelreal @aedwardslevy There are a lot of potholes to navigate though if you cover polls for a living, including people attributing positions to you that you don't hold or even are sort of the opposite of what you've said. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@jdelreal @aedwardslevy Oh just to be clear I absolutely wasn't implying that you were engaging in any sort of straw-man argument. These are great conversations. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @aedwardslevy: The communication...also clearly remains an issue, but I'm just honestly not sure how much more loudly or more repetitive… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@aedwardslevy @jdelreal There are also a lot of strawman arguments both made *using* polls and made *about* polls and I think it's important to rebut those forcefully, especially when they're made in bad faith. But I think people who were actually reading 538 et al were extremely prepared for Tuesday. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@aedwardslevy @jdelreal Yeah there are some exceptions but we at 538 or the folks at the Upshot or Ariel/HuffPo and most of the other prominent folks in the industry who really know their stuff cover polls with a lot of nuance and spend a ton of time talking about uncertainty. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

You can refresh various COVID tracking dashboards 20 times a day. Warning: Not a lot of comforting news there. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Polls could be 2x or 3x worse and they'd still be better than hot takes. Hot takes/conventional wisdom are very bad and often literally have negative predictive accuracy (i.e. polls often miss in the opposite direction from what they expect). https://t.co/EFqBQPTpEz https://t.co/fpiAddgqKB — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@chrislhayes There's not actually much evidence that polls are becoming less accurate. They had perhaps their best year ever in 2018. 2016 and 2020 polling errors were slightly worse than average but within a fairly normal range. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

If polls are becoming less accurate—it's not clear they are but leave that aside for a moment—people basically just need to accept that there's more uncertainty. But instead what will happen is that people will just be more confident in their dubious narratives and hot takes. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @jbenton: This guy ran in a D+71 district — one of the most Democratic districts in the country — and lost 86-14. And yet he’s saying… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @Redistrict: Not nearly good enough for Trump. Trump now needs about 63% of the remaining ~60k ballots, and about a third of those are f… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @FiveThirtyEight: Alex Trebek and “Jeopardy!” were a beacon of democratic ideals, flattening the world for all to consume. https://t.co/… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

A lot of Republican elected officials are implying—or saying outright—that voters shouldn't trust the election results. Do you not believe polls that say Republican voters are listening, governor? — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

And almost certainly the overall bias in political reporting is to overestimate the rationality and savviness and strategic acuity of political actors. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It's hard to know. I'm sure a lot of reporters would say "I talk to these Republicans and I know they don't really believe this stuff." But politicians are good at telling people, including reporters, what they want to hear. It isn't dispositive as to their actual feelings. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

However—despite all of Trump's rhetoric—polls found most Republicans seemed to not take Trump literally and said they trusted the electoral system. But post Nov. 3, there's been a big shift among GOP voters and only ~1/3 trust the election system now. https://t.co/ppUv09hBWd https://t.co/rJszb1D8lA — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

So, one thing that remains to be seen is what happens to Republican turnout if Republicans are *actually* convinced that elections are rigged. It's long been predicted that this could hurt GOP turnout and that's never really panned out. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @aedwardslevy: @databyler I need to set up a keyboard macro for "there's a difference between lying to pollsters and non-response" — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I know Democrats really wanted to beat Collins, but it's a lot better for them that she won than say that McSally did in Arizona. There's likely to be another "Gang of 6" or whatever involving Collins, Murkowski, Manchin, Romney and maybe Sasse, Sinema, Toomey and Portman. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The GOP Senators who have congratulated Biden so far are exactly who you'd guess (Murkowski, Collins, Romney, Sasse). Probably (Sasse less so than the others) the same group Biden will have to rely upon for crossover votes if Democrats don't win the Georgia runoffs. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

If it's both strategically convenient and emotionally satisfying to hold a certain belief *and* you have a movement that believes there are no neutral gatekeepers to snap you back to reality, then at some point this all seems to become fairly self-reinforcing. — PolitiTweet.org