Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@Nate_Cohn It was a good election for "keeping multiple hypotheses in your head at once". — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

1998 is the clearest analogy IMO; voters reacting to Dobbs and Republican extremism. Particularly if it's true, as exit polls say, that Democrats did strongly with independents. I wrote about the theory of the case for Democratic upside back in August: https://t.co/ky5OklaAlW — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@TheStalwart Lower CPI should also be good for Democrats' midterm chances. Real chance they keep the Senate now, and maybe even the House. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It's kinda crazy that Raphael Warnock has run in 4 elections (counting runoffs) for the same Senate seat in 2 years. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@davidshor Does that reflect fundraising or other resource allocation decisions? Survivorship bias (i.e. you were probably pretty good to survive 2020)? Just luck? — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@bendreyfuss Yeah like not too far from the median of the forecast (depending on how things end up) but one of the weirder iterations of the median. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@bendreyfuss In media and many other fields there's a type of person whose main skill is reading vibes. It's a rather useful skill, but if it isn't accompanied by either a sense of ironic detachment or some other "hard" skills, they literally can't comprehend that the vibes can be wrong. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There were 9 battleground Senate races on the ballot last night in states that also had gubernatorial races. We may wind up with *5* split tickets out of that (NH, WI already, maybe GA, AZ, NV) and that doesn't count PA or OH where the same party won but with a big gap in margin. https://t.co/ZP6RhH8aaT — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

So, I'm glad that one of the takeaways from last night is that candidate quality matters. It matters less than it did before because we're in an era of super high partisanship, but it matters, and there had been a big overcorrection toward dismissing it. https://t.co/n5geOJMWP0 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This was one of the most accurate years for polling ever. You have absolutely no clue what you're talking about. https://t.co/h41uviGS1n — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @samsanders: If weather forecasters relied on forecasting software as bad as political polling has been for political journalism for the… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Yep. And even in 2016 he lost the popular vote against a very unpopular Democratic opponent. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@joshtpm I mean, it didn't even happen in the previous midterm! (Polling was pretty unbiased in 2018.) Not being able to recall more than one or two elections ago and assuming what happened then is some new iron law is a classic failing of political journalism. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

One thing about the GOP mini-wave in NY state/NYC metro is that you're going to have a half-dozen Republican House members who are extremely vulnerable under typical presidential-year turnout conditions and will have a lot of incentive to buck GOP leadership. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@umichvoter That's an RCP error not a polling error. https://t.co/tnUISPNUtT — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The polls-only ("Lite") version of our forecast projected 50 Dem Senate seats and 229 GOP House seats. We'll probably end up at 50 +/- 1 Dem Senate seats and 222 +/- 5 GOP House seats. Pretty good! https://t.co/ImBoBkHf3b — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Except this time the polls correctly showed Democrats having a relatitvely good midterm and came very close the correct margin in most key races and a lot of journalists didn't take them at face value and went with the vibes instead. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Getting to 218 is tougher than it looks for Democrats if races are uncorrelated (i.e. just a bunch of independent coin flips). However, they probably *are* correlated. If Democrats beat Upshot projections in California, it gets interesting, for instance. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

5 races where Ds currently lead but the Upshot Needle (as of 4AM last night) rated as tossup: CO-8 NM-2 NV-1 NV-3 WA-8 4 race where Rs currently lead but the Upshot Needle (as of 4AM last night) rated as tossup: CA-13 CA-22 CA-27 OR-5 Did this fast so may be errors/omissions. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

4 races where Ds currently lead but the Upshot Needle (as of 4AM last night) had Rs favored: AZ-1 CA-41 CO-3 WA-3 1 race where Rs currently lead but the Upshot Needle (as of 4AM last night) had Ds favored: MD-6 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This is cool. GOP currently leads 220-215 based on called races + races where they're currently ahead. But, quite a few are uncertain; some key ones below. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@lxeagle17 @SplitTicket_ Honestly I'd have no problem if RCP had a *forecast* that used whatever methodology they wanted, including "take the polling average and shift it R by 3 points". But the fact is that their *polling average* is not a reasonable attempt to describe what the polls, in fact, say. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I don't feel like getting into a big argument this morning re: RCP, but I'm also pretty annoyed with people lumping 538 together with RCP. Polling websites and forecasts that followed a rigorous, non-arbitrary process (i.e. not RCP) did pretty darn well last night. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I mean, seriously, we could easily wind up with anything from a 51-49 D Senate and Ds keeping the House to a 51-49 GOP Senate and GOP +20-25 seats in the House. Those average out to a rather bad night for the GOP but they're pretty different outcomes. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @ryanmatsumoto1: Here's a look at how polls are doing in competitive states, comparing the @FiveThirtyEight polling averages with the cu… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I'm not going to have a written-out What It All Means take tonight in part because WE STILL DON'T KNOW WHO'S GOING TO WIN CONTROL OF EITHER CHAMBER OF CONGRESS, but we do have a quick podcast episode for you: https://t.co/sfwFOQrbyH — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @jbview: Who the hell knows but if PA, WI, MI and MN all shift a bit to the Dems, that's a pretty good trade for FL moving from marginal… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Really a good night for Ds throughout the Upper Midwest. These were the areas that shifted most toward Trump so maybe some mean-reversion. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

What an incredibly ignorant and assholeish thing to say. The people who made The Needle are real journalists and they're exceptionally good at their jobs. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Granted I don't expect it to be a particularly large polling error, pollsters mostly had a very good night. But it looks like we'll wind up with 2 elections out of the past 6 (2012, 2022) with an R polling bias and 3 (2014, 2016, 2020) with a D bias (2018 basically unbiased). — PolitiTweet.org