Nate Silver

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Lots of *very* good state polls for Biden and merely-pretty-good national polls, a reversal of the pattern from recent days. These things do tend to even out over time. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @EricTopol: @NateSilver538 Not at all. Very reassuring, Nate. 32 known, documented reinfection by genomics worldwide now out of > 40 mil… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@joshtpm Was not intended as a comment about you at all. There's a lot of bad analysis circulating out there centered around the IBD/TIPP poll tho — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

RT @TrackerDebate: Some competitive states processing/counting ballots very early, and with a greater potential for winners on election nig… — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@TheStalwart @conorsen @Nate_Cohn Yeah, what Joe said. Also, although it probably does lock *some* votes in, early voting data could also change pollsters' assumptions about turnout and cause volatility in polls that way. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Looking at the polling average vs. cherry-picking polls is the lowest bar to clear. If someone isn't able to do that, then maybe they have valuable insights about other topics but they don't know what they're doing on polling stuff. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

There's a ton of national polling so no one poll is going to influence our average much. And there's nothing intrinsically wrong with the IBD poll. But that won't stop some people from looking only at that poll and not the many other polls in the average. https://t.co/HnhenaVq5D — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

As @Nate_Cohn wrote yesterday, there are also some reasons to think the race might tighten a bit. Indeed, that's what our model predicts (it has Biden winning the popular vote by ~8, not ~10). But Trump needs it to tighten by *more than a bit*. https://t.co/laZtZZGXIC — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

You could probably convince me that the race has tightened by half a point. On the other hand, there had been a bit of a state poll vs. national poll gap, and Biden got some pretty good state polls this morning. https://t.co/9AeTKX5o0O https://t.co/IDJoUFSLJ6 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Am I wrong to think it's pretty good news that the pandemic has been raging in some countries for 8 months now and yet there are only a handful of credible cases of reinfection? — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@DanRosenheck It's a combination — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

And there's a world's worth of difference between Biden winning Florida and Trump winning it, which may be called on election night. https://t.co/yMOHmFnC9S — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This uses output directly from our model. What happens to our overall forecast if the Midwest battlegrounds are split, for example, with Biden winning MI/WI/MN but Trump winning PA/OH/IA? It's basically a tossup. https://t.co/Y5pQF9LlLu — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Hey folks it's time to CHOOSE YOUR OWN ELECTION ADVENTURE we think you're really going to like this: https://t.co/1loKiZVJXp https://t.co/YqzM07eLsf — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I'm being a bit euphemistic when I say "unexpected" given some of the characters involved, but "how *exactly* did this happen" is a big story/question. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I'm on the side that says $ is overrated in presidential races but "how did the Trump campaign end up with so little money" is one of the more unexpected turns. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@billscher @ForecasterEnten NYT, which I think is even more aggressive than 538 about weighting toward higher-quality polls (our weights aren't actually *that* strong) has it as 7. https://t.co/Yz4fwJqrDN — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Also, our *forecast* is for a Biden popular vote win by 8.2 points, notably smaller than his lead in national polls (+10.3). That's because i) the forecast is mostly based on state polls, which been a bit less bad for Trump and ii) the model still expects a pinch of tightening. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Part of that is because Trump's better polls, in the context of what we've seen recently, means state polls that look like they did before the debate (i.e. consistent with a 7-8 point Biden national lead), which is still not a great position to be in with 14 days to go. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

To reiterate this point, on one of Trump better days of polling recently, he only decreased Biden's odds from a 87.5% chance of winning the Electoral College as of our final model run last night to 87.2% now. (Not a statistically significant change.) https://t.co/ajG88SznSA — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@chrislhayes Probably, yeah, although it's hard to know since we don't get many polls of non-competitive states. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Historically, state polls (if used properly) can often give you a better estimate of the national popular vote than national polls, although recently a lot of the higher-quality data has been on the national side so this might be an exception. https://t.co/L7bcUHUGzv — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

So to get a little wonky, we've seen the **state poll vs. national poll** gap increase, but that's not quite the same thing as the electoral college vs. the popular vote. If you imputed a popular vote based on the state polls, it would imply Biden is up ~9 nationally, not 10/11. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

You can sorta kinda see some patterns here, where Biden's biggest gains since the debate have tended to come in the Southeast (e.g. NC and FL) whereas he hasn't gained much in the Upper Midwest. But could easily be noise especially given a fairly low-quality mix of polling. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It's hard to know what to make of this, although I'd keep in mind that Biden's state polls were probably a little better for him than national polls pre-debate. So national polls have gone from 7 to 10 while state polls have gone from implying an 8-point lead to 9 points instead. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Biden's gain in swing state polls has been considerably more modest than his gain in national polls. https://t.co/ZN7MRZqccr — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Could that have an impact in a close election? Sure, in a *very* close election. But it's also not clear that late-arriving mail ballots would be especially Democratic given that Ds are sending in their ballots sooner than Republicans. See here for more: https://t.co/6SzPVrbkRG — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

This seems important to keep in mind when considering the impact of court rulings over when ballots arrive. Only about 1% of mail ballots arrived after Election Day in the PA primaries. https://t.co/se9WHVujpd https://t.co/bOwwWyZU0p — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

It's more of a sliding scale than a fixed time horizon, where our algorithm is trying to manage a trade-off between quality and recency. But you also need to account for house effects; the polls in the RCP average in PA are a really friendly set for Trump. https://t.co/wxRaq7bDjI — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I love many things about RCP, but if you have an average and 1/3 of it consists of Trafalgar and InsiderAdvantage and 0% of it consists of live-caller polls, it's not going to be a very reliable average. https://t.co/3LTQ7gEwAd — PolitiTweet.org